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

Not disputing your numbers however the average number can get skewed by loss of tracks...

as late as 2000 Lincoln, Port Royal and Selinsgrove each had full fields on a saturday night and most places had a consolation race. So minimum of 72 sprintcars and closer to 84-90 each night.  now they both for regular especially handicap show struggle for 24.

Additonally the holy grail Williamsgrove who no other track is allowed to run a 410 race against them well except for Port or face the death penaly of losing your speedweek date can't draw a full field on most friday nights.

True...but I also remember car counts in the teens at Port and Selinsgrove, not sure about other tracks. Those car count stats were compiled by BillV at sprintcarstats.com by the way.

Not picking numbers with nothing to back it.  I worked in the machining industry for decades and we quoted work, had to re-price our products and services, and calculate tooling and machine increases.  We also gave employees raises.   It was about 3%, on average, each year for each of these.  When making these calculations, I wasn't interested in cost of groceries and medication.  I wasn't interested in how much a washing machine cost.  I was interested in the cost of steel and aluminum, the cost of labor, and the cost of tooling and equipment.  We had years with negative pricing (2009 and 2010 for example) and recent years that hit double-digits or near double-digit increases.  I have been out of the industry for 11 years.  I would bet the past few years in this business have put this 30 average above the 3% we used to use.  

$70,000 sprint car engines are not way out of proportion compared to the inflation involved with manufacturing and materials.  A $30,000 engine, of which the value increased on average 3% over 30 years, would be a $72,817 engine.  

Give me your car count data. I'm thinking the avergae now is higher than years back. I know this is only back to 2015, but it was lower before that. 

Year By Year Stats - 410 Wing
 

phew a lot to unpack here from my experiences of being a member of a 410 team in PS:

Paragraph #1 refreshing top 410 motors somewhere between race 10-15....rarely ever less than 10 and rarely ever more than 15.  just 3 years ago i saw a bill for a refresh of 410 it was $8,500.00 and it was not blow up.  i believe a comphrension rule as drivers and owners have expressed would lenghten the refresh window.

#2 i like it not sure it would work but in theory love the idea.

#3 i only disagree with the traditionalist part look at a 70's and early 80 sprintcar and tire and wing size is noticealy smaller..i cant remember the year they put the front wing on them to hook them up even more.

#4 you are 100% spot on here without a transition time is necessary i remember these conversation within our own team...the running joke was okay what is this rule change going to cost us.

#5 man is this spot on can't put a show on with 12-13 WoO and 14-15 High Limit need locals!

#6 i think your opinion is pretty good and murphy to add to your relative point and what i was saying about the difference of 2.5% on purse and motor is: 

1995 purse to motor differential between 22,000 and 25,000

2025 purse to motor differential between 46,000 and 58,000 

After you guys get the inflation rates figured out, then take into account that you are not getting the same engine as 20 or so years ago. I will bet those engines could not compete with todays engines. I also don't think there are as many big time blow ups now as then.

I apologize, I often write a book lol.  I've had this conversation many times and had always heard the same thing so I was trying to explain my full thought process. 

It's interesting that a freshen only needs to happen 10-15 races now, I know I had heard 5-6 shows at one point.  I have a hard time believing $8,500 was all it cost to fix a motor that was blown up, but blown up can mean several different things.  When I think of "blown up" I think of a pretty catostrophic thing but it could also mean a broken valve spring.  Years ago I helped on a local 360 team.  One week the right rear wheel hub broke and he turned a ton of RPMs.  If I remember correctly the owner called the motor builder and he said it should be fine.  The next week he was flying in the heat race (like from the third row to a half a straitaway lead in about 3 laps) and all of the sudden a big puff of smoke came out of the car, and he just pulled off.  When he came in one of the rods was sticking through the oil pan.  The thought was that the week before when it turned all of those RPMs it stretched a rod.  Now maybe some things have changed and maybe my numbers are off.  But something as simple as turning that many RPMs for that short of a time destroyed that engine.  So tipping over or hopping wheels could cause something like this.  However I do acknowledge that in the last twenty years there might be a rev limiter or something like that built into the ignition box?  Rods could and probably are also much better today.  But I would guess if you "stretched" a rod or thought you might have, you would probably replace all of them?  Again I heard at one point the bottom end of a motor was $30,000.  I'm guessing replacing all of the connecting rods would cost more than $8,500 but I don't have any idea.

I thought I would get a traditionalist comment and you're right.  When I went to my first race in 1990 sprint cars looked pretty much like they do today outside of downtubes, larger sideboards on the front wing, wing angle and the amount of panels on the frame of the car and hood shape (I loved it when they came out with the hood that wrapped around the downtubes).  I guess that's what I'm talking about but if you go back ten years before that they looked a lot different, if you go back twenty years before that, many cars didn't have wings, go before that period and they didn't even have roll cages.  So I do acknowledge the look has changed but not as much in recent years.  I remember the IMCA sprint cars with the little wings and I thought they looked dumb.

As far as the purse to motor cost and ROI.  Lets be real, I don't think any owner has ever looked at sprint car racing as a business or investment.  If they are, they're not very smart because I don't know of many who are making money owning a race car.  However I'm not in the position to own a competitive 410 sprint car operation, so I really can't say but if I was, I certainly wouldn't.  I work too damn hard for the little bit of money I do have and have no interest in watching it get destroyed because of a mistake someone made.

You kind of have a point.  You're correct that there's no doubt that today's motors are better, have more power blah blah blah.  However lets say twenty years ago the best 410 motor was $50,000 and today it's $70,000.  You've gained nothing except spending an extra $20,000 because everybody else also has the same motor you do, it just costs $20,000 more, even though it's a faster motor it hasn't gained an advantage.  It's just like the argument I made on outlawing exotic metals.  Is there as many "gernading" the motors?  I can't speak to that but it's something to think about.

No cost savings method type car will win the Knoxville Nationals or a race at Eldora, that isn't the point. Smaller and/or slicker tracks would be the target. Take the traction away and these type of tracks could run no motor rules. Darin know more about this than most of us, maybe he'll chime in. I know he had home built and 305s that won races or did very well. Use the wing as a rudder instead of a traction devce, that is the biggest hurdle and it isn't too hard to jump.

First off, I think it's great that you guys are having a healthy, common sense discussion on this topic - and being respectful of everyone else's opinions...regarding the sport that you all care about. I haven't been ignoring this post or responding to it, just been really busy with some big 2026 season projects.

With any scientific formula, to attempt to reach the constant, you have to remove as many variables as possible to try to come up with an effective solution.

That being said, I'm going to jump right to the center of the cinnamon roll in this case. We accomplished our goal here of making open engine sprint car racing more sustainable down here for 6 years.

We figured out how to make teams of varying budgets able to not only race, but compete with each other - all while not causing any of them to have to spend more money based on whatever engine configuration they chose to use.

It worked.

It took some time to get some teams to wrap their heads around it at first, but after the first couple of seasons, more and more drivers tried it, liked it, and came back - eventually culminating in what would become the largest single field of open engine sprint cars in the history of Texas Motor Speedway - including all national touring series - over the past 25 years.

In many cases, our rules also reduced consumables expenses by easily $300+/night on average. It also put less stress on engines & components and the track surface itself - which certainly lead to lower overall operating expenses and better track/racing conditions.

And our rules took a team maybe an hour or less to become compliant, and the next night they could be off racing in their 'normal' rules somewhere else, again, in an hour or less.

Several 'big name' drivers had raced with us at one point or the other, and all made our rules work with whatever engine configuration they shown up with at the track.

And they all seemed to like it...as I never heard one complaint out of any of them. Actually, the unsolicited comment they kept telling me was things like: "That was the most fun I've had racing sprint cars in over a decade."

Never once did I hear a fan afterwards say anything to the effect of: "ya, but the cars were 3/10 of a second slower in the feature race."

So, all that being said, the drivers around here eventually fully supported the rules and were doing a great job supporting the events in and around the Metroplex. 

But even with all these years of 'showing' the rest of the country the formula on how they could cookie-cutter it for their own tracks or series, I'm not aware of anyone who chose to do it in the open engine sprint car division. 

So, that leads me to believe that there's one other variable in the formula, which is, do these people spending that money really care?

I think that's the one aspect (or variable) in this discussion that has not really been hit on. Maybe some of you that have connections to open engine-rules teams or tracks in your area, you could ask them.

For now, I'll leave you with one picture (which I'll put on a separate response, as for some reason, a lot of times this message board software crashes if I put up text and a picture on the same post - no idea why) and comment:

Not to pick out one driver in specific, but he's a good example in this discussion. Tim Kaeding joined us at KSP for an early season event in March, where he was off that weekend. We had 38 open engine sprint cars in the pits. He'd never raced our rules before. He'd never raced at that track before. (That night we also had drivers such as JJ Hickle, Chase Randall, Harli White, Channin Tankersley, the Estes' and Dylan Westbrook in the field.)

The track was fast in the heats and there were no TTR's, just draw + passing points. TK started 7th in his heat out of 10 cars. He raced from 5th to finish 2nd. And we didn't invert or redraw for the feature (I'll save that conversation for another day. Not a fan of penalizing drivers that perform well in heat races.) His teammate Dylan Westbrook also started 7th and finished 2nd in his heat.

That would place Westrook on the pole in points, with Jarrad Warhurst outside front row after his drive from 10th to 4th in his heat, and TK starting 2nd row inside.

The track would become near-Thunderbowl style in width and closeness to the wall, with passing all over the place. 

Westbrook and TK would square off battling side by side for the lead, with Westbrook catching the corner 3 wall late in the event, and TK would cruise to the win in his first attempt with these rules and at a new track.

The fans got to see a great show with a quality field of drivers, the drivers got to race a racy track without using more than the same pair of rear tires all night, and the ticket price was $20GA.

There's an equally good story about the effects of these rules from Texas Motor Speedway, but we'll save that for another day...but it involves Sammy Swindell racing our rules and it would be fun to get his take on it. As it sure had an exciting outcome...with fans in the stands screaming and cheering during the on-track action.

So my bottom line on all of this discussion is, unless the sanctioning body or track requires rules that make open engine sprint car racing more sustainable, it's just going to keep progressing the direction it is. And it doesn't require an overhaul of what's already out there. And drivers quickly found out that a full-tilt 410 engine wasn't the hot setup with our rules, because it overpowered the ability to get traction, and most of them found the most success with the 'Estes special' that was about a $20-25,000 engine.

If some of you know TK, maybe ask him his thoughts on his night of racing with us. The following is a picture of him in feature racing action that night, Thunderbowl style at KSP racing for the lead with Dylan Westbrook.

Have a great start to the Holiday season and I'm glad to see so many of you so passionate for this sport.

The average is higher, but keep in mind, that using averages tends to gloss over some things. A big race like the Knoxville Nationals, that had 100 cars on Saturday masks a lot of races that had far fewer than average. 

I'd say you have to care about the costs of food and washing machines. That's what I'm talking about. The cost of engines has gone up at a faster rate than food and washing machines, etc.  If they keep going up faster than the overall inflation, they are going to kill sprint car racing as we know it, starting with the weekly shows.