It’s basically the transfer portal or free agency but for Sprint Car racing.
That’s the best way to articulate the current and quite frankly exciting dynamic between the World of Outlaws and High Limit Racing. It’s the Monday Night Wars for you professional wrestling enthusiasts amongst us.
The World of Outlaws has largely operated as a hegemony for the past four decades, and while it has seen the occasional challenger series, it has never been confronted by something with the bonafides and resources of High Limit.
It’s owned by the World of Outlaws five-time defending champion, Brad Sweet, for goodness sake, alongside one of the most recognizable figures in national motorsports in Kyle Larson and a massive streaming entity in FloSports. By all reasonable expectations, it should have staying power.
Race teams have a legitimate option to race with another series full-time, and the off-season has been and will continue to be full of curiosity and speculation. Sweet is going to run his own series, of course, and will be joined by team owner and former NASCAR star Kasey Kahne. It’s also picked up emerging stars Zeb Wise and Cory Eliason.
There has been one “flip” beyond Sweet and that occurred when the Shark Racing team decided to split the two series with Logan Schuchart staying with the Outlaws and Jacob Allen going High Limit.
With Sweet running his own series, the World of Outlaws championship is now wide-open with several of his top challengers from the past couple of years already committing to stay and battle it out amongst themselves โ David Gravel of Big Game Motorsports, Sheldon Haudenschild of Stenhouse Jr Marshall Racing and Gio Scelzi of KCP Racing.
Brock Zearfoss is back with his family team on the tour, too.
What will Donny Schatz of Tony Stewart Racing do? He is the most prolific champion, 10 times, of this era. What about Carson Macedo and Jason Johnson Racing? One of the biggest potential wild cards of this entire dynamic is Rico Abreu, who had previously suggested a commitment to a pick-and-choose schedule that contains both tours.
But now he’s met again with Sweet and suggested that he has his “poker face” on.
It’s such palpable drama.
Abreu, who has expressed support for both tours, has said the biggest challenge for Sweet to overcome in Year One is the optics of Sweet starting his own series and running roughshod over the competition if all his biggest competitors stay WoO.
The team that took the fight to Kyle Larson in the inaugural mini series championship could single-handedly provide both a championship battle and the competitive legitimacy High Limit needs.
It’s all a fascinating follow and with the Performance Racing Industry trade show coming up this week, and the expectation of learning more about the full-time High Limit team financial package, even more should come into clarity before the holidays.
And while this is the fun part for fans and observers, it also has to be recognized that the new status quo is creating some unfortunate tensions across the industry as well.
Both schedules are out, and that’s interesting too, as the High Limit slate has several breaks to allow their teams to race all the big World of Outlaws shows. And that’s part of their appeal because the Outlaws allow their teams to only race four times outside of its own schedule.
Port Royal and 34 Raceway were fascinatingly left off the Outlaws schedule. Eldora, Tulare, Hanford Riverside and Atomic are each hosting both series. Also curious how that dynamic works.
There has competition for staffing and senior officials too. Longtime World of Outlaws race director Mike Hess is now overseeing competition and procedures for High Limit. Content and communications stalwart Brian ‘Walkapedia’ Walker and timing chief Anthony Corini are spearheading similar roles at High Limit now too.
High Limit hired on Tuesday World of Outlaws pit reporter Chase Raudman to serve as it’s play by play voice.
It’s both a testament to the infrastructure World Racing Group has built with WoO but also how serious High Limit is about building something of a similar stature.
What lies ahead for World of Outlaws, High Limit
The biggest challenge for the industry remains if there are enough teams of equal stature to support to national tours, and even if there currently isn’t, if both series can build new stars to fill out their respective rosters.
This is also going to have a negative effect on both local racing and regional racing. High Limit purchased the regional Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania based All Stars Circuit of Champions from Tony Stewart but this series is not simply the ASCoC but with a west coast swing.
The absence of the All Stars, combined with attracting some of weekly racingโs biggest stars to a second national tour, could have a long-lasting impact to the weekly racer and their tracks. Ohio Sprint Week will be taken over by the FAST Series but it doesnโt have the resources or infrastructure of the All Stars for example.
However, the dynamic could also create those new stars in Pennsylvania and Ohio too. Itโs all a delicate balance.
A second national tour that features Larson racing with greater regularity, every chance his NASCAR schedule allows, could stand to grow the discipline even further. FloRacing will certainly put its full might behind this project.
Also, make no mistake, World of Outlaws will continue to be the standard bearer. It was growing its full-time participation program well before High Limit was conceived. Sometimes competition is healthy and could create growth.
But both sides must be careful not to kill the golden goose that has been national sprint car racing over the past month. Again, no matter what, this dynamic has been and will continue to be exciting to watch until teams roll into Florida in February for the most interesting season of Sprint Car racing in recent history.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.