What tremendous theater.
All of it.
That’s the main takeaway from the 38th Chili Bowl Midget Nationals.
It’s unfortunate in a way that so much of what makes this event special doesn’t translate to television. It has to be experienced in person. But really, if you’re someone who only watches mainstream motorsports, do you not feel the same way about your favored discipline?
How many times have you told friends that experience a NASCAR race in person will create a lifelong fan? Doesn’t the same narrative apply to watching a first NHRA pass in person?
Chili Bowl is no different.
For the decade plus that Rico Abreu competed in the Tulsa Expo, there was no way to translate the bond he shared with the fans in Turn 2, especially the Top Row Rowdies. Of course, over the years, there have been social media posts or broadcast snippets but it just doesn’t translate in the way a mainstream sporting event does with its 30,000 to 50,000 attendance figures.
That comes across on TV.
Chili Bowl is way more intimate, and that is the point, one that the promoters are keenly aware of having turned down a chance to grow the event into an arena spectacle at the Alamodome in Texas many years ago.
To wit, this is probably a IYKYK kind of experience.
For those watching once a year on television, the Parade of Nations and driver intros seem excessive and unnecessary but it is part in parcel of the reasons Chili Bowl is a generational right of passage for the 15,000 who walk through the doors.
This is a family gathering and there are far too many non-family members trying to turn Chili Bowl into a TV show.
It’s the indie rock festival of motorsports but one like a Coachella or Lollapalooza in which a headliner like Larson performs in an intimate setting against the low-fi darlings like Logan Seavey, Tanner Thorson, Justin Grant and Hank Davis.
What kind of working man music festival wouldn’t include a Hank?
For those who know, no explanation is needed and for those who don’t, none will do but the racing tends to be good enough to at least satisfy everyone who is watching just the feature every Saturday night.
And that is as good a place to begin as any in this list of takeaways from the 38th Chili Bowl Midget Nationals.
Feature track prep
Track prep for the 55-lap main event is such a no-win scenario for Brad ‘Gravel’ Chandler and his crew based on the current event structure and schedule.
Here are the facts from this past week if anyone is interested.
This was the best week of racing, holistically, from the past decade of the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals. This is objectively true and everyone who matters will tell you that and they certainly would have told you that at 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
Gravel kept moisture in the track and nailed the prelim feature for four of the five nights and even Thursday was pretty dang good.
Saturday is just getting increasingly and increasingly tougher with an entry list that is slowly approaching 400 cars and all of them racing the Alphabet Soup from 10 a.m. until the early afternoon hours. That’s a lot of freaking laps, folks.
If Gravel overworks it with the moisture, it turns into a hammer down, wide open race track and everyone would complain about that too. The truth is that the modern Chili Bowl has always been a 35-lap race disguised as a 55-lapper with everyone knowing the clock is ticking to get track position before the track locks down.
This time, it took 25 laps and Gravel is going to want a mulligan, but gosh give that man and his team their flowers for what they did all week and up until the feature.
The larger issue is the schedule and finding a way to run some of the early features on Friday night. It might take away from part of the day long Alphabet Soup experience but that experience is taking away from the main event.
And for all this rambling about how great the track was for five-plus days, all everyone is going to remember is what happened in the feature.
Kyle Larson suggested bringing back Rookie Night on Sunday and then running the veteran prelims Monday through Thursday with the early soup runs and the pole shuffle on Friday night. That would allow Gravel to spend all night reworking the track and having less laps put down on Saturday in advance of the feature.
Maybe, and with all due respect to Paesant’s Row, the event has grown to the point to where there needs to be a cutoff to even participate in the Saturday Alphabet Soup in the same way there is a cutoff between going straight to a Prelimm Night qualifier or to a C Main.
Everyone likes to talk about how quickly the track has locked down during the feature over the past several years without conceding the caveat about the number of races that are being run on it now.
THEY STARTED FROM THE P-MAINS ON SATURDAY.
So, full stop, they have to find a way to decrease the number of laps on Championship Saturday and maybe the answer is just adding another day of racing to the schedule, which surely promoter Emmett Hahn would be fine with anyway.
We just have to have nuanced conversations about all of this without resorting to the knee-jerk criticism about a track prep crew that nailed it all week.
Still a good race
Daison Pursley went +16 from 20th to 4th and did it coming from his D Main.
Like, say what you will about the track and quality of racing but Dais still put on a show that will be remembered for a long time. He very well could have won the whole dang thing if the track had took rubber a little bit later.
That’s probably part of the frustration.
On the other hand, even a lock down race at the Tulsa Expo has a degree of intrigue. Buddy Kofoid and Seavey are too close, and Kofoid is too professional, but this is absolutely a track where you could execute a NASCAR style bump and run when everyone gets sucked down to the bottom.
They would get booed out of the building like Cannon McIntosh, but depending on who is running up front, that dynamic is certainly in play.
The first half of the race was pretty darn thrilling with Kofoid and Seavey swapping the lead, one of them not counting due to the timing of the caution, all the while with Pursley dicing through the field. When that is the bookend of an incredible week of racing, it’s easier to give the main event a pass.
It also shows the importance of each prelim night and the pole shuffle.
When Kofoid and Seavey earned the front row, it was their earned advantage to race amongst themselves while Pursley was punished for his prelim night misfortune, and it’s just part of the storyline of the week in its entirety.
But again, reducing the number of features on Saturday would go a long way towards providing a much better 55 lap main event on Saturday.
It keeps coming back to that.
Slide or die
Man, Cannon McIntosh can’t stay off Thomas Meseraull lately, can he?
That’s not a criticism, or a slight, but just an accurate summation of their recent history. There have been a lot of run-ins over the past 15 months. When TMez called Cannon Mac Can’t Drive Cannon, that is some deep seeded animosity.
What’s most unfortunate is that both drivers were in a transfer spot coming to the checkered flag when McIntosh fed Meseraull a right rear in Turn 4. McIntosh surely wants that back, and even with the tension, he says he didn’t want it to play out that way but it’s also true they had mixed it up with Briggs Danner that entire last several lap run.
That was for the transfer and there is a lot happening.
At the same time, it’s not a justification and Meseraull has every right to feel the way he does too, but this is all to say there was a lot going on and when someone who lives by the Slide or Die slogan dies by the slider …
Well …
But Meseraull says, and also fair given their history, that there is Slide or Die and then there is a Cannon Mac Cannonball.
No matter where your allegiances land, it did produce tremendous, tremendous theater.
This was the immediate aftermath of the feature with fans migrating to the area where McIntosh and Meseraull were parked.
An entire Expo Hall and they were naturally Parker across from each other.
Meseraull was even briefly ejected from the building, the byproduct of a misunderstanding with safety officials, and a decision that was overridden by Hahn himself.
Those in attendance certainly made their voices heard.
What’s especially wild about the fan reactions is that it came a year after McIntosh, a native Oklahoman, won a prelim race and celebrated with mutual love with the Top Row Rowdies.
What a difference a year and one corner makes.
While it is certainly a rotten deal for Meseraull, one of the most popular stats in the discipline, it again made for a tremendous energy in the building.
It was quintessential Chili Bowl.
Other positives
After well over a decade of ending after midnight local time, the 38th Championship Saturday of the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals ended at 9:40.
NINE-FORTY!
Several factors played into that, of course. No one flipped hard into the catchfence and created the need for a lengthy repair. The event crew were super-efficient. Some of that also has to do with the race no longer being on MAVTV, meaning there was no waiting for the television window to open up.
The Es went into track work, which led into the Ds, pole shuffle, Cs, Bs, track work and feature.
Gosh was that nice.
Moving to a stiffer sidewall tire seemed to improve the racing and it might have even improved the track too. Individual mileage varies on that last point. It’s basically the USAC spec tire on the larger Chili Bowl wheel.
Track prep did not change from year-to-year and the only real variable was the tire so it stands to reason that it made a tangible difference.
Closing thoughts
With the exception of Larson’s surprise entry, and short-lived Thursday attempt, this felt like this first season of Chili Bowl: The Next Generation.
The Big Three have moved on for now.
Rico Abreu is in Australia
Christopher Bell is no longer permitted to race
Larson is in New Mexico
It felt different the past two years, but especially this year, without all three. It is objectively going to take time to replace that popularity and potential to win every single time they hit the track and the attention that demands.
It’s not just about Saturday but Rico’s relationship with the Rowdies and how Bell and Larson decided five straight races amongst themselves.
At the same time, The Big Three aren’t the first stars. They are the spiritual successors to Sammy Swindell, Tony Stewart and Kevin Swindell.
If this year was about building the next generation of starts in the Tulsa Expo, that process is off to a good start with Seavey, now a two-time winner, Kofoid, Thorson, McIntosh and Carrick, who all perpetually win prelim nights over the past several years and race for the win.
Hopefully, The Big Three come back because they add so much to the show, and when they do, the emergence of this next generation is going to make the Chili Bowl seem so much bigger.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.