con7

Not modifieds but the most extreme distance to travel to a weekly track I’m aware of is Mark Dobmeier the sprint car driver who back in the day travelled from Grand Forks,ND (where he would race on Friday) to Knoxville Iowa every Saturday which is between 8-9 hours one way.

As a casual observer the racing for LMs has been better this year especially early in the year. As for the straight up format, it’s the most fair but I think these midweek shows especially High Limit are missing the boat by doing things the way the others do it. I think the Eldora wheel for example would be a great way to shake up High Limit as opposed to this awkward dice roll that forces drivers to look like wimps by making smart decisions.

Lance has had his detractors over the years as all big winners do. When Fred, Lance, Greg and Todd Shaffer were the big guns all had his share of fans and non-fans. When one would have a big year and the others struggle, especially when Lance was in the Hamilton 77 and started to struggle, the fans would argue in the grandstands. All part of the Central PA experience.

One of the great drives ever was when Danny left the Freightliner 6, got into the Honeoye 84 backup car and went from last to first at RWR in a SDS race.

88 year old “crew chief” Davey Brown (more like setup advisor but still incredible). Donald Krietz is now the winningest car owner in Grove history as well. For those who don’t follow sprint cars as closely, Davey Brown was the crew cheif for the Weikert 29 when Doug Wolfgang won 53 races in 1985. And he’s still winning at a high level 38 years later. It’s awesome to watch these guys beat much younger teams/drivers at a very high level.

It’s been like that honestly since 2020, used to be you could easily name a race of the year candidate off the top of your head because they stood out so much. Nowadays, if a race doesn’t feature a great battle for the lead it’s a bad race.

Sunday races especially those before and after summer are tough to get big crowds for, WoO rarely runs on Sunday outside of the Weedsport show. All Stars are in a weird spot as they had momentum with the Flo association and have tried to expand the footprint and keep drivers following the tour but High Limit has sort of taken their status as the alternative to the WoO. Given many of their teams also follow High Limit it’s sort of hard to differentiate. It’s also hard because they really need to upgrade their purses but without crowds it’s tough to do.

Would be interesting to see what the car counts for other divisions are at tracks who are struggling for mods. One poster said Ransomville was getting 45 cars for 5 divisions so it’s not just the mods who are struggling. Are there tracks that have 12-15 mods that have 40 cars in the other divisions? Or is it simply a matter of too many options nearby coupled with lousy promoters? I honestly don’t know but it is concerning that so many tracks seem to be struggling for cars across the board.

DirtVision has put up some old This Week on Dirt episodes recently and it reminded me how good modified racing was back in the day. The professionalism of the show, how many of the big names had big sponsors, how many midweek shows there were and how well attended they seem to be; how it seemed most races had rain dates, how each member track seemed to have its own big names and how track championships mattered…etc Sprints and LM might be enjoying their golden ages right now with streaming, but dirt mod racing has so far to go to get back to what we all basically took for granted back in the 80s and 90s

To be fair, there were some horrendous races at RWR too. It’s what stopped my dad and I from going upstate in the spring for those races. Port Royal seems to have a good formula to prepare a daytime surface.

I had to hit the “watch now” button twice after it gave me the “event hasn’t started yet” message

This would be true if motorsports was a meritocracy and money had nothing to do with “making it”. Lebron James showing up to play a minor league basketball game, it would be surprising if he didn’t dominate. As it is there is a ton of talent in the “lower levels” of the sport that will never “make it” because of the huge barriers to entry and therefore it is interesting when Larson and others compete against them.

Same thing last year. Deal must be completely subsidized by Flo and the back gate.

If it’s working so well, why are they drastically cutting back on their marquee events?

I check out 4m on occasion to keep up with LMs and apparently even the diehards of the sport were not aware of basic things like format for the race etc… Also, $25 admission. The larger than normal crowd makes more sense. This would be like me finding a rich guy, taking his money, scheduling a $100k to win sprint car show in Central PA or some other hotbed, charging $25 to get in; “pack the stands” and lose a ton of money in the process.