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

If what you are looking to do is get seat time, race and learn and not go broke, call the ASCS and see if they will take you on.  You get $500/night in tow money.  The races pay at minimum $300 to start and $400 for bigger shows.  You race 45 times so if you have 2 engines, and don't run them to lean, can get 20-25 nights out of each.  If you do as above and learn to weld, mount tires etc then you don't have to pay labor.  Finally, you can base your self in Oklahoma or Missouri or Kansas as some super small town with a very low cost of living but central to the races.  Buy a dually and a 32 foot trailer and you are set.  The only thing I would recomend is fly over same mates for the June west coast trip as that is a long trip by yourself and you will need some help.  Figure your nightly racing cost with no crashes is around $1200-$1300/night.  Given that the ASCS has rarely had B mains this year, you will have a chance to make decent money and if you do well, can actually break even a handfult of nights.

You can also mix in a few regional shows that pay well.

I posted this on Facebook back in January but it probably fits this thread. 

20 years ago about this time, my dad Michael W. Smith had a crazy idea. I mean REALLY crazy. He wanted to run the entire All Star Circuit of Champions schedule. 70 races. Not 55 like now, but 70. Places like Williams Grove PA, Knoxville Raceway IA, Volusia County FL, Wakeeney KS, Hartford South Dakota, Bulls Gap TN, Crystal Mi, Eagle Nebraska, Tulsa Oklahoma, Kokomo In, and everything in between. Racing with legends week in and week out like Frankie Kerr, Kenny Jacobs, Joey Saldana, Kevin Huntley, Keith Kaufman, Jeff Shepard, Dean Jacobs, Brian Paulus, and Sarah Fisher. 
     Here’s the kicker...all while both of us worked full time jobs and my brother  Todd was in College full time...with ONE CAR...and ONE MOTOR... Let that sink in for a minute. Oh, and my wife Kimberly pregnant with our first daughter. 
     To this day I still can’t believe we pulled it off. 38,000 miles, tons of lost sleep, arguments, getting fired and locked out of the garage, casinos, overtime, ultrasounds, getting lost, sleeping in the truck, making a USAC feature, falling asleep at the wheel (in the race car and the tow vehicle) crashing into a NASCAR crew chief, flipping under yellow at Port Royal, having Joey Saldana tell me I was braver than him, driving the Hampshire 63 at Eldora, Kenny Jacobs falling asleep on my shoulder at Keith Kaufmann’s house and so,so much more. My dad finished 5th in owner points and I finished 6th in driver points in the final standings. We made hundreds of friends and thousands of memories, most good, some bad, but I treasure all of them.     Unbelievably, all our wives are the same now as they were then. Kimberly, Carol Ann Smith,  Clare Smith  were all critical to our success along with a huge list of others.
   Some day I need to write a book. It was an amazing time in my life I’ll never forget.

p.s. 

Im still running the same bottom end tonight at Attica. It was the same engine all together till this past offseason.