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

Glad to see Marks step it up! Lots of young talent on tour, just a matter of time before Gravel breaks through! Still "The Greatest Show On Dirt" handds down! Ready to get 2017 started!

The last I heard, another good young talent from the Knoxville/Badlands/Jackson tracks is planning on running around 50 WoO shows. Matt Juhl in the #09. Last year was his first full year in a 410 and he ran well. Was getting real quick by years end. He'll make the most out of the experience and should do respectable. He won a 360 track championship at Husets (before Badlands), so he does have experience as a driver. Great family and great person. 

Nice!  Matt is definitely a young and up coming talent.  Sounds like there's going to be a few guys (including both Madsens) who are going to hit around 50-60 WoO shows and this seems to be a trend...and I like it.  Makes fiscal, time and travel sense for some teams to run around this number of shows when the WoO is within ____ mile radius of their shops (plus big time events - Nats, King's Royal, etc.). 

I predict Brent Marks picks up at least one win next year!

I know Brett and think hes a good guy and a better than average racer ,wish him the best of luck with the Outlaws ,but with the current format he will have a hard time winning unless he really improves his time trials.

This format took Shane Stewart from a contender for the title second to the 15 to struggling to stay in the top five last year.

Schatz has had 20 years of expeirence racing at the Grove doubt very much if he would win 25  races even if they ran 50 at the Grove. 

Outlaws should have a great following this season.    14 regulars committed already, plus Ian Madsen, Kerry Madsen, and Brady Bacon all running 50 to 60 Outlaw shows.  Hope the All-Stars can get the same sort of following!

That may be true.  However, the biggest problem I have when people talk about the competition in the Outlaws and Schatz winning titles as they pine for the old days is that of the big 3 (Kinser, Swindell, Wolfgang), only one of them was an Outlaw on a regular basis.

There may have been two other drivers that were competitive with Kinser when he was in his prime, but there was nobody who was a long time regular on the Outlaw tour that was beating him.  The "other" best in the business didn't run the entire Outlaw schedule, so I don't think you can argue that the Outlaws were more competitive back then. 

I should have said, "didn't run the entire schedule very often."

"There may have been two other drivers".........Unless of course you look at the top 20 in all time WoO wins and discover how many of those top 20 drivers did race against Kinser in his prime and still racked up a rather impressive number of WoO wins, whether or not part time. The list of those with respctable numbers is far greater than two. 

I can totally agree with that. Today's deal is just different than it was. Times change and thats just the way it goes.

You said that nobody can challenge the 15. My point was that I saw him challenged plenty of times last year. The 15 does have all of the PA tracks figured out, he has proven that already. There is no way that the points title is locked up by Memorial Day with teh level of comeptition that will be on tour next year. 

With Stenhouse, Larson, Kahne, and Stewart all with teams, it is cool to see a rivalry between car owners. Stewart laughs at them now but I know all of them are gonna try hard to beat him

And how many of  those that are running today will someday be in that top 20 (a couple of them already are) I honestly don't know.  I am not saying that Donny isn't the dominant force out there, he obviously is, and no one can pass cars or be as consistent as he is....but he won 24 out of the 81 races run last year, which means 57 were still won by others.

That's not that far off from the percentages Kinser won when he was in his prime.  If you go to a WoO race, there is still almost a 70% chance that you will see someone other than Donny win.  Considering how dominant he is, that is still pretty good odds. 

Please explain how a big budget and parts in the trailer help you hit the set up. 

Surely you've been through enough race seasons to undertand that! The bigger the budget....the larger the parts supply and availability, the fresher the engines, etc....   Keeping fresh new parts available is key to the big budget teams staying on top. Especially as the season progresses and the lower budget teams are using some (not all) worn and fatigued parts. Answer this....is it easier to hit the set up with fresh parts or worn parts? Granted, there is a lot more to hitting the set up than just parts.....balance, stagger....wing angle.....and much more.  Even with the parts coming off the shelf as they do today, the ability of the driver and crew to understand set up is still key, of course. But if large budgets and plenty of fresh hi tech parts wasn't the key to success, why has the cost gotten so damn far out of reach for so many? TSR, KKR and the other big teams would be getting by for a hell of a lot less money. 

Never said he wasn't challenged, hell he didn't even win a third of the Features last year. (sarcasm)  And I said nothing about a Memorial day lock. That was another poster. I do though, think he will win another title this year. 

"Too bad its not like the glory days of the 80s and 90s when it was wide open and you never knew who was going to win".  Has to be the dumb statement of the year.  I don't like to bash people on here like the Schatz-haters do, which is most of you but to say the 80s and 90s were wide open and you never knew who was going to win???? Say What?  Economaki's book mentions the lack of competition for Kinser, Wolfgang and Swindell back then.  Brad Doty has said it in his column in Sprint Car and Midget magazine, but not in those exact words (to not pizz off the above three "stars" of the 80s/90s and the only stars. Just finished Speedway Bill Smith's book (too much bragging for me and he admits it) and he says it.  Wolfgang indirectly made the same comment in his book but again, indirectly to not lose three friends with too brash a comment about those years.   Yeah, there were a couple other "stars" but they  ran the full WoO series once or twice in their career like Rick Ferkel. Mark Kinser had his short time in the WoO and dominated for two years with the new Mopar engine that had everyone covered those two years.  Mark dominated those two years due to his equipment same as the "big three"---better equipment. 

Today, well today everyone can buy, and does buy the same equipment.  No one is lacking the best equipment. They all have tons of talent.  Just to watch them wheel the now 925 HP sprinters around the track, rarely getting off it even on 1/4 mile bullrings is amazing talent.  Just a lite push on the brake but throttle wide open.   Schatz is just a once in a lifetime driver and the classiest driver out there.  It seems that every driver who is interviewed in Flat Out or Sprint Car/Midget has the class to tell the truth about Schatz being the cleanest driver out there.  If 95% of the posters here weren't diehard Kinser/Swindell groupies, this forum would be a lot better.  The WoO is rarely mentioned and Schatz is a no no.   Mention Donny Schatz in a postive way and your post will find it's way to page 2 before the day it was posted is over so rarely does anyone talk about Schatz other than negative BS.

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Burning hundreds of buildings, a thousand assaults and 
dozens of murders. Getting worser and worser.

No I don't agree, you can only use the parts on the car, 50 spare parts in the trailer won't help you hit the setup or go faster. Fresher engines won't help you hit the set up. Experience and knowledge is how you hit the setup. I've seen Rick Lafferty beat the best in Pa on used tires and a car held together with zip ties. Logan Schuhart beat the WoO mega buck teams with tired used parts because he had the car setup right. Big bucks make it easier to stay on the road but setup, in my opinion, has nothing to do with budget. 

What high tech parts are you talking about? Other than using carbon fiber and titanium to make the parts, what do the Nascar woo teams have that the under funded teams don't have and what do they have to do with hitting the setup? If I had as much money as KKR or TSR and all the same high tech parts, and Schatz was my driver and I set the car up, there isn't enough money or extra parts in the world to overcome my awful setup and  Donny would get beat by a 360, so again what does budget have to do with setup again?

I didn't expect you would agree with me. So why the hell ask me again? Your arguemnts don't hold much water. Yeh the underfunded teams will occasionally win with worn parts. And all those fresh new parts in the trailor can and do get used as a night of racing goes on during the season, so a team is not only able to use the parts on the car. The beauty of a sprint car is adjustability. We don't agree as to the importance of fresh frames, fresh bars, fresh shocks and other parts when it comes to set up. That's fine. Ask the boys who do it. I'll disregard your statement about you not hitting a set up for Donny, regardless of your finacial situatuion. Even Donny's team misses it once in a while.

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