Tri-City Speedway
Midweek series offers more options for racers
By Joshua Joiner
DirtonDirt.com staff writer
Bobby Pierce plans to compete March 31 at Tri-City. (dt52photos.com)
When both Jonathan Davenport and Brandon Overton seemingly confirmed their intentions not to contend for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series this season by attending Saturday’s $50,000-to-win Karl Kustoms Bristol Dirt Nationals at Bristol Motor Speedway, it also confirmed something else: independent schedules are a viable option for today’s top Dirt Late Model racers.
Make no mistake, both national tours still carry some of the sport's biggest names on their rosters with superstar veterans Jimmy Owens and Tim McCreadie leading the way on the Lucas Oil tour and the World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series touting the likes of Brandon Sheppard and Scott Bloomquist among its regulars. But with drivers like Davenport and Overton joining the likes of Bobby Pierce, Chris Ferguson and others in choosing mixed schedules over following a national tour, it appears the “outlaw” style of racing is back in vogue with many top racers.
“We’re in this to try to make money,” said Davenport, who claimed the $50,000 victory Saturday at the dirt-covered Bristol. “It’s great to win races and win championships, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to dollars and cents. If we spend $800 in diesel to go win 10 grand or we can spend $100 in diesel to win 10 grand, we’re already $700 to the good when we get there. There’s a lot of races out there these days, and more options is always a good thing.”
Drivers choosing to run an independent campaign will have even more options for filling their schedules in 2021 thanks to the new Castrol FloRacing Night in America tour that launches with Wednesday at Tri-City Speedway in Granite City, Ill. Featuring a 10-race slate of single-day midweek races to be streamed live on FloRacing, the first-year tour offers a points fund of more than $60,000 with $20,000 going to the champion.
In addition to the points fund, the event payouts are attractive as well, including the $22,000-to-win event April 21 date at Atomic Speedway in Alma, Ohio and the $20,000-to-win Sept. 23 visit to 411 Motor Speedway in Seymour, Tenn., that was originally slated to kick off the tour Thursday before it was postponed by weather. A Sept. 14 race at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway pays $15,000 to win, while the remaining seven races, including the March 31 opener at Tri-City, each offer a $10,000 winner’s check. (Full disclosure: series founder FloSports owns DirtonDirt.com.)
With series officials choosing dates that complement the sport’s national tours instead of competing with them, the series has received plenty of interest from full-timers on both series. But it’s drawing interest from independent drivers as well. And that fact that the tour only counts a driver’s top seven finishes toward the final points standings has drawn support from both groups.
Pierce, of Oakwood, Ill., is among the independent drivers planning to enter the FloRacing Series opener at Tri-City. While he hasn’t committed to attending all 10 races on the tour, Pierce has expressed interest in attending many of the tour’s events and possible vying for the series title if things go well.
“We’re going to do 411 and Tri-City and see what happens,” Pierce, the three-time DIRT Summer Nationals champion and former World 100 winner, said while competing at Bristol before the postponement of 411’s series event. “It’s only nine or 10 races, so we might as well go to the first two races and see how it goes. I like how they give us the opportunity to hit all the races without it interfering with something else. I know it’s hard for the tracks to do those midweek races, but if they can pull it off, that’s great for us drivers to get those extra opportunities to race without missing out on something else.”
Like Davenport and Overton, Pierce, whose only full national tour run produced a seventh-place points finish on the Lucas Oil tour in 2018, has had his own experiences with forgoing a series to focus on a mixed schedule that better fits him and his team. In 2020 he dropped off the DIRTcar Summer Nationals midway through the series in order to attend the $53,000-to-win Silver Dollar Nationals at I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, Neb. At the time, Pierce was in a tight points battle on the Summer Nationals with eventual champion Brian Shirley, but the prospect of big-money racing was more appealing than following the summer tour’s full schedule.
“Really, the biggest thing with running a series for me, if you think you can go out there and win it and make enough money doing it, then you should go out there and run it,” Pierce said. “But if you’re not really going for the championship, it just makes more sense to go to the races you feel like you can win and make the most money. I feel like I’m getting to that point (where he can compete for national touring championships), but I still think I’m learning and just not to the point that it makes sense yet. I hope I get to that point though. I definitely want to win championships on those deals one day.
“You see guys like Davenport and Overton not running a series this year. I think that just goes to show that it’s almost a better option to kind of pick and choose. I was looking at the schedule and it seems like there’s a lot of races going on for good money. Every weekend you’ve got big races. You might have to travel a little bit, but they’re out there.”
The uniqueness of the new FloRacing Series is its midweek dates. Midweek races aren’t new in Dirt Late Model racing, but big-money midweek races are rare as promoters understandably hesitate to risk losing money on big payouts if weeknight events are poorly attended. But with the emergence of live video streaming online and the revenue it brings in, midweek races have become more attractive in recent seasons.
Pierce has seen the benefits of racing in the age of streaming and credits much of the sport’s growth to fans’ ability to follow the sport more closely by watching races live online.
“It’s definitely cool it’s getting the kind of exposure,” Pierce said. “Some people will argue it takes fans away from the track, but it doesn’t seem like to me crowds are getting smaller at these races. I think it’s 10 times better this way because there’s a lot of people who are watching because they can’t be there because it’s too far away or for whatever reason. But at least they’re getting to watch and be part of it. To me, I think that makes them more likely to come to a race the next time they have a chance to.”
The midweek events and their audiences from streaming are also attractive to racers for the increased exposure they offer over weekend events. Pierce compared the potential streaming audience for midweek races to Eldora Speedway’s World 100, noting that weekly racers and fans alike are more likely to tune in to watch on weeknights since they aren’t attending events at their local tracks like they typically would on weekends.
“That’s one of the reasons the World is so big, because you kind of have nothing else going on,” Pierce said. “There’s not many other opportunities to have races like that where everyone’s, or I guess a lot of people, are watching. I think that’s kind of what you get more of with these big weekday races. Those local racers and fans aren’t at their local track and they’re just chilling at the house, so they might as well watch us.”
The increased exposure through streaming has helped Pierce land all-important sponsorship dollars for his team. But it’s not just because businesses see streaming audiences as potential customers. Instead, as Pierce points out, many times streaming helps with sponsorships because it allows business owners to feel like they’re part of the team they are sponsoring.
“It definitely helps with sponsors to be able to say, ‘Look at the exposure we can get for you with all these people watching,’ but most of our sponsors are with us because they want to be part of what we’re doing, you know, part of our team,’ Pierce said. “A lot of them aren’t able to make it to the track a lot, so watching right there on their phone or on their TV, they’re definitely more engaged and feeling like they’re part of it.
“I think a lot of sponsors that sponsor race cars aren’t always doing it because of the exposure they get to the public. A lot of them, they want to be engaged with the driver. They want to watch you racing and if they can do it from the comfort of their own living room, that’s great.”
This week the attention of much of the Dirt Late Model racing world will turn to Tri-City for the launch of the FloRacing Series. The shift of the series opener to Tri-City from 411 actually works in the favor of Pierce, who has never been to 411 but has plenty of laps around Tri-City.
Pierce hopes that a strong run in the opener could perhaps set him up for a potential shot at becoming the tour’s first champion. Providing, of course, that the tour’s races fit his schedule.
“I think there’ll be a lot of cars at these events as long as the weather’s good. That’ll make it tough, but I think we can get a good run at 411 and be in contention at Tri-City,” Pierce said. “After that we’ll see how things are looking and how the other races fit in our schedule. If it makes sense, yeah, we might keep following (the tour), but it’s just one of those deals where it has to make sense for us.”
