The Evolution of American Sprint Car Racing

if you've ever watched American Motorsports for more than about five seconds then you have eventually seen these insane looking things ripping around a dirt track in some part of the country you've never heard of before but what the hell are you looking at here it looks like somebody strapped a ping pong table on top of a go-kart there's more Wing than car the tires are huge and how is it even possible to go that fast on dirt well these are sprint cars but where did that name come from if they're called sprint cars why does it take all day to put on a race well let's get to know these Kings of the dirt a little bit better because they are about as old as auto racing itself foreign [Applause] the first form of professionally organized Motor Sports in the U.S was what would go on to become IndyCar but at the time they were called champ cars these were the first generation of purpose-built race cars and they popped up right around the turn of the 20th century not even two decades removed from the invention of the automobile itself racing up to this point mainly consisted of street races on circuits that can measure up to 20 miles in length or point-to-point rally style races in 1909 the season finale for The Indycar series was a 480 mile race from LA to Phoenix Arizona and that race took 19 hours to complete today with modern live broadcasting and timing and scoring that could be a very interesting race to watch but this is 1909 commercial radios hadn't even been invented yet watching a race in person wasn't just not fun it was confusing and sometimes impossible you had no way of knowing who was ahead of who or if the race was even over yet as a matter of fact race organizers didn't even really expect that many people to show up in person for a lot of Races they didn't even sell tickets you could just walk up and just watch the race no nobody would stop you you'd find out who won the next day when you read it in the paper because most of these races were sponsored by newspapers and those Publications used the races to sell more papers like many things in America racing was initially just a ruse to get you to buy something else some things never change I guess however these races were getting a big enough Buzz that someone somewhere had the bright idea to hold a motor race on a flat closed-in Circle Track and sell tickets to sit in the grandstands and the best part was that person didn't even have to put up any money to build such a venue because they already existed for horse racing dirt horse racing tracks dotted the entire U.S if there were enough people to Warrant a County Fairground then there was probably a horse track somewhere on the grounds as well these tracks were anywhere from quarter mile to one mile circuits and auto racing found a new home for itself thus American Circle Track Racing was born those chant cars eventually began racing at paved tracks too when the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened for its first races in 1909. in 1911 the first Indy 500 was held and Ray Haroon had modified his Marmon wasp to be a single seed open clock pit car with mirrors so he could see what was going on around him thus people began calling his creation an indie special and later an IndyCar these Indy cars began racing on the dirt and rode courses too and they seemed to be able to race at any track with any surface pretty damn well with long wheelbases and big motors Indy cars were the cream of the crop when it came to not just American Motorsports but International Motorsports as well the idea of a single-seat open cockpit car took off in Europe and by 1950 Formula One racing had kicked off and quickly became the premier Motorsport in the world but back home in America IndyCar was still King so much so that the Indy 500 was actually on the Formula One schedule for a while but as Circle Track Racing took hold in the 1920s the first generation of racers were starting to retire and new Thrill Seekers sought to take their place but even then full-size Indy cars were expensive and not everyone could sink that kind of money into a hobby from the Roaring 20s to today the backbone of American Racing was and continues to be the Grassroots weekend warrior people with day jobs who race for fun and a little bit of extra money and those people eventually ended up creating what are known as cars he's had small four-cylinder engines in incredibly short wheelbases but had the general shape and Aesthetics of an IndyCar as such they were slower but still difficult to drive if you could race well in one of these then there was likely a spot for you in the big leagues on the plus side though these cars were cheap Fields were always slammed full of competitors and they usually served as a preliminary race for their bigger IndyCar Brothers they're even smaller versions of cars that became popular too quarter midgets three-quarter midgets and micro midgets served as the Proving Grounds for new talent and bear in mind this ladder system was developed well before World War II these guys were way ahead of the curve but around this time an intermediary between the and the Indy car had come along the Sprint car Sprints were almost perfectly in the middle between a and a full-sized Indie Roadster and became what was essentially the minor league for IndyCar these were noticeably bigger than the midgets but they still use four-cylinder Motors at the time as the name Sprint car implies they did not race in 100 or 200 features like IndyCar instead they erased at Short 35 or 50 lap features however much like the sprint cars were stupid cheap and lots of them showed up to races so promoters had to hold heat races and last chance qualifiers to thin out the field to something more manageable all while also thinning out the equally massive field of midgets thus sprint car race days from initial practice sessions to the time the final trophy is hoisted can easily take from sun up to well past Sundown if you want to know why pretty much every single short track in America has lights you can thank these guys during World War II all non-essential driving was banned car races and even joyriding were strictly prohibited to save fuel for the war effort but once the war was won those GIS came home and all over the country they found new hobbies in auto racing in the South it was stock car racing out west it was drag racing the first motorcycle clubs formed made up almost entirely of Army Surplus Harleys and in the midwest where IndyCar was King and Sprints were cheap open wheel dirt track racing flourished it was impossible to escape it it seemed like there was a Saturday night feature in almost every County in in every state but as advancements in all sorts of race cars developed sprint cars got faster and a lot more technical by the late 1950s sprint cars had switched to bigger V8 engines leaving the four cylinders to The Midgets and the first aerodynamic Wing started to get installed these weren't the modern upside down airplane wings with the side plates we see today no these were basically just gigantic scoop wings that planted the cars into the ground by brute force of wind which paired quite well with the new Big V8s however some Racers didn't really like the new wings or bigger Motors they were expensive and the faster speeds were getting more dangerous as these cars were mostly competing at Half Mile and one mile dirt tracks still so attempts were made to legislate these out of existence by race organizers but like so many other attempts at such regulations people really just want to see what is possible when you take away all the rules thus these winged sprint cars with V8s became called Outlaw Sprint Cars this will come into play later although riffs had begun to form in the world of and Sprint car racing the biggest was still yet to come in 1970 the dirt asphalt Schism happened both NASCAR and IndyCar held their last dirt races and IndyCar had already adopted new Formula One style rear engine cars for racing on paved Speedways now there were no similarities between Indy cars and sprint cars and even to this day sprint cars visually speaking have not changed that much since their 1960s ancestors other than larger tires safety modifications like roll cages and modern Arrow kits the fundamental layout of the car has been locked away in time for decades but underneath the body panels lots of Innovations from IndyCar nonetheless found a home with the Sprints and midgets the engines became ever larger going all the way up to 410 cubic inches as mechanics would just drop IndyCar Motors straight into the smaller sprint cars and as they learned more about aerodynamics the wings became more and more intricate they switched from gasoline to methanol as fuel and by 1978 the World of Outlaws was founded where all the biggest and best sprint cars and their drivers would have a place to compete against each other the World of Outlaws became the premier Sprint car racing series in the country hosting more than 40 events per year and racing everywhere from Florida to North Dakota from Texas to New York these Road Warriors do it all and they're not racing for peanuts either these events routinely pay out five six or sometimes seven figures there is serious money in this and that's not just the World of Outlaws there are dozens of smaller promotions in just about every single state even in my neck of the woods in South Carolina where Sprint car racing is rare we still have the Carolina Sprint car tour and the United Sprint Car Series if you want to watch this type of racing chances are you can find it in your backyard pretty easily today these Outlaw methanol fueled 410 cubic inch V8 powered sprint cars can produce upwards of one thousand horsepower and weigh as little as 1400 pounds that is a power to weight ratio that puts Formula One cars to shame and the cost to build a competitive 410 Sprint from the ground up is only about 100K for a modern race car that is dirt cheap and because of their unified rules package pretty much any 410 Sprint in the country can be entered into World of Outlaw series Rays so in every major event where big names like David travel Brad sweet and Donnie shots are competing there's a plethora of Local Heroes in the mix as well shouts out to the PA Posse if you know you know sprint cars though aren't just a side show in the American Motorsports landscape tons of talent comes through the dirt world to this day NASCAR stars like Christopher Bell Kyle Larson and Chase Briscoe all got their start in dirt midgets and Sprints Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart also came from that discipline as well and the next batch of NASCAR stars are probably racing midgets on dirt somewhere right now as we speak and if you're not from America I've got some good news for you if you're from Down Under sprint cars have migrated overseas and have found a nice little home for themselves in Australia and New Zealand so even abroad you can still enjoy some of the fastest most powerful speed demons in the world today open wheel dirt track racing has as many divisions as you can imagine those old long wheel base front engine Indy cars are still competing today and they're known as silver crown cars winged sprint cars come in 410 360 and 305 cubic inch engines there are wingless sprint cars there are the classic midgets three-quarter midgets quarter midgets and micro midgets and I'm sure I'm glossing over or just outright missing a whole bunch of others and I haven't even talked about the asphalt seeing for these cars yet but that's a whole different can of worms as paved short track racing costs continue to mount many racers from all over the country have reverted back to their roots and gone back to dirt these cars are insanely fast the costs are considerably lower and the skills needed to drive in the upper divisions of sprint cars are out of this world the best of the best rides to the top and it is as close to a meritocracy as we're going to get in Motorsports these days anyway I'm slap shoes thanks for watching and go visit your local dirt track sometime and watch some Sprint car racing yo it to yourself Speedway [Music] [Applause]

if you've ever watched American Motorsports for more than about five seconds then you have eventually seen these insane looking things ripping around a dirt track in some part of the country you've never heard of before but what the hell are you looking at here it looks like somebody strapped a ping pong table on top of a go-kart there's more Wing than car the tires are huge and how is it even possible to go that fast on dirt well these are sprint cars but where did that name come from if they're called sprint cars why does it take all day to put on a race well let's get to know these Kings of the dirt a little bit better because they are about as old as auto racing itself foreign [Applause] the first form of professionally organized Motor Sports in the U.S was what would go on to become IndyCar but at the time they were called champ cars these were the first generation of purpose-built race cars and they popped up right around the turn of the 20th century not even two decades removed from the invention of the automobile itself racing up to this point mainly consisted of street races on circuits that can measure up to 20 miles in length or point-to-point rally style races in 1909 the season finale for The Indycar series was a 480 mile race from LA to Phoenix Arizona and that race took 19 hours to complete today with modern live broadcasting and timing and scoring that could be a very interesting race to watch but this is 1909 commercial radios hadn't even been invented yet watching a race in person wasn't just not fun it was confusing and sometimes impossible you had no way of knowing who was ahead of who or if the race was even over yet as a matter of fact race organizers didn't even really expect that many people to show up in person for a lot of Races they didn't even sell tickets you could just walk up and just watch the race no nobody would stop you you'd find out who won the next day when you read it in the paper because most of these races were sponsored by newspapers and those Publications used the races to sell more papers like many things in America racing was initially just a ruse to get you to buy something else some things never change I guess however these races were getting a big enough Buzz that someone somewhere had the bright idea to hold a motor race on a flat closed-in Circle Track and sell tickets to sit in the grandstands and the best part was that person didn't even have to put up any money to build such a venue because they already existed for horse racing dirt horse racing tracks dotted the entire U.S if there were enough people to Warrant a County Fairground then there was probably a horse track somewhere on the grounds as well these tracks were anywhere from quarter mile to one mile circuits and auto racing found a new home for itself thus American Circle Track Racing was born those chant cars eventually began racing at paved tracks too when the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened for its first races in 1909. in 1911 the first Indy 500 was held and Ray Haroon had modified his Marmon wasp to be a single seed open clock pit car with mirrors so he could see what was going on around him thus people began calling his creation an indie special and later an IndyCar these Indy cars began racing on the dirt and rode courses too and they seemed to be able to race at any track with any surface pretty damn well with long wheelbases and big motors Indy cars were the cream of the crop when it came to not just American Motorsports but International Motorsports as well the idea of a single-seat open cockpit car took off in Europe and by 1950 Formula One racing had kicked off and quickly became the premier Motorsport in the world but back home in America IndyCar was still King so much so that the Indy 500 was actually on the Formula One schedule for a while but as Circle Track Racing took hold in the 1920s the first generation of racers were starting to retire and new Thrill Seekers sought to take their place but even then full-size Indy cars were expensive and not everyone could sink that kind of money into a hobby from the Roaring 20s to today the backbone of American Racing was and continues to be the Grassroots weekend warrior people with day jobs who race for fun and a little bit of extra money and those people eventually ended up creating what are known as cars he's had small four-cylinder engines in incredibly short wheelbases but had the general shape and Aesthetics of an IndyCar as such they were slower but still difficult to drive if you could race well in one of these then there was likely a spot for you in the big leagues on the plus side though these cars were cheap Fields were always slammed full of competitors and they usually served as a preliminary race for their bigger IndyCar Brothers they're even smaller versions of cars that became popular too quarter midgets three-quarter midgets and micro midgets served as the Proving Grounds for new talent and bear in mind this ladder system was developed well before World War II these guys were way ahead of the curve but around this time an intermediary between the and the Indy car had come along the Sprint car Sprints were almost perfectly in the middle between a and a full-sized Indie Roadster and became what was essentially the minor league for IndyCar these were noticeably bigger than the midgets but they still use four-cylinder Motors at the time as the name Sprint car implies they did not race in 100 or 200 features like IndyCar instead they erased at Short 35 or 50 lap features however much like the sprint cars were stupid cheap and lots of them showed up to races so promoters had to hold heat races and last chance qualifiers to thin out the field to something more manageable all while also thinning out the equally massive field of midgets thus sprint car race days from initial practice sessions to the time the final trophy is hoisted can easily take from sun up to well past Sundown if you want to know why pretty much every single short track in America has lights you can thank these guys during World War II all non-essential driving was banned car races and even joyriding were strictly prohibited to save fuel for the war effort but once the war was won those GIS came home and all over the country they found new hobbies in auto racing in the South it was stock car racing out west it was drag racing the first motorcycle clubs formed made up almost entirely of Army Surplus Harleys and in the midwest where IndyCar was King and Sprints were cheap open wheel dirt track racing flourished it was impossible to escape it it seemed like there was a Saturday night feature in almost every County in in every state but as advancements in all sorts of race cars developed sprint cars got faster and a lot more technical by the late 1950s sprint cars had switched to bigger V8 engines leaving the four cylinders to The Midgets and the first aerodynamic Wing started to get installed these weren't the modern upside down airplane wings with the side plates we see today no these were basically just gigantic scoop wings that planted the cars into the ground by brute force of wind which paired quite well with the new Big V8s however some Racers didn't really like the new wings or bigger Motors they were expensive and the faster speeds were getting more dangerous as these cars were mostly competing at Half Mile and one mile dirt tracks still so attempts were made to legislate these out of existence by race organizers but like so many other attempts at such regulations people really just want to see what is possible when you take away all the rules thus these winged sprint cars with V8s became called Outlaw Sprint Cars this will come into play later although riffs had begun to form in the world of  and Sprint car racing the biggest was still yet to come in 1970 the dirt asphalt Schism happened both NASCAR and IndyCar held their last dirt races and IndyCar had already adopted new Formula One style rear engine cars for racing on paved Speedways now there were no similarities between Indy cars and sprint cars and even to this day sprint cars visually speaking have not changed that much since their 1960s ancestors other than larger tires safety modifications like roll cages and modern Arrow kits the fundamental layout of the car has been locked away in time for decades but underneath the body panels lots of Innovations from IndyCar nonetheless found a home with the Sprints and midgets the engines became ever larger going all the way up to 410 cubic inches as mechanics would just drop IndyCar Motors straight into the smaller sprint cars and as they learned more about aerodynamics the wings became more and more intricate they switched from gasoline to methanol as fuel and by 1978 the World of Outlaws was founded where all the biggest and best sprint cars and their drivers would have a place to compete against each other the World of Outlaws became the premier Sprint car racing series in the country hosting more than 40 events per year and racing everywhere from Florida to North Dakota from Texas to New York these Road Warriors do it all and they're not racing for peanuts either these events routinely pay out five six or sometimes seven figures there is serious money in this and that's not just the World of Outlaws there are dozens of smaller promotions in just about every single state even in my neck of the woods in South Carolina where Sprint car racing is rare we still have the Carolina Sprint car tour and the United Sprint Car Series if you want to watch this type of racing chances are you can find it in your backyard pretty easily today these Outlaw methanol fueled 410 cubic inch V8 powered sprint cars can produce upwards of one thousand horsepower and weigh as little as 1400 pounds that is a power to weight ratio that puts Formula One cars to shame and the cost to build a competitive 410 Sprint from the ground up is only about 100K for a modern race car that is dirt cheap and because of their unified rules package pretty much any 410 Sprint in the country can be entered into World of Outlaw series Rays so in every major event where big names like David travel Brad sweet and Donnie shots are competing there's a plethora of Local Heroes in the mix as well shouts out to the PA Posse if you know you know sprint cars though aren't just a side show in the American Motorsports landscape tons of talent comes through the dirt world to this day NASCAR stars like Christopher Bell Kyle Larson and Chase Briscoe all got their start in dirt midgets and Sprints Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart also came from that discipline as well and the next batch of NASCAR stars are probably racing midgets on dirt somewhere right now as we speak and if you're not from America I've got some good news for you if you're from Down Under sprint cars have migrated overseas and have found a nice little home for themselves in Australia and New Zealand so even abroad you can still enjoy some of the fastest most powerful speed demons in the world today open wheel dirt track racing has as many divisions as you can imagine those old long wheel base front engine Indy cars are still competing today and they're known as silver crown cars winged sprint cars come in 410 360 and 305 cubic inch engines there are wingless sprint cars there are the classic midgets three-quarter midgets quarter midgets and micro midgets and I'm sure I'm glossing over or just outright missing a whole bunch of others and I haven't even talked about the asphalt seeing for these cars yet but that's a whole different can of worms as paved short track racing costs continue to mount many racers from all over the country have reverted back to their roots and gone back to dirt these cars are insanely fast the costs are considerably lower and the skills needed to drive in the upper divisions of sprint cars are out of this world the best of the best rides to the top and it is as close to a meritocracy as we're going to get in Motorsports these days anyway I'm slap shoes thanks for watching and go visit your local dirt track sometime and watch some Sprint car racing yo it to yourself Speedway [Music] [Applause]

Transcript for:The Evolution of American Sprint Car Racing

Transcript for:
The Evolution of American Sprint Car Racing