Now that Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet purchasing the All Stars Circuit of Champions Sprint Car Series and likely merging it with their High Limit Sprint Car Series has been made official, the next shoe to drop will be the schedule and driver roster.
It remains an open question how this newly combined series fits within the landscape historically dominated by World of Outlaws and just how ambitious Sweet, Larson and FloRacing will be with their new endeavor.
Speaking publicly about the topic for the first time on Saturday at Martinsville Speedway, Larson emphasized how much he believes this is truly about growing the sport of dirt Sprint Car competition.
“We’re still trying to piece together our schedule,” Larson said. “I haven’t obviously seen what the Outlaws are doing with their schedule. We want what is best for the sport. We wouldn’t have gotten the series if we didn’t want what was best for the sport.
“It’s hard to predict the future with how that will look but I love dirt track racing and my whole goal in all this is to continue to grow it and get it to a place where I feel it deserves to be. We want to make it where the teams and drivers can make a good living. We’ll see how it shakes out. I don’t think any of us knows at this point but what I do know is that I want the best for the sport just like we all do.”
Even before making the acquisition public this past week, the High Limit Series had already made some high-profile hires like longtime World of Outlaws race director Mike Hess and digital media specialist Brian Walker.
The move sets up what is expected to create a national challenger to the World of Outlaws’ hegemony in the discipline but it remains debatable if there are enough teams to even support two national touring championships.
That’s to say nothing of having two diluted champions instead of one bonafide standard bearer. Larson did not have a clear answer right now over just how expansive the new combined series schedule would be next season.
“We’re still working through the schedule,” Larson said. “I spent a couple of days with Brad this week and he’s been on the phone a lot. It’s changed a lot. It changes daily, the schedule, and what we would like it to look like.
“I don’t have a good answer but it will be bigger than 11 races.”
That number is what the inaugural season contained, excluding one rainout, for a campaign first pitched as a big money, mid-week series on FloRacing that intended to provide additional marquee events for non-World of Outlaws teams.
World of Outlaws teams sign a near-exclusivity agreement with the sanctioning body that entitles them to championship money and contingency bonuses in exchange for only running a handful of races off the schedule each season.
Larson says they want to continue growing purses for the merged High Limit – All Stars series too.
“Our goal is yeah, to definitely raise the purses, anytime you buy something you want to make it better or more lucrative for the teams,” Larson said. “That’s our goal. There’s more risk on our end with a much larger schedule that we’ll hopefully have. But again, Brad and I, and everyone involved want the best for the sport or Sprint Car racing and our goal is to put it there.”
Larson also expects a midweek miniseries component to remain in place, for both selfish and logistically reasonable reasons.
“Whatever our full schedule ends up being, a priority of ours would be to maintain the midweek stuff,” Larson said. “I don’t know if the number is six or eight or 12 or more.
“The more midweek races we have, the more opportunities I have to race and the viewership for the midweek stuff has been really good so that’s for sure a priority of ours. It’s just difficult trying to put a schedule together and make it logistically make sense for everybody.”
World of Outlaws will conclude its season next weekend at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Dirt Track where Sweet leads David Gravel by 45 points seeking a fifth consecutive championship.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.