Farmer city late model car count

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

You are right, they aren't bringing a new Longhorn and a new engine to race for that. But a 2015 Rocket with an 18 degree engine in it is still a super late model.

[Highside Hustler25]

None of this should come as a surprise. They only had 18 cars for a $3000 special last year. It's a combination of not a bunch of regional supers anymore and the one's still doing it are venturing out to 10g specials which are only a hour or 2 away.
I don't doubt FC would be paying good money if they could get a full field of cars. Can't blame it all on the track.

[powerslide]

The track has to have enough sense to look at the schedules around them and say "self the cars aren't going to come support us for $1000 when they are paying $5000-$10000 down the road a couple hours lets let them take a week off"

[cgrace]

Lucky for us in Central Illinois, we have lots of good racers who travel either regionally or nationally. Unfortunately for Farmer City, that hurts their car count, consider Pierce, Shep, Steve Shep, Shirley, Erb, Feger, Unzicker, Heckenast, Gartner, Tommy Sheppard and I'm sure others I am missing. Other guys seem to only race once a week or wait until June to get going.

[Barbecueboy]

You are right, they aren't bringing a new Longhorn and a new engine to race for that. But a 2015 Rocket with an 18 degree engine in it is still a super late model.

Your insight is quite excellent MB…….thanks for sharing like you do.

[riddle28]

Earlier this year we went to a super race that was close to home to just shake down the car and test some things. Come to find out it paid $250 to win. Second place got $90. Fifth on back got $25 and a pit pass. For sure the worst payout I have ever seen and we race a lot like Mastersbuilt only with out the E85.

i hear clarksville is about like that weekly

[play4kps]

The elephant in the room nobody wants to address! The drivers have priced themselves out of racing. In an effort to compete with Lucas oil and WOO they spent there way out of being competitive. Not everyone can spend what the top teams are spending. Somehow the sprint car world has not gotten out of hand. And lately their races have been much better. Anyone watch Attica all-stars show this weekend. And a local won there on friday. When the World of outlaws sprints roll into PA, Attica or Knoxville, never count out the locals. thats unheard of in Lucas Oil or Woo, I know about Josh Rice.

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

The elephant in the room nobody wants to address! The drivers have priced themselves out of racing. In an effort to compete with Lucas oil and WOO they spent there way out of being competitive. Not everyone can spend what the top teams are spending. Somehow the sprint car world has not gotten out of hand. And lately their races have been much better. Anyone watch Attica all-stars show this weekend. And a local won there on friday. When the World of outlaws sprints roll into PA, Attica or Knoxville, never count out the locals. thats unheard of in Lucas Oil or Woo, I know about Josh Rice.

Sprint cars are much simpler machines and the downforce hasn't changed in decades, or ever.

[Mopar DLM]

Sprint cars are also on limits. Either 410 or 360 cubic inch and injector stack size. Power in that class has not really had big gains in 20-25 years. Late models have raised the ceiling 200-250 HP in the past 20-25 years. Agreeing with Masters on this one there are not a lot of places on a sprint car to spend crazy money and gain speed like you can on a late model.

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

Sprint cars are also on limits. Either 410 or 360 cubic inch and injector stack size. Power in that class has not really had big gains in 20-25 years. Late models have raised the ceiling 200-250 HP in the past 20-25 years. Agreeing with Masters on this one there are not a lot of places on a sprint car to spend crazy money and gain speed like you can on a late model.

The sad part about the power gains is that it wouldn't be near as big of a deal if the cars were not wedge cars that use the suspension to improve the attack angle more than be a suspension. It wasn't that long ago, that a horsepower disadvantage was really overblown.

[Mopar DLM]

The way that a lot of the series use timing in to line up heat races also puts the lower powered teams at a huge disadvantage. Have lots of power early when the track has good bite and start up front of your heat. Put the fast cars up front and people cant figure out why there is not a lot of passing happening. Pill draw and give someone like myself that's down over 100 HP a chance to start in clean air. I don't travel to as many bigger shows knowing that I have a pretty good shot of starting closer to the back because of being under powered and having to time in.

[TheJet-09]

^^^ It will be my gripe for as long as I can gripe...straight up starts in local racing has played a major role in killing it. It's simple human nature. Nobody is going to spend the time and money on something like racing, knowing they stand virtually no chance of winning. If I wasn't faster than you in qualifying, how am I going to be in the heat, and then most certainly the feature?

You may have been the slowest qualifier back in the day, but you'd go out and maybe win your heat, then run mid-pack or so in the feature. And you were excited. You got your picture taken and felt like you had something to look forward to for next week. Come Monday morning when people at work asked how racing went, you said, "Great. I won my heat and finished [wherever] in the feature."

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

^^^ It will be my gripe for as long as I can gripe...straight up starts in local racing has played a major role in killing it. It's simple human nature. Nobody is going to spend the time and money on something like racing, knowing they stand virtually no chance of winning. If I wasn't faster than you in qualifying, how am I going to be in the heat, and then most certainly the feature?

You may have been the slowest qualifier back in the day, but you'd go out and maybe win your heat, then run mid-pack or so in the feature. And you were excited. You got your picture taken and felt like you had something to look forward to for next week. Come Monday morning when people at work asked how racing went, you said, "Great. I won my heat and finished [wherever] in the feature."

Qualifying and racing are 2 different things. Timing 1 second off fast time, in 12th place, and finishing the night on the podium is a normal night for us at a Steel block series event.

[Buford.Justice]

Three car features?????

[MasterSbilt_Racer]

Three car features?????

Everyone else slows down