“I think Brad is scared. That’s why he went somewhere else.”
If the chuckle didn’t give away the joke, David Gravel quickly followed it with a ‘just kidding,’ because of course he was.
There is a tremendous amount of mutual respect between the two of them.
All joking aside, Brad Sweet set the standard with Kasey Kahne Racing in the Greatest Show on Dirt over the past five years but has since left to spearhead the High Limit Sprint Car Series alongside Kyle Larson and FloRacing.
Their departure completely changes the dynamic of the most venerable series in Winged Sprint Car competition. Gravel, in the Big Game Motorsports No. 2, finished second in the standings to Sweet three years in a row but inherits the role as championship favorite.
He also doesn’t think a championship, should it come to fruition only after the departure of Sweet, warrants any kind of asterisk.
“Of course, in the worst way, I want to beat him fair and square when we’re racing together and maybe we’ll race together again someday,” Gravel said back in January at Chili Bowl. “He went his way, made a business decision, and the World of Outlaws championship pays more than the High Limit championship.
“It’s a very elite club and right now, a World of Outlaws championship is worth more today than a High Limit championship. In 10 years, that might be different. Today? Every Sprint Car driver wants to be a World of Outlaws champion.”
World of Outlaws still has a really robust roster by the way:
10-time champion Donny Schatz with Tony Stewart Racing
Carson Macedo at Jason Johnson Racing
Sheldon Haudenschild at Stenhouse Jr Marshall Racing
Eldora Million winner Logan Schichart at Shark Racing
Gio Scelzi and KCP Racing
Buddy Kofoid at Roth Racing Enterprises
This will still be an incredibly challenging championship and Gravel isn’t expecting anyone to make it easy.
“There are a lot of great drivers that struggled last year or had off years,” Gravel said. “Donny struggled a little bit the past couple of years and who is to say he doesn’t come back to form this year. Logan was kind of inconsistent and Sheldon kind of had an off year. All those guys are capable. During the COVID year, Logan had a great shot to win the championship.
“There are still five or six guys that could easily contend for the championship. It’s whoever gets hot. Brad obviously won the past five seasons but he just didn’t DNF where everyone else had engine failures or whatnot while Brad could grind the wall at Devil’s Bowl and roll away.
“No bad things happened to him where Carson had things go wrong and we had things go wrong. Logan had things go wrong. Maybe it just feels that way but it looks that way to me too.”
Schuchart echoed that sentiment too.
“Brad was definitely very tough the past couple of years, and they build a program where they didn’t fall out of races,” Schuchart said. “You can have off nights and still win the championship but the biggest key is just not falling out of races.
“I think the first two years of the five, Brad had the fastest car, but the last two, I think Carson and David were the fastest but had some DNFs. That’s where we need to improve. We lost points on nights where, your worst nights have to be an eighth-place finish, and we didn’t finish.
“Brad is still going to go to the biggest races, as will Kyle (Larson) and Rico (Abreu) but I still believe the best of the best race the World of Outlaws and that’s why I wanted to be here.”
While Gravel and Schuchart respectfully shrugged off the impact of not racing Sweet on a nightly basis in 2024, Macedo went the complete opposite direction when asked about it on Friday at media day.
“I’m devastated about Brad moving on to be honest with you,” Macedo said. “I think it’s a terrible thing. I don’t really care that it gives us an opportunity to win more races. That’s great I guess, financially, or whatever but the World of Outlaws is about beating the best.
“Right now, I view Brad as the best. He’s won the last (five) championships in a row. I was kind of one of the few bummed about it. It’s tough, bittersweet, and there were times when he was winning those championships, that we had those conversations, and I told him, ‘how would you like it if you were as close as you ever have been to winning a championship and Donny just left?
“That wouldn’t be a real good thing. There is an opportunity to win more races, and for everyone here to capitalize on those changes but the competitor in me doesn’t really like it. Ultimately, the races won’t be different as people think and I think we’ll go to Volusia and have the toughest field with both series in town.
“But the competitor in me wants to race the best because that’s what World of Outlaws was founded on.”
This isn’t the first time this has happened, by the way, with the legendary Steve Kinser and Sammy Swindell bolting for the upstart National Sprint Tour in 2006. Just as he is now, Schatz remained in World of Outlaws and went onto claim his first championship that season, and no one looks back at that with any kind of asterisk either.
But really, Schatz says he can’t control what the High Rollers are doing this season, so he is instead more focused inward.
“I remember going to the race track with my dad, looking at my phone and telling him it was going to rain, and he would take my phone and ask me what the hell am I going to do about it. ‘You can’t control the weather.’
“So I can’t control what other people have done,” Schatz said. “In the back of my mind, I can ask myself why but I don’t have the answer. Not racing against really good race car drivers is unfortunate but I didn’t do anything that made them want to race somewhere else.
“I certainly didn’t scare them away with my performance the past couple of seasons. They just left. Only they can answer why they left. I certainly have an inclination about why but that might be a different opinion than others.
“From my standpoint, you’re still going to see a lot of those guys still be a lot of our races but now they’re going to have to pay to get in the gate. It’s the nature of the beast, it’s out of my control, and just worry about what I can do and that’s the same as I’ve always done.
“Go the race track, try to win, try to be competitive, and try to do the right thing by the fans and hope they keep coming around and still enjoy watching me.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.