Never get caught staring at the standings. You hear it after two months of a six-month baseball campaign or Week Five of a 17-game football season. The message is clear: just do your job, play hard, and let the chips fall wherever they may. Do not waste concern on rival teams. Strengthen your own program.
Super DIRT Week is here. True, the World of Outlaws are a Tuscarora Mountain range away. Yes, the Moody Mile at Syracuse went six feet under six years ago. But the spirit remains. Venues change, but campgrounds and entry lists stay fat. In the modified stock car universe, Super DIRT Week is still the harvest
Northern California and Central Pennsylvania have always been where the World of Outlaws might be defeated. Last week’s Gold Cup Race of Champions by Colby Copeland nearly furthered a tradition that started in the very first Outlaw race won by Jimmy Boyd and Kenny Woodruff’s Sacramento Special right up to its 2019-20 champion Brad Sweet
Skagit River rages from Cascade Mountain snowmelt to spill into Skagit Bay and mother ocean. Just north of the river is the town of Alger, WA — population 403. Saturdays at Skagit Speedway, however, Alger swells with Sprint Car pride and presence. Jim Raper carved an oval among the evergreen trees in 1954. He created
“All he does is catch touchdowns.” That was coach Buddy Ryan’s sarcastic dismissal of Cris Carter before Carter starred for someone else. Well, all that Kyle Larson does is catch checkered flags. Whether his demoralized pursuers are scattered across asphalt or dirt, oval or road course pressing eight cylinders or four does not matter one
It was their last year without wings. Four decades ago, the 1981 World of Outlaws season was 102 days and nights on 45 plots of dirt in 20 North American states and provinces. It was the first to crown a champion other than Steve Kinser. To dethrone “The King” after three years demanded diversity from
It is the Yankee Stadium or Soldier Field of Sprint Car Racing. To step into the 82-year-old Williams Grove Speedway is to step back in time. Anyone with any sense of history can feel the ghosts, aura and spirit of its early warriors. And as dirt ovals go, The Grove is as quirky as Fenway
It was Eldora Speedway’s first multi-night Sprint Car festival. It began six years before the Kings Royal and 17 seasons ahead of the Historical Big One. It was the Eldora Nationals and like everything by Earl Baltes, it was a big deal in 1978. Eldora had staged a trial run in 1976 when the first
Cedar Lake Speedway staged the greatest race that I ever saw. It was one manic Monday conclusion to the World of Outlaws visit of 1988. To read headlines, Cedar Lake looked like another case of Steve Kinser stomping everyone in the dust, something he did 27 times that season. But it was so much more.
The World of Outlaws has long served the bold. It needs drivers bold enough to aim at concrete walls without lifting. It requires mechanics willing to sacrifice time with family to barnstorm car washes and truck stops. And promoters bold enough to challenge Mother Nature every weekend. Then there are car owners, the sport’s most
