As the 2023 race season begins to wind down, we are quickly approaching the time of year when series and tracks across the country release their schedule for the following year. One organization that managed to get ahead of the curve this year is the XR Super Series, having already put out their six-race slate for 2024.

As announced Monday, the XR season will get going February 24th at the newly-reopened Ultimate Motorsports Park in Elkin, North Carolina. Of course, it is great to see the former Friendship Motor Speedway, which shut down midway through the 2022 season, kickstart their first full season under new ownership with one of the biggest events in track history. There’s just one little problem: the date.

Frankly, it’s hard to get excited about a major event like this when you know in the back of your mind that the chances of it happening without interruption from Mother Nature are less than ideal. While yes, any dirt track race aside from the Chili Bowl and Gateway Dirt Nationals are subject to cancellation due to inclement weather, some races are simply more likely to get rained out than others. Below is a compilation of every scheduled race from the last five completed seasons of the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series sorted by month, along with the amount of those races that were either postponed or canceled due to weather.

*Does not include races that were canceled due to COVID-19 restrictions in 2020

A quick glance at the numbers reveals one key trend: the springtime is not a good time to schedule a dirt race. While the month of February may look good, which is when the XR season opener is scheduled, it’s important to remember that all of those races took place in Florida. Meanwhile in Elkin, the average high temperature on February 24th is a whopping 53 degrees.

So what can be done to alleviate these issues? The first option would be to stop scheduling races in March and April. With more and more winter events popping up, such as Gateway and the Wild West Shootout, and Florida speedweeks quickly turning into speed-months, the sport of dirt racing on the national level really doesn’t have an offseason anymore. Instead of letting the weather give teams two months off like what happened this year, just announce the break in advance so that personnel can plan their vacations and other activities accordingly.

The current schedules have several open weekends throughout the fall, so this could be a landing spot for some of the major springtime events moving forward. It could be a positive change for all involved considering how, for example, the Lucas event at Macon Speedway has not taken place since 2018 despite being on the schedule every year since then. At this point, anything is worth a shot to try and get these races in on a more consistent basis. 

The other option would be to rethink the way we schedule races in the spring. More specifically, stop going to tracks in the northern half of the country in the early portion of the season. Back in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced all of the national touring series to throw their original schedule in the trash, and instead go to any track where the local government would allow racing to occur.

That led to the All Star Circuit of Champions making an 11-race swing through Texas and Oklahoma in the early part of the year, something they would ordinarily never do. And guess what? All but three of those races were run to completion, which is a much better percentage than what we normally see in the opening stages of the season. 

What’s hard to understand is, why has no one else taken a page out of that notebook since? That stretch of races proved there are plenty of tracks in the south central United States that are capable of hosting big league dirt racing. With a fair purse, you would have a decent amount of teams make the trip down to get some laps in before the weekly racing season kicks off up north. It would also put the stars of tours like Lucas and the World of Outlaws in front of fans who may have never seen them before, which could do wonders in growing the overall audience of the sport. 

So why do we as an industry keep setting ourselves up for disappointment year after year? One would think that this past spring would serve as a wake up call, considering that the World of Outlaws Late Models did not run a race after speedweeks until April 20th at 411, and the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series had to wait until early May. But it looks as if we still haven’t learned our lesson.