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Funny you should mention that jdfast...there is a titanium frame midget roller in the classifieds right now...was built before last years race with the intention of having PJ Jones in the seat.... damn near everything on it was a 1 off custom built piece of titanium...including a butterfly steering wheel... it is truly a work of art. The owner claims to have spent over 100K on building the roller...it's priced at 30 grand now...I don't think it ever made it to the race track..not sure why.
There were no carbon fiber wheels on the Swindell cars last year. However, there has been a company building carbon fiber wheels for micros for quite a few years now, and they really aren't that much higher than aluminum wheels.
Other than meticulous component selection, the Swindell cars are pretty much the same Spike chassis that anybody can buy. They may use some thinner wall tubing in some places than a standard Spike, but the Swindells damn sure aren't the only ones with a Chilibowl special Spike frame... several of them show up in classifieds each year...hell the car Kasey and Smoke are building to honor Leffler is being built on a Chilibowl special Beast frame...they are giving the car away to one lucky person after the race, and when you sign up for the drawing you have to agree to terms, one of whichis that you agree to never use the car anywere but on indoor tracks (Chili bowl, Duquion, etc), probably because it has some thinner tubing in places that wouldn't hold up as well in a higher speed crash.
Everybody who thinks the cars are such a big deal because the Swindells beat regular midget drivers...not running them regularly is a big part of the reason they are so fast. They never get away from their baseline for the Expo center. They don't have to worry about having worn out pieces on their cars, they don't run short on prep time for the bowl, and they don't get mixed up with making adjustments based on what worked for them at some other track last August. But the biggest reason not running midgets regularly is helping them is this....When you are used to running a 410 sprinter, especailly a winged car, you totally feel like King kong when you strapinto a midget on a bullring. If you can run through the turns at Knoxville or Eldora straight as a string, on the bottom or on the cushion, without so much as flinching on the throttle, you will have no problem or hesitation running a midget into the corners harder than the guys who drive em every week, and you will be smoother and waste less momentum than a guy who hustles a midget around tight tracks every weekend.
The reasons the Swindells are whoopin so much ass in that building are driving ability, car preperation, and the psychological effect they have on the other 250 guys there. When guys like Brad Sweet and Dave Darland make comments like "Everybody else is just racing for 3rd place" that tells me that the whole field is already beat before the calendar turns to the new year.
I guarantee you that if Joe Loyet offered Sammy an extra hundred grand to drive one of his orange #05 cars instead of his own the results would be exactly the same. Sammy would bring his own shocks, put the bars and stagger he wanted in Loyets car, and nobody would see any difference than if he was in his own car.
The Swindells approach this race differently than any of the other 250 guys approach it. They drive that racetrack differently than the other 250 guys. I bet they have a bar/shock/tire combo that is hundreds of miles away from what anybody else has ever even considered doing. I bet Sammy and Kevin make more "on the fly" shock adjustments during the week than all 250 other guys combined do. Every time Sammy has run the chilibowl, his car or somebody elses, he has looked to be in a class of his own. When he didn't get kicked n the balls by bad luck he won. Did it in Kunz cars, did it in Potter cars, it hasn't mattered if he was in his own "mythical millimeter illegal front end cheater" car or in a car that had run the whole USAC tour that year. Kevin has jumped into a perfect situation and has had 25 years worth of dominating experience served up to him to use with no secrets. And in the last 5 years bad luck has been unable to smack them both on the same night, which is one of the biggest things everybody who races in that building prays for.
Loose is when you hit the wall with the rear of the
car, tight is when you hit the wall with the front of
the car. Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall and
torque is how far you move the wall.
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