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What will the top sprint car teams do, and what are the factors they are considering? | Daily 12-27-2022

Sprint car teams have a lot to think about for 2023. Should they go Outlaws? All Stars? High Limit? Pick and choose? We'll look today at how the schedules fit together and what the money picture really looks like for the various options. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, December 27th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

Right now, sprint car teams and drivers around the country are trying to decide what their 2023 plans are going to look like. I mentioned yesterday that we have just one official All Star team declaration with Scotty Thiel and Premier Motorspots. The Outlaws have two official in James McFadden with Roth and Noah Gass. And High Limit has three with Kyle Larson, Rico Abreu, and Buddy Kofoid with CMS. That leaves a lot of drivers and teams who have yet to say anything publicly about what they'll do. And under normal circumstances, you wouldn't necessarily get press releases from a lot of teams about their plans, but with so much chatter about teams evaluating options and all that, you can be sure that any public declarations will get some attention. In all of this, I wanted to dive back into some of the numbers and see if we could get an idea on what the factors are that teams will be looking at and how all of this will play together in 2023. We've seen the World of Outlaws point fund and bonus program. The champion could get as much as $350,000, while down to 12th would get $52,500. That's on top of race winnings and tow money available through the season. We also know about the four and eight race restriction rules. With the All Stars, their champion earns $80,000, with 12th getting $8000. Their drivers get $300 a night in tow money. Returning teams get an additional $25 per night. The top five runners get an additional $100 bonus. And the champion gets an extra $100 a night. Membership costs $1500, but that is refundable with perfect attendance. The series does sometimes impose restrictions on where full timers can race, but they are usually only used a few times a season. I think I heard twice in 2022. And with High Limit, no tow money, no bonus money, the champion gets $30,000, with tenth getting $5000. Standard races pay $1500 to win and $23,000 to start. They also have two $50,000 to win and $2000 to start races. No restrictions of any kind here. The next consideration between these three series is the schedules. We've already documented the Outlaw schedule versus High Limit. The only race that is really not doable for Outlaw teams is Tulare, which is why they made it non-points. I had not yet taken a look at the High Limit schedule though versus the All Stars to see if those guys could run this deal for points. And really, they probably can't. All Star teams could run Tulare if they really wanted to, as it's ten days before the points opener at Attica. I doubt that will happen though. Lakeside, 34, and Kokomo are all doable. Attica to Lakeside is three days apart and 12 hours drive. Things start to get weird though with Wayne County. It's in between Wilmot in Wisconsin and Outlaw Speedway in New York. May 13th, to the 16th, then to the 19th. Doable, but it would take some hustle. Granite City also feels like a tough run. Port Royal on May 28th for the Weikert, Granite City on the 31st, and then Beaver Dam on the second. Eagle in Nebraska is similar, between Plymouth and Attica. Where this thing goes off the rails though if All Star teams want to try for High Limit points is Grandview. The All Stars are at Red Hill Raceway in Illinois on July 23rd, while High Limit at Grandview is on the 25th. The All Stars are then at Benton Speedway in Missouri on the 26th. That is basically impossible. 13 hours from Red Hill to Grandview. Almost 15 hours from Grandview back to Benton. The final four are all doable from there. Huset's is three days before Outlaw Speedway in New York, and the final three of Lernerville, Bridgeport, and Lincoln Park are after the All Star season ends. So you will definitely get some All Star teams at High Limit shows, but nobody is running for both championships.

I also wanted to do some comparisons between series full time drivers and pick and choose drivers based on 2022 earnings. Because besides the schedule, money will definitely be a deciding factor as these teams make choices for 2023. Back on December 13th, I did a show about sprint car purse money, and I used the top 30 drivers from the sprintcarratings.com list and their earnings. I took that same data in a spreadsheet, added in the Outlaw and All Star points fund and bonus money for each driver so we can compare the different scenarios. As has been talked about ad nauseum, Brent Marks was the highest earner in sprint car racing in 2022, taking down more than $640,000. He's the name that continues to get brought up by everyone when they start complaining about money. He ran a pick and choose schedule, was home more weekends, and led the country in cash. And it's true, even if you add in the Outlaw point fund and bonus money, Marks was still about $50,000 ahead of Brad Sweet. It's not necessarily that simple though. Nevermind the fact that Marks won $276,000 of that in one four day period at Eldora, he also ran 11 more nights than Sweet did to earn that money. Marks raced 83 times in 2022 to Sweet's 72. Donny Schatz, David Gravel, Logan Schuchart, Spencer Bayston, James McFadden all also at 72 races for the year. So if you average Marks' winnings out over 83 races, and then compare the per night total compensation, Marks is actually third behind Sweet and Schatz. Sweet was at nearly $8300 a night, Schatz at $8100, and Marks at $7700. And this was in a season where both Sweet and Schatz were down, with only five wins each. If we go off the idea that it costs the top teams something like $10k a night to open the door on the trailer, yes Marks won $50,000 more than Sweet, but he spent an extra $100,000 plus to do it. And now's the part where the audience says to me that Marks traveled less than Sweet did for the year, so it makes more sense. And you'd be correct. Marks ran a good portion of his schedule around Central PA, but he'd have to be spending $1500 less per night than the top Outlaw teams to make the costs even. That's $125,000 less over the full year. Marks ran 35 races away from Pennsylvania, so while his travel costs were certainly less, they weren't $125,000 less. And the rest of his team costs were higher, because he needed more tires, more fuel, etc for those 11 extra nights. The other example from Pennsylvania is Anthony Macri. Third on the season in total race winnings behind Marks and Schatz. But again, how often do you want to race? Macri ran 93 times to earn his $413,000. He was eighth in total earnings on the year, and 13th in total compensation per night at just shy $4500. In the top ten in average total compensation per night, six are World of Outlaws drivers, one is an All Star driver, and three are pick and choose. The pick and choose drivers are obviously Brent Marks, and the other two are Kyle Larson and Lance Dewease. Larson made $207k in 28 nights, and Dewease made $204k in 41 nights. If you are going to fall off a series and go pick and choose, you both need to find ways to win as much as possible, and also cut costs. Those things though, don't normally go hand in hand. The other consideration here, especially for the top Outlaw teams, is merch sales. No status with the Outlaws means no midway space for that merch trailer. That's potentially a six figure problem for them. I've got two nuggets for you on this before we move on. Logan Schuchart finished sixth in the Outlaw standings and had seven wins in 2022. Adding in his point fund and bonus money, he made $21,000 more than Anthony Macri did, and he raced 21 fewer nights. Also, Brock Zearfoss finished the season with less race winnings than Rico Abreu, Gio Scelzi, Aaron Reutzel, Danny Dietrich, and Brian Brown. Of those five drivers though, only Dietrich ended up ahead of Zearfoss in total compensation when you add in his Outlaw cash. But Dietrich only beat Zearfoss by $28, and to do it, he had to run 16 more nights than Zearfoss. Zearfoss topped all five in average total compensation per night. And that was with Zearfoss finishing 10th in the Outlaw standings with just a single win. As much as they talk about not racing with a series, I'm not sure how you see this information and not run with the Outlaws or All Stars in 2023. The question will be whether teams are prepared to risk guaranteed money in the hopes that they strike it rich at just a few shows.

Just this morning we've had another driver declare as a full timer with the World of Outlaws Late Model Series. Missouri driver Parker Martin is joining a growing field of full timers that is now up to 13 officially, and will most likely be at least 14. Over the past three seasons, Martin has made 23 appearances with the Outlaws, with a best finish of 14th. That came at Volusia in 2021. He closed out 2022 with all three nights at World Finals, making the feature on the final night. Martin joins Brandon Sheppard, Tanner English, Max Blair, Boom Briggs, Chris Madden, Payton Freeman, Nick Hoffman, Gordy Gundaker, Ryan Gustin, Brent Larson, Todd Cooney, and Dustin Walker as official full timers. We've still got nothing public from reigning champion Dennis Erb Jr. We are just about three weeks away from the start of the Outlaw season.

This season of iRacing World of Outlaws Sprint Cars has now reached the half way point following last night's race at Pevely. Like last week's show at Lincoln Speedway, this was the first time that Pevely has appeared on the sprint car pro series schedule. Alex Bergeron continues to lead the championship, although his advantage is smaller after last night's feature. Swindell Speedlab driver James Edens started on the pole of the main event and got out to the lead early, but his time in front was short lived. Third starting Timothy Smith took over and was out front for much of the rest of the laps. Nobody really seemed to have anything for him, but he ended up making a late mistake that let Edens slip by for the victory. It was Edens' first win of the year, and Smith had to settle for second with Dylan Yeager third. Points leader Bergeron finished seventh after starting fourth, but his two closest rivals in the standings both finished ahead of him in Smith and Tyler Schell. So headed to Fairbury next Monday night, the gap is now 26, with Smith 34 back in third. An interesting note from last night as well, several drivers, including Logan Rumsey and Mason Hannagan were absent because they are in Tulsa this week for the Tulsa Shootout. More examples of iRacers who also compete in dirt events in real life.

It's actually a fairly nice next 24 hours across the streaming services. FloRacing has the first night of the Tulsa Shootout plus Flo 24/7. Clay Per View has sprint cars and super sedans across three different race tracks. There is also DIRTVision Now. To see the full daily streaming schedule, head over to dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

Alright, that's it for the show today. Have a good Tuesday. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll be back here on Monday for more DIRTRACKR Daily.