Yes, they can provide a financial windfall for one skilled (and quite often lucky) racer, but that isn't the half of it. In fact, it might not be the most important part. These are the times when reputations are made and records are established. We are talking about big-money races-where events can enter the mythology of great races because the stakes are ramped up from the customary $3,000 or so to win to anywhere between 30 and 100 grand.
Nationwide, there are approximately a dozen Dirt Late Model races run annually that pay $30,000 or more to the winner. This year, The Dirt Track at Lowe's Motor Speedway (Concord, North Carolina) became the newest facility to join those elite ranks when it hosted the first-ever running of the Circle K Colossal 100.
Held April 21 and 22 at The Dirt Track (a 14,000-seat facility just across the street from Lowe's Motor Speedway), the Colossal 100 immediately vaulted to the upper echelons of big-money races when track manager Roger Slack announced a total purse of $200,000 with a whopping $50,000 going to the winner.
You'd better believe that when nearly a quarter of a million dollars is made available to racers, it will get their attention. Entries poured in from 26 states, and over 160 teams paid the early entry fee to reserve their spots in the event. The entry list included the biggest names in the business, such as Scott Bloomquist, Steve Francis, Shannon Babb, Rick Eckert, and Chub Frank, among others.
The setup for the event was obviously designed to provide plenty of action for the fans. Qualifying was handled "European style," with 10 cars on the track at a time and lap times tracked by transponders, and that provided more of a racing atmosphere for the fans in the stands during qualifying and enabled the army of race cars to all qualify in a reasonable amount of time. The race itself was 100 laps and the 41/410-mile surface was packed with 36 cars-both record highs for the facility.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature didn't cooperate with the year-plus planning that went into the event. Heavy rains on the Wednesday before cars began arriving on Friday threw a monkey wrench into the track preparation schedule, and then the rains came again on Saturday just hours before the action was set to begin. "The weather didn't help," Slack admits. "It got too wet with all that rain on Wednesday, which basically put us a day behind on track compaction and two days ahead on watering, but the track was still racy-it just got rougher than we would have liked."
Despite the weather troubles, a quick tour of the pits showed that the racers were still eager to do what they do best. A quick survey of several drivers to see how they approached a big-money race produced the same answer from each one: The money is nice, but when you are racing, you always give it everything you've got, no matter how large, or small, the payoff.
...
>>next page