I know that this isn't circle track racing

[ron.brown11]

I just watched a press conference on FloRacing, our Austin based home for streaming all things circle track. But this wasn't about circle track racing. There is a group of really accomplished Drag racers & team owners, that have put together a pre NHRA season opening racing event. It will basically look like a Street Outlaws No Prep Kings event, but the track (in Bradenton, FL), will have a full pro prep. Anybody can go onto floracing.com and read the press release, and they will probably put the video back up, as they were doing Q&A with the media when something happened to the feed. The press conference was taking place live here in Austin. Here are the folks that did the conference: Steve Torrance, many time top fuel champ from San Antonio (CAPCO); Erica Enders many time pro stock champ; Alan Johnson many time NHRA winning crew chief; Chad Head race winning driver/owner; Richard Freeman owner of Elite Race Cars from TX; and some guy named Tony Stewart, who owns a top fuel & a funny car team. Also a top alcohol dragster driver. 

It will be by invitation only. There will be 3 pro classes; top fuel; funny car & pro stock. The top fuel & funny cars will run to 1000', and the pro stocks will run the full 1/4 mile. They said that there will be about 12 cars per division invited. They are working on having 2-3 lower classes as support classes, but that will be announced at a later date. Each pro class will pay $250k to win, and that's larger than any NHRA event according to this group. The event will be held at Bradenton Motorsports Park before the 2024 NHRA season starts. This isn't an attempt to hurt NHRA, as apparently they NHRA has been involved in some manner. Like in the Street Outlaws events, drivers will do pill draws to see who they will race. They're saying that this will be a 6 day event, with concerts and other activities during the week. They also said that fans will get to see a whole lot more of the drivers than just the 1-2 minute interviews that are usually shown on NHRA events. They will show a lot of behind the scenes stuff too. They said that it will be called the Superstar Shootout. SRX anybody? 

Everybody knows that Tony Stewart hates a lot of things. In this press conference he was heaping a lot of love or FloRacing. It also looks like they are trying to develop a series, not just this 1 event. If that happens, it will be included in the FloRacing package. I hope that it all works out. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by ron.brown11

[NickHolt]

Sounds like a good deal for a lot of folks!~

[ron.brown11]

I hope so Nick. I love drag racing, but it's a distant second place. To me, this is like the Cup guys buying the CARS Tour. It should be a win/win. And with Tony's circle track background, and that he still races & has a racing series, there's a chance that brings more eyes to circle track racing, from the straight-line crowd. Plus, it gets away a bit from the structured ways of the NHRA. Gives it more of an outlaw feel to it. That there might bring more drag fans out that might not otherwise go. Unless it fails miserably, I can't see any negatives to it. Stewart isn't one to want to attach his name to something he doesn't think can be successful. I think by the time they get this thing up and running, it will end up with a pretty strong SRX feel to it. People seem to like that so far in the SRX series. The fans like to see the drivers and racing, without the pressure of the points championship. Yes, there's still an SRX champion, but only about 2/3 of those drivers are actually competing for it. Plus, I don't think that any of those that do are relying on that for their livelihood. So still, it's racing for the sake of racing, and for the fans. That's always a great thing. 

[ron.brown11]

Here's the drivers for this Thursday Night Thunder SRX race at Berlin Raceway near Grand Rapids, MI.

Helio Castroneves

Marco Andretti

Kevin Harvick

Hailie Deegan

Brad Kesolowski

Kasey Kayne

Johnny Benson Jr

Toney Stewart

Bobby Labonte

Ryan Newman

Kyle Busch

Kenney Schrader

As Berlin was Johnny Benson Jr's home track, and he still runs super modifieds there occasionally, he could be good there. Seeing as how Paul Tracy isn't racing, there might not be as many crashes. Oh wait, Hailie running, never mind. Hopefully they have their brake issues fixed. Both weeks they ran at Stafford Speedway, they had several cars that had brake failure. Ryan Preece was easily leading, even Tony Stewart commented that Preece looked like he was doing a good job taking care of them. He cursed Ryan. A few laps later he ran into turn 1, and nearly walled it. Amazingly he only dropped to 2nd. Then he nearly walled it again going into turn 3. That was it. Two other cars had brake issues last Thursday. Two weeks ago nearly half the field had brake issues. That was the talk in the booth before the races began last week. Hopefully not this week. Stafford & Berlin are similar sized tracks, but at Berlin, it's almost a constant turn. Stafford has very fast straights, and the brakes are really needed. If anyone ever questioned the driving talents of Ryan Preece, they need to see him race a Whelan Modified at Stafford. He's an animal, and he doesn't wreck people. He ran the same line in the SRX car as he does in mods. I'm glad that ESPN & the SRX series get together to revive the Thursday Night Thunder racing. I wasn't sure that ESPN would ever get back into covering stock car racing, after the way they were treated by NASCAR. Hopefully this will lead to more racing coverage by them. 

 

[rebelracewriter]

4 hours ago, ron.brown11 said:

I just watched a press conference on FloRacing, our Austin based home for streaming all things circle track. But this wasn't about circle track racing.

A couple things....There was a shit ton of rumors floating around about this recently from all the displaced drag racers in  the San Antonio area....Everything from a new area track to drag racing at COTA....Sadly just more disappointment after the SAR/ACM debacle..... Then there was the "story" of resurrecting the corner of Watson Road/Hwy 16 to a drag strip and 1/4 mile circle track.....Of course that turned out to be just smoke out their ass....The only viable solution I've seen/read is a deal Hugh Garteiser tried to implement on FB....Last I heard he hadn't even gotten a tenth of the investors(5K ea.) to begin to look for a suitable place to build a new track....I gave he and John Villenueve a list of old deserted air strips that Texas Tom passed along to me as possible existing sites....It's a shame this area can't sustain a track, of any kind it seems.....I grew close enough to drag strip that you could hear it in the quiet of the night, and was able to ride my bicycle there as a 14 yr old.

 

Now to BMP.....Looks like they face the same extinction as the dinosaurs, uummmmm, other race tracks have.....Freaking urban expansion.....Hopefully, though I don't believe it, these two developments can co-exist in peace and harmony......FAT CHANCE!

https://www.fox13news.com/news/dont-let-my-racetrack-die-housing-horsepower-clash-with-sprawl-reaching-bradenton-raceways

[HiTech]

2 hours ago, rebelracewriter said:

A couple things....There was a shit ton of rumors floating around about this recently from all the displaced drag racers in  the San Antonio area....Everything from a new area track to drag racing at COTA....Sadly just more disappointment after the SAR/ACM debacle..... Then there was the "story" of resurrecting the corner of Watson Road/Hwy 16 to a drag strip and 1/4 mile circle track.....Of course that turned out to be just smoke out their ass....The only viable solution I've seen/read is a deal Hugh Garteiser tried to implement on FB....Last I heard he hadn't even gotten a tenth of the investors(5K ea.) to begin to look for a suitable place to build a new track....I gave he and John Villenueve a list of old deserted air strips that Texas Tom passed along to me as possible existing sites....It's a shame this area can't sustain a track, of any kind it seems.....I grew close enough to drag strip that you could hear it in the quiet of the night, and was able to ride my bicycle there as a 14 yr old.

 

Now to BMP.....Looks like they face the same extinction as the dinosaurs, uummmmm, other race tracks have.....Freaking urban expansion.....Hopefully, though I don't believe it, these two developments can co-exist in peace and harmony......FAT CHANCE!

https://www.fox13news.com/news/dont-let-my-racetrack-die-housing-horsepower-clash-with-sprawl-reaching-bradenton-raceways

 ..  have alot of open land  around corpus . ed roy  mathis all on 37 .. but  corpus is far away from parts of texas .. ..  in some of those areas   u will not find much reason for  urban expansion .. . plenty of land  between mathis and skidmore on 359   ... . u can drive  right down that  highway  from anywhere .. 

[24nomo]

crowd funding for a race track would be the worst business model ever in the race track business.   

[NickHolt]

It takes someone with enough money and resources to build a multi-purpose motorsports facility and then not worry about any return on their investment.  

For some strange reason, that person has yet to come forward!

[Radical]

20 hours ago, NickHolt said:

It takes someone with enough money and resources to build a multi-purpose motorsports facility and then not worry about any return on their investment.  

For some strange reason, that person has yet to come forward!

You can come out from behind those shadows!!