Opinion
With the sporting landscape on hold for the time being and a lot of negativity floating around, now is a good time to share some happier experiences with sport. So here is my reminiscing about checking out the World of Outlaws in the United States last year.
For the sporting community that haven’t heard of this event, the World of Outlaws is an American racing body for sprint cars and other classes. But for the purpose of this article, I am focusing only the sprint cars. A sprint car is a dirt track race car, with a 410 cubic engine outputting more than 900 horsepower and speeds capable of 260 kilometres an hour on dirt and on small tracks.
In this trip to the USA, my first experience with the Outlaws was the Ironman 55 race in Pevely, Missouri. The gimmick of the race is the racetrack is off the I-55 highway, and the A-Main feature race is a 55-lap monster. For context, most Australian A-Main races vary between 25 and 35 laps. The Ironman 55 race meeting was held over two nights, with the A-Main featuring on the second night.
The race track was something like I have never seen in Australia, with a 19-degree banking on the corners, and with the Knoxville track I saw later on my trip coming in at eight degrees. The track was around 530 metres long, coming just slightly longer than Sydney (460 metres). For the first night, I was able to more freely roam around (set seating, but not strictly enforced on the first night), so I checked out Turns 1, 3 and 4 for viewing. The highlight of Night 1 was seeing Logan Schuchart set a new track record of 10.115 seconds for a blistering fast lap, with an average speed of 190.7 kilometres an hour.
For the second night, the place was packed, and rightly so. The weather was a balmy 29 degrees with a bit of humidity. After a couple more heat races and the C- and B-Mains, it was time for the A-Main with an Aussie – Marcus Dumesny, son of Max – in the feature, alongside a lot of American talent. And the main talent of this night was Sheldon Haudenschild.
In sprint car racing, the fuel tanks aren’t very large, so the expectation was there would be a fuel stop mid race. For this kind of racing, they would stop the cars on the track safely under a red flag, and allow the teams to enter the track and modify the cars for eight minutes. However, the entire field raced an entirely clean race, resulting in a green to chequered for all 55 laps with no break.
The amazing thing was Haudenschild won the race by an unprecedented margin of 10.3 seconds over second place, keeping in mind, the new lap record was set at 10.115 the night before. In the end, the race leader had lapped cars all the way up to fifth place. In the post-race interviews, the drivers in second and third commented they thought they were racing for the race lead, and didn’t realise that the race leader was so far ahead, figuring he must have spun or had issues and gone backwards in field.
From there, my trip headed to Iowa, where I stayed in the lovely town of Pella. This night’s racing was my first taste of Knoxville, home of the Nationals, for the racing of the Capitani Classic. There was great racing on this night, with a few Aussies featuring in the A-Main, with Warrnambool’s James McFadden finishing eighth. I sped over this, because I come back to Knoxville soon.
(Photo by Tami Pope/Icon SMI/Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
For my night off of racing, I headed to another race track for a non-Outlaws sprint car meet. This night was special for me. This trip was a tour hosted by Peter of Global Speedway Tours. But what made this special is I was given a chance to watch a heat race from the flag stand above the race track. This is something that normally never happens to a normal person.
Watching Marcus Dumesny race in his heat and getting to wave the yellow flag post-race are memories I will cherish forever. It is so hard to put into words, watching a race where the cars are literally at your feet. It was a special night of racing too. As in the other race class, they have the challenge where you can elect to start rear of field instead of pole, and win additional $20,000 if you can pull it off and win. And he did, and it was amazing to watch the fastest car in the field just come from the back to win. It was a great night, and my highlight of tour.
But the reason I went for this trip is the Knoxville Nationals. It was a $250,000 prize purse for the win, and four nights of consecutive racing. A field of 109 race cars entered, so the first two nights were qualifying nights for the main event, with points being king here. And I won’t lie, it gets confusing so I just enjoyed the racing, rather than tracking who had what points. There was some amazing racing on an 800-metre track, one of the largest race tracks I have ever seen.
One of the amazing things is that Knoxville, Iowa has a population of around 7200. There were 19,000 people at the speedway alone, not including the surrounding parties, so the town comes alive for this event. By the last night, the main event they do is something we don’t in Australia: they ran only sprint cars with no support classes, and only had five races, the E-, D-, C-, B- and A-Mains. So it was a long night of racing with intermissions, and a fast track, which sadly didn’t lend itself to many overtaking moves. But it was a great night of racing, as no one was leaving anything behind, with James McFadden coming eighth again, an amazing result given the field.
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