At this point, all that remains come Monday at East Bay Raceway Park at is for Brad Sweet to go out and do what he has done for a decade and that is winning races and championships.
But this time. It’s under the High Limit Racing banner, a series he has co-founded with brother-in-law Kyle Larson and streaming network FloRacing. It has simultaneously rejuvenated him but also required much from him in a way that only being a race car driver never could.
After a nine race weekday mini-series ‘proof of concept’ in 2023, High Limit Racing is now a full-blown national Sprint Car series intended to rival World of Outlaws while also elevate the entire discipline, the results of which will have the attention of the racing world all season.
High Limit has made impressive hires, starting with longtime World of Outlaws race director Mike Hess, but also several experienced officials from the competition, marketing and content sectors. That is to say nothing of the 17 teams that have signed up to be full-time High Rollers, a collection of racers that is every bit the roster quality as those competing in the Greatest Show on Dirt.
Come Monday night, Sweet just gets to be a racer, and it couldn’t work any other way.
“I’ve had these conversations with Hess and our entire staff,” Sweet told Sportsnaut on Sunday. “Once we start racing, they’re my boss and we couldn’t be successful otherwise.”
There was one significant blip in that proof of concept series last year, when Larson effectively made a race control decision from inside the car, during a race. It rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and a lot of that was High Limit just not having a robust enough officiating crew, things that have been rectified over the winter.
Sweet and Larson will only be competitors on race days and hiring Hess was an important message because integrity is a foundational attribute to the racer turned technical official, race director and now series director.
“When you build the foundation of any company, there are certain parts that are ultra-important, and we feel like he is one of those parts,” Sweet said.
“There was always be the thing that, ‘well, Brad and Kyle, they own the series,’ and questions of the officiating until we got Hess.
“Racers are very comfortable with him,” Sweet said. “He is known to not show favoritism to anyone. That was huge. I really don’t think we could do this without Mike Hess. He is that important to what we’re doing.”
Sweet says Hess has put in the time in a variety of roles in Sprint Car racing and that he’s effectively gotten a promotion to overall series director with High Limit and that he deserves that too.
It also has to be one of the deciding factors for the 16 other drivers that signed up to be full-timers. It’s a number that genuinely surprised everyone in the High Limit leadership group.
At World Finals, Rico Abreu said his biggest concern for High Limit now that they had signed Hess, would just be the on-track product if enough championship caliber teams either remained with World of Outlaws or retained a true outlaw schedule.
Abreu signed up alongside Tyler Courtney, Justin Peck, Brent Marks, Zeb Wise Spencer Bayston, Corey Day and James McFadden. That is a really impressive list of contenders,.
Sweet said it has been satisfying to see so many people buy into the High Limit vision.
“I was told once that all you really have is your reputation,” Sweet said. “If you have that, and when you take a chance on something, people will want to follow. There are a lot of people who have changed their lives to come our way and work with us and I feel very grateful that they believe in this.”
But, he also is energized as a driver too after a decade spent racing against Donny Schatz, David Gravel, Carson Macedo and Logan Schuchart. It’s meant as no disrespect to the World of Outlaws or the racers he has raced with over the past dozen-plus years but it’s simply exciting to do something different.
“I wasn’t sure, from a racing standpoint, how I’d feel once we got to this season,” he said. “I’ve done it for so long but I also just feel like I didn’t have anything to prove anymore.
“But also, when you race for points, it’s such a grind, and you get the schedule in December and it’s the same 90 races where you’re doing the same thing every year. I knew exactly where I would be at all times.
“But with our model, 60 races and the freedom to go do other things, that’s rejuvenating. I’m pumped to get to the track.”
He also embraces the idea of a healthy rivalry between High Limit and World of Outlaws. When Courtney, Abreu and himself swept the podium at a WoO race this past week at Volusia, it garnered this polarizing post.
“We have a lot to prove,” Sweet said. “We want to prove that our roster is the best. Tyler, Rico, Brent, myself, we all want people to say High Limit has the best teams. David Gravel, Logan Schuchart, Donny Schatz, Sheldon (Haudenschild) and Carson (Macedo), they want to prove they’re the best and that World of Outlaws is the best.
“That’s a good thing right? That’s a storyline. And its natural, fan-driven too? That’s what sports is all about so we want that.”
The general consensus around the Sprint Car world is that this first year with two national tours should just be fun. Both series have very competitive fields and now there’s almost double the number of high-paying national races.
There will be a boost from around 80 national points races to around 120, depending on rain outs.
If this is going to work, for both series, World of Outlaws needs to remain a standard bearer in the discipline and High Limit’s proposed charter system, one of the driving forces behind the roster that signed up this year, needs to be a success.
Right now, Sweet doesn’t know entirely how it’s going to work.
High Limit has a very loose outline of issuing revenue sharing franchise tokens to the top-five teams in points after the 2024 season and the top-five who didn’t receive one in 2024 in 2025. How High Limit will distribute revenue and broadcast money remains to be announced.
But like Sweet said, he has the highest reputation amongst his peers and they’re all in and he also continues consulting with a lot of smart people, many of which crafted NASCAR’s franchise model in advance of the 2016 season.
“I work with some really smart people with Flo, Kyle’s management team,” Sweet said. “I’ve done a lot of homework on how the Formula 1 model works, NASCAR’s model and it’s not the same but there are things I’ve learned from it.
“I’ve talked to Brett Frood (former Steart-Haas Racing president) and (NASCAR agent) Rod Moskowitz. Mark Florini (FloRacing president). I can’t answer all the questions yet because we’re still putting it all together but we’ll have more to put out soon.
“We’re going to learn together and we’ll make it better as we get feedback as we get closer to 2026. But the goal is giving teams equity and to reward the sport they’ve helped build.”
And that journey, both as a driver and series owner, begins this week.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.