Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Some people already brought this up in the I-80 Dirt Classic thread. I was at the NSL 360 show last night at Rock Rapids. I-80 had 20 410's for a 10,000 to win show. Rock Rapids last night had 18 360's. IT'S EARLY MAY IN A SEASON WITH PLENTY OF RAINOUTS AND THE CAR COUNTS ARE ALREADY HORRIBLE. What in the world are car counts gonna look like in July and August? Don't take this as a knock on NSL or TQ he is trying to give the fans good paying shows at reasonable ticket prices and the racers a good year end points fund for a limited area traveling series. Just asking WHY don't racers want to run NSL shows it doesnt make any sense.... what has to be done to make the sprint cars show up at these deals?

The worst president of my lifetime:
Ronald Reagan

I wonder if NSL would drop the 410's and pour all this money into 360s what the counts would be?? Pretty darn good l would think. Last year at l-80 there was big money up for grabs with the Road to Knoxville race and that got 22 or 23 410s to show up. Nobody can afford to run the damn things anymore with these huge $$$$$ motors that need freshed up after 8 races To be flat honest l cant tell the difference between a 360 and a 410  watching in the stands....there both fast n loud. 

Well unfortunately 360 got stupid expensive too. One guy wins 10k-who is going to a race like this and beating tmac or dude? Almost no chance but the likelihood of 20k in damages is way better than 10k in winnings.  If sprint cars were profitable there would still be lots of owners that hire drivers not just a few. Only diehard fans and partisipants left.

Sprint car racing is a grassroots form of racing with only a few elite car owners/teams and drivers scattered around the country at the local levels. The money is simply not there for the majority of the teams. It has less to do with purses than it does the stupid high cost of competeing. It probably won't change because the "elite teams" want to garner the top dollars so they'll keep right on spending, and those are the teams with the pull! Somehow a level playing field at a much lower cost to compete has to return to sprint car racing. A pipe dream I'm afraid. Oh and too.....there are plenty of promoters and such making a healthy chunk of change and ignoring the fact that the sport could soon be in real trouble.

Was gonna say the same thing about 360's. Another issue is the number of divisions and travelling series now spreading the cars thin. Plus some areas keep adding more and more races to the schedule which of course doesn't help. Costs are ultimately the biggest factor but no one wants to address it. Ron Shaver and Donny Schatz's dad developed an off the shelf sprint car motor with stock GM parts(corvette GL1) a few years ago. The engine was 430 CI and the HP output was inbetween a 410 and 360 designed to last at least 20 races between fresh-ups.... 20G pricetag. No one was intersted. WHY? Hell some teams are spending that for a 305. A good 410 costs what 50-60G? A good 360, 35-40?

A

I think TQ would've been better served to stick with his 410 series and concentrate on building it before getting involved with the small sprints. JMO.

I don't agree with this statement and here is why.  Both Ohio and Pennsylvania have multiple tracks and series running 410 sprint cars.  This is true because of the pure number of cars as a result of the large number of opportunities.  In addition, they also have 305's, 360's and in the case of PA, Super Sportsman.  All of these cars are based on sprint car frame, equipment and setup.  In the midwest, we have USMTS/USRA Mods, IMCA Mods, Sport Mods, Mod Lites etc.  Modified racing really has grown.  Sprint cars on the other hand have had Grand Forks, Jackson(360), Husets and Knoxville.  Until last year there was only 1 410 series (I don't count NOSA).  The growth will come as a result of the growth in the racesavers as well as the growth of 410's on Fridays and Saturdays.  We finally have feeder systems coupled with high class tracks and programs.  The car counts will come, but it doesn't happen overnight.  It will be 2-3 more years before we begin to see counts improve as a result of the grassroots (305) programs.

I think the bigger concern is will Jackson and Badlands as well as the NSL still be around in 5 years.  If so, we will see a very strong sprint car area.

One example of what happens when things fall off is California.  Silver Dollar was very strong for a long time and the home of 410's.  When the old NARC closed and San Jose ceased, it had a fall off.  Finally the KWS has come back and Silver Dollar appears to be on better footing, plus Watsonville is back weekly.  It appears that sprints are growing, albeit slowly in California.  Things in the midwest were much worse than CA, and it is going to take twice as long as the California situation for things to improve to the successful levels that they should.

I know you don't agree with most of what I say but I agree with you on what you said in this statement . I see it as a conflict owning  two of the dominant cars in two series . Don't get me wrong  TQ as some of you refer to him has done alot for racing and his idea of midwest series is a good one , to hold costs down . THE COSTS OF OWNING CARS IS THE MAJOR PROBLEM THESE DAYS  , there is no real incentive for a new car owner , its just not like it use to be .

I think all the politics in the area with Knoxville, Badlands, and Jackson has divided the camps and weakend the position of a traveling NSL series. Plus with 70% of the shows at Knoxville and Jackson I think many guys are just picking and choosing where they want to run as I thought originally the plan was for NSL to expose the region and other tracks to 410 sprints. It is going to get real interesting when Jackson and Badlands start up soon. Too bad everyone could not get along for the betterment of the sport.

I would like to respond amd put my two cents in regarding the comments about Tod Quiring owning the dominant car last year with Danny Lasoski behind the wheel. First off, Tod has had top notch cars and drivers on the track for a long time (I'm sure you're aware of that)....considerably well ahead of his introduction of the NSL. He also currently has the dominant car on the All Star circuit with Dale Blaney aboard. As for last season, Danny was extremely lucky night after night from the very beginning of the season with his draw position for the Feature. As the season began to close out, he wasn't getting all those upfront draws and other teams began to win. I know those favorable draws were simply luck, because my bosses' daughter reached into and drew out the numbers on several occasions. I think this year will be much different than last year. Brian brown had a pretty bad start last year and didn't really get it in gear until the Knoxville Nationals. I don't think thatpoor start will happen again for Brian. Also, Kaeding and Dollansky are now in to their second seasons with new rides and they should be much stronger. Several drivers in the NSL series are going to be threats this year to run upfront. You are right that this is a critical year for the NSL. I do believe one thing....Tod Quiring is going to stick it out and make the series a winner.

It'll be interesting to see who goes where for the May 21st show. With Jackson moving their spring nationals to the same date as the silver shootout. 

It truly is to bad they couldn't find a way to work together. What could have been!!!??!!

Mitch, I think you're wrong. 

Jackson Motorplex - Folken's Spring Nationals is Friday, May 20.

Badlands Motor Speedway - Silver Shootout is Saturday, May 21. 

As far as I can see, there are no dates where Jackson and Badlands have 410s on the same night in 2016. 

makes sense to me...

The really sad part is.....when promoters like Durst, Huffman, the Kosiski's, and Jared Adams (KK) put up the 10k and 700 to start types of payoff and get 20 cars, yet on the following night, Knoxville gets the same 20 plus more for only 3K to win.......if the rest of the cars in our area don't show, what's the incentive for them to keep doing it  and not just pay a standard 5K / 400 to start NSL purse....you certainly can't fault the twenty cars that showed up, they were there to support the deal and put on some good racing.......although the crowd for this race was the largest of the three NSL weekend at I-80 so far.......all the buzz we hear about and see from the fans is where are the cars?.....never anything about the quality the field and how good the racing was, especially the format.......or  the trememdous race there last fall that TK won..........SC

NOT Right

THIS IS  RIGHT

In this case. Thankful I'm wrong!! Thanks for clearing that up Shawn! 

The ones that can (work obligations) usually do travel and juding by the results, pretty much all did (with the exception of Dobmeier who watched weather and made the decision to race at River Cities on Friday instead of taking the chance of 2 rainouts by racing I-80 and Knoxville last weekend).

I don't think drivers have a major issue with Lasoski running the series provided that the rules are enforced equally to that team as it is the others.  I don't recall a mass complaint from competitors when Terry McCarl ran his own event (Front Row Challenge) a few years back.  Same goes for Brad Sweet when he promotes a race in CA, or when Jason Meyers did, etc..

It's easy for us on a message board to say "Why wasn't so and so there?" when we have ZERO knowledge of their race budget, personal lives, or work obligations.  We should be happy that we get to watch anyone race.  Most could make the decision tomorrow to sell everything and buy a boat instead.

It seems like something is missing from the NSL's on line game. I have to work about 1/2 the friday nights and last year it was very easy to follow the races. I wonder if its Natalie being gone or if Bill W. Is not doing there web stuff? I honestly have no clue but something  definitely missin. 

My thoughts on the NSL from central Minnesota are that they are so close yet so far away.  Last year I saw them once when the co-sanctioned the Jerry Richert Sr. Memorial at Cedar Lake with the IRA.  The race was already a good one with some of the Knoxville cars showing up each year so the addition of NSL went largely unnoticed with the exception of some added signage.  This year the Memorial isn't on the NSL schedule so I would have to go chase them if I want to see them.

Jackson is a few hours down the road but I bus it into work in the Twin Cities due to never ending construction and not paying for parking.  The best opportunity to get to Jackson would be on a vacation week and that thought did cross my mind as I'm off work this week.  NSL moved their opener back a week and my son would have been too busy to make the redeye so scrapped that plan.  I guess that you could say the NSL is a Minnesota based series but we wouldn't know that around the tracks up here north of the Cities.  For the most part it's centered around Jackson which is a rare sell to the non-race-fan wife and Knoxville which is an even tougher sell.  She insists on a 50/50 split on an already tight entertainment dollar.  I don't have a problem with that as I can see some decent racing wihin an hour or so of home without travel or motel expenses.

Still I wouldn't rule out a trip down to Jackson next time I can swing it.  I've got a Friday off next month but Back to the 50's at the State Fair beats out racing on that day.  10,000 awesome cars to photograph a half hour from home beats 20 muddy dented up race cars any time.  As I approach 65 later this year I decided to step down from my racing media work and photography gig.  I still take photos in the infield when I do attend a race but I'm paying full price so I'm watching these Sprint Car shows closely to ensure that the entertainment value is there.  When I see reports of 18 to 20 cars at NSL races no thanks, the entertainment value isn't worth the travel expense.  I'll be watching the results closely, especially when Badlands opens, to make sure that fields are consistently good.

Bottom line, I used to run down to Jackson sometimes in the pre-internet days when the VFW was running the track.  The stands were packed and there were two classes of Sprints both with car counts in the 30's to 40's.  Today with digital photography we've got 10x the photographers and a gazzilion websites promoting the hell out of every move the racers make.  In spite of all that in a lot of cases I see less than half the cars at the tracks than I saw fifteen years ago.  Case in point, we just had a Sprint Car race 40 minutes from here on Sunday night, seven cars showed up.  I opted for taking my wife out for dinner and when I saw the results I was glad that I made that decision.  A $30 pit pass to take photos of 7 cars would not be a wise way to spend my entertainment dollar. 

I have shifted away from racing and am supporting the son-in-law's band and going to concerts.  Two weeks ago we watched the band compete for the chance to open for a band called Korn (with a K) at an outdoor festival then went and saw Dream Theater a couple of nights later.  The price tag on that weekend was more than the races would have been but it was worth every cent.  I do want to get out to a few more races this year and would like to catch NSL somewhere but I don't do much traveling for races anymore.  It looks like they changed their business model and getting to tracks outside of Jackson and Knoxville isn't much of a priority.  I repeat, so close and yet so far away. 

Stan Meissner