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

Why would you say that? Kasey has fielded a multi-car team for years now... He's no longer cashing NASCAR checks and simply cant afford to race 3 cars to the comforts he'd prefer. If hes having trouble finding sponsorship for the 2019 season and the 9 car is going to race out of his pocket... it might as well be kasey in the seat. 

I'm not expecting him to contend for the title or anything but hopefully he wins a few WoO shows. Wishing Daryn the best as well.

Of course Kasey has made a huge contribution to sprint car racing & deserves our appreciation. But who cares who somebody else is rooting for (or against?)? We don't know his reasons, & it doesn't matter anyway

Root for whoever you want.... jeez

Lost in some of the bitterness in Pittman being out of the Kahne ride is the sponsors on board for a car Kasey is driving would not be on board for a ride Kasey owns (Pittman or anyone else).  Kasey driving a car has nothing to do with Pittman being out of the Kahne ride. 

Oh give Blazer00 a break everyone, he normally has some well thought out opinions on the board most of the time. Not like all of us on here haven't clicked on the post message button without rethinking the action. I think this fall in the category of

If I may.....I'll accept the crtiticism and try to explain my original thoughts, and also respond. First off, unlike so many, I'm not all goo-goo eyed and thrilled about the NASCAR boys and the money they bring. I've made those feelings known for quite some time. I think it is detrimental to the sport. Anybody here doubt the fact that the Penskes, the Heindrichs and the rest of that overly rich bunch aren't part of the NASCAR problem?  If an owner can't find sponsorship to keep a top 4 or 5 team on the tour, and still run part time himself, there is something wrong with the costs vs payback to run top 4 or 5. And the majority of the fault is the super deep pockets. At some point, the pockets become shallow....but of course not the pockets of the owners, the pockets of the sponsors. The only owners and drivers that suffer are the ones who can no longer find enough sponsorship money to continue in the sport. One person critical of my remark states that Kasey has "spent millions and millions of his money" to fund teams. Bullshit!  The majority of what he spends is someone elses money. Of course racing is a business, and the car owners are in business. But when owners don't stand up to make things less costly for their business, they are inviting failure. And having just fourteen cars (incuding JJ) on a tour of this magnitude, with just 5 or 6 teams taking out the lions share of the money is failing.  Of course Smoke and Kahne can't recognize that, because it was racing that made them each worth in excess of fifty million dollars (as reported elsewhere), and racing is still making them even more. It's really too damn bad all the teams on the tour don't have to do it the way the Shark Teams do.

Thanks to those of you who recognized the fact that I did not wish anything bad on Kasey. 

I never said the Trophy Cup "sucked". I criticised the track conditions of past years and thought the racing involved far too many crashes because of the rough conditions of the track. This year's Trophy Cup was awesome...the track was smoother and far fewer crashes. So there!

Now see Blazer....had I read your opinion and reasoning like this I wouldn’t have gotten so worked up. Lol. Your first statement struck me as odd from you as, normally, your responses, even if I disagree with them, seem to be well thought out and have sound reasoning behind them. For example, even though i don’t totally agree with EVERYTHING in your post I’m now responding to, like most of your responses I can usually find something that I either agree with or it makes me stop and think about another way at looking at whichever topic is being discussed....thought provoking you could say. That is why I respect your opinion a lot of the time. It’s also why, in my first reponse, instead of just stating I thought your comment was “dumb”, I stated my reasoning behind my comment. Henceforth, I apologize for responding as I did with my first sentence of my First response to you. Please have a good Thanksgiving. 

DakotaDude

He'll have a kick ass crew so he should be just fine.  

Speaking of crews, does anyone know who will crew chief the 83 for Pittman?

Hey, no problem. And no need for an apology. I wasn't offended by any of the criticism from any of the posts. My original post was pretty blunt and that is what I intended it to be. It pisses me off that there are so many great experienced racers without rides and so many young racers deserving of WoO rides, and only a few of them will be able to put together a ride on the tour because of the damn costs. The sponsors are actually opening up their eyes, I believe. They've seen countless people get rich on their sponsrship dollars and what do they really get back? And each year they demand even more sponsorship dollars. The big dogs are pricing the sponsors out of the business.

I'm not sure if someone else said this or not but I wonder if Kasey can secure sponsorship for himself but not Pittman?  Lets be honest Kasey was a very popular driver at a time NASCAR was very popular.

I'm not sure if I can blame it all on being NASCAR money that is raising the costs.  I don't know what Karl Kinser, Sammy Swindell or Doug Wolfgang did to make sprint car racing any cheaper.  Believe me, I have no doubt that Tony Stewart and Kasey Kahne pushed it to the next level but I think that for sure Karl Kinser and Sammy Swindell made things much more expensive many times throughout the years.  I'm not sure I could blame it on NASCAR money, to me they are just two competitive guys who love racing and happen to have a lot of money.  Just think if Trump was a sprint car fan, I don't think there would be any expense spared.

I kind of take issue with you dogging Kasey for not giving more of his money.  Even if he hasn't spent much of his own money he has brought a lot of corporate sponsorship with him.  Would you prefer he went the Jeff Gordon route?  I'm sure he has a lot more money than Kahne or Stewart but to my knowledge has never given anything back to sprint car racing or any "grass roots racing" at all, even though that's where he got his start.

I couldn't agree with you more that there are a ton of drivers deserving opportunities based on talent, unfortunately it takes more than talent these days.  And it's not just WOO sprint car racing either.  To be honest with you, I've lost a lot of interest in racing and I think that's a big reason why.

I think I know your opinion but what is yours and everyone else's opinion, have the NASCAR drivers been good for the WOO?  I guess I always thought that they had been.  They've generally fielded at least four cars but I think it's probably more now with Larson and Stenhouse being somewhat involved.  They've also brought a lot of corporate sponsorship.  They've certainly brought some attention to the sport too.  But you are right they have definitely drove up the cost.  That corporate sponsorship has not really stayed in the sport or gone to other drivers like it would in NASCAR.  And I'm not sure they've really brought attention to the WOO but mainly to themselves.

I totally agree. I've always said that I don't think that there's a huge return on investment to be had for a large corporation sponsoring a sprint car compared to many of the other places they can spend their advertising money. I wish it were different but it's just the way it is. If we had live TV, that may be different but that ship has long since sailed.

Regarding Kinser, Swindell and Wolfgang, there are some things that get overlooked. A large number of fans speak out about how they had the best of everything and that is why they won so much. Again I’ll say BULLSHIT! Think about it…………Karl Kinser was not a wealthy car owner when the WoO started, so right there alone, Steve Kinser was in the same place as many drivers financially. The big difference was that Karl was a workaholic and an innovator that could figure out how to make a sprint car fast and make it stick. Wolfgang sure as hell didn’t come from money and when he hooked up with Trostle, he hooked up with a builder that was open to innovation, and it just happened that Doug was just that also, an innovator along with having the desire to race and win. Trostle sure as hell wasn’t wealthy. Then Doug got in to the Speedway Motor car which was supposed to be a step up, even though it was short lived, really. And Sammy didn’t just burst on to the scene with high dollar stuff. There wasn’t much for high dollar stuff in the beginning to be had. But like Karl and Doug, Sammy was an innovator, a true racer and filled with desire to succeed. There were dozens of car owners around the country that had financial means exceeding the Big 3 in the beginning, so why did those owners become the dominated rather than the dominators? Simple, Steve, Sammy and Doug were going to kick ass in like equipment, as well as lessor equipment regardless. They were that good. And Doug won many a race when he was in just average equipment. 

So when does the money come into play? I think the first real sponsorship that Karl secured was Valvoline. That came by way of Steve’s brother-in-law (Dana’s brother) who was hooked up with Al Unser,Jr., who had Valvoline as his Indy car sponsor. Sammy attracted several good rides in the '80’s, the Nance car, the Old Milwaukee car and cars with Channel Lock and Kodiak sponsors as well as others. Doug had some sponsor money from an accounting firm and some Visegrip sponsorship and at some point a deal with Hoosier. In ’83 Doug landed the Gambler house car for one year and then ended up in the seat of the Weikert car in mid ’84. As far as the money goes, again the Big 3 weren’t in rides that were that much above many others when it came to money. There were several  successful builders racing house cars and plenty of solid privately owned teams around the country with good drivers and very good financial backing. Many, many sponsors began to show up on sprint cars. Still, the Big 3 dominated throughout the ’80’s and early ’90’s. Of course after 1991, there was just the Big 2.

I think the first of the real money in sprint car racing came on the scene in 1995, when Steve Kinser returned from his NASCAR stint with the Quaker State money and sponsorship. In 2000, Tony Stewart put Danny Lasoski in a car he co-owned that carried sponsorship money that Tony had secured in NASCAR. At that point in time, it was evident that even the wealthy owners of the day could no longer compete. It took the mega-wealthy who had mega-resources at their disposal. And through the 2000’s that became very evident. There are usually two columns when the race results are presented in major series and major individual races. The left hand column is the driver, the right hand column is the car owner. Since 2000, the car owning winners of the WoO championship, with only two exceptions, have sponsorship that is traced back to NASCAR directly. Donny Schatz’s family car in 2006 and 2007, and Jason Meyers in 2010 and 2011 had no relationship with NASCAR. They were the last, and it's likely they will remain so.

I can't speak to ANY of the big 3's financial situations when they started.  In fact I made no mention of it.  My point was that I don't believe any of their interest was in making sprint car racing cheaper at the time, in fact I think they were just as guilty of making it more expensive as anyone.  The one thing I remember was in the late 90s when the top teams were big into the lightening the cars.  At the front of all that was Karl Kinser and Sammy Swindell.  At the time do you think they were thinking "Boy this is going to make racing better and make it cheaper"?  No, they wanted to be the fastest for a little while.  Just like the modern day owners.

It's okay that we disagree on some things. Wolfgang and Trostle are most likely the first to really reduce the weight of a sprint car. And they did so in the least expensive way they could. After all, they were racing to make money, and doing so on a pretty meager budget. Kinser, Swindell and Wolfgang are not responsible for the high costs of sprint car racing. At least no more so than any other driver, owners, vendors and builders of that era. Everybody was doing what racers and those making money from racing always do.....trying to find a way to get faster. So in answer to your question, I beleive Kinser, Swindell and Wolfgang were thinkig "boy, this is going to make me better and FASTER". That's still the case today. So if you want to lay blame on high costs, maybe take a good look at what those who write the rule books have done. Do you think as a group, the WoO are doing much really to contain costs? Or do the rules and format they write benefit the most affluent teams?

Wolfgang was the reasoning a lot of the rules today are in place. 

When he was in the Weikerts car, they had two complete operations. Doug would go with one crew and rig to a track, but if something rained out or they could do 2 shows in a day, they would have another complete operation waiting at Phone Booths along the way to next "Said" track and they would wait for a call from Doug to either say lets go to the track or you can go back to the shop.

Doug also was the reason for tire rules, there was never a time that his car hit the track that he didnt have brand new tires on all 4, they would go through 16 tires a night. 

Doug tested at NUMEROUS nascar tracks, Darlington, Dover, Bristol, Lakeside. But that isnt any NASCAR Money back then.

But then agian that was just average equipement.

How much did that accounting firm embezzle again?

Also your forgetting about Sammys FedEx Car, wasnt a bad gig getting paid in FedEx stock in the 70s....

It's apparant that you don't know shit about the 8d and the HUD incident. Look into it. As for the tire deal, you think Wolfgang was the only one throwing on new tires? Get real. I'll ask Doug about the two operation deal, having two crews  and the phone booths when he was with Weikerts (I actually wonder what you're smoking to be honest with you, btw....did the guys waiting in the phone boths have leotards under their shirts with a big S on them?). First I've heard of that one. I do know in talking with Doug that they had three and four cars already to go at the shop set up for specific tracks. Again, you think that was unique? After all, some weeks they were racing four and five times. And I had'nt intentionally overlooked Sammys Fed Ex sponsorship. Do you have the stock facts actual dollar amounts? Sammy drove the car from 1978-1980. The car was owned by a couple brothers out of Memphis, I believe, and they both worked for Fed Ex. Sammy and the team had some sort of problem or disagreement at the Nationals in 1980, and even though he had the car qualified for the A Main, he quit and walked out.

They would put brand new rear tires on during red flags stops too.

Ooh! Those wascally wabbits!! What were they trying to do? Win?

So did many of the teams.