If you follow NASCAR, you may have come across Denny Hamlin talking about wanting the series to host a March Madness style bracket during the season. The goal would be to create fan interaction by having them fill out brackets and gamble on matchups each week. At the end of the tournament, the winning driver would earn a huge payout. This got me thinking, what if we could have a sprint car tournament? Logistically this would be a nightmare, and I am no scheduling expert, but if all of the major touring series worked together with the tracks, something could potentially be set up. Obviously, some of the lower budget teams would have to have a large incentive just to travel to some neutral sites. The tournament would also have to be set up differently, since it would not be possible to have all of the drivers competing against each other in the same night at the same track.
My original thought would be to have the regions battle amongst themselves in prelims to set the who advances to the main tournament. Prelims would be 2 to 4 days, and the top half of the drivers would advance to face the winners of the closest region (for example: the top PA Posse drivers would face off against the top Ohio drivers). The problem is, some of the regions are clearly more stacked than others. None of the driver counts from each region would be the same, so this would raise questions about fairness. If we were to take the top 10 drivers from each region to be in the tournament, then we would be taking all of the All Star Circuit of Champions competitors (makes me sad). The tournament could also be a season long thing for regionals. Tracks could host designated nights for tournament competition.
Another option looks like this. I created 8 regions below, and if 8 drivers made it out of each region, we would have a 64 car field for the tournament. The field could be split into 3 A-Main style races and have individual matchups. Time trials or overall points from prelim action could set the seeding. The three fastest or highest in points would be starting on the pole for each feature. They would be matched up against the last place starting car (I know the numbers do not matchup with 64 cars, but a last chance showdown style event from the prelims to add a few more cars could be in play). Whoever finishes higher in each feature out of their matchup, advances to the next night. So yes, theoretically the second place finisher could be eliminated if he was matched up against the winner. The second night, new matchups would be created and the same format would be executed. This would set the A-Main for the championship. This gets away from the standard passing points format that we are all used to for the Crown Jewels and adds a little fun to the mix. Bad luck could really hurt some drivers, so a last chance format would probably have to be created.
Basically, the tournament style set up would be thrown out the window on the final night or else the match ups would go on forever and we would have a 1v1 main event (could be cool). We could still have matchups with incentives for finishing higher than your opponent. The winner of the final race would be the true champion and would be representing their region. I guess what I am really trying to set up is just sprint car regionals that extends into nationals but in a tournament format. Can you imagine how awesome the support from the fans representing their region would be? The closest thing we get to something like this is the Knoxville Nationals, where we see 100+ cars in the pits, but that still leaves well over 100 cars unaccounted for. I am being greedy and want to see all of them compete.
I am purposely leaving the tracks out of this, because that is all up for debate. What is the fairest neutral sight for all sprint car drivers in the final tournament? Is the answer Knoxville or Eldora? Or can we find another facility? How would regionals work for the invaders? Could we extend the championship across multiple tracks? Some bull rings and some big tracks? The possibilities are endless.
Check out the graphics below for the regions and make sure you read the disclaimer before you freak out. Even if you think this is incredibly dumb, it’s still fun to think about who would advance out of each region. It’s even more fun to think about all of these drivers potentially competing against each other on the same night. Hopefully we can see most of them at the Million and the Knoxville Nationals.
*DISCLAIMER – I just went through 200+ 410 sprint car drivers across the nation. There is a strong chance I left some important drivers out of each region. Please chime in and let me know who I forgot. I also based the regions off of where drivers mostly run. The “invaders” are obviously up for debate. I used the early Eldora Million entry list and the High Limit regulars for most of the invaders. If you think I messed up driver placement, please explain your reasoning. With Ohio and PA having their own region, I felt it was necessary to have Knoxville and Huset’s be their own region. DRIVERS – if I missed you, I apologize, please comment if you want to be added to a region. I also likely spelled some names wrong and got some car numbers wrong, please correct me. This is all for fun and engagement, I know this is not really realistic (but it could be). I was originally creating these graphics for a preview of the Knoxville Nationals and Eldora Million and then I thought of this crazy idea. I have the utmost faith in sprint car Twitter to be totally logical about this (sarcasm) and have the ability to work together to come up with the perfect tournament format.
The Regions
The invaders are stacked. I know I am missing a few and I know a few guys could be allocated to other regions, but this is a good start. The High Limit series could be its own region, but that would leave some drivers out of the picture. Who are the top 8 out of this region? A few are obvious locks, but a few spots remain anyone’s game.
It just made too much sense to combine these two awesome tracks. Prelims could be two races at Huset’s and two races at Knoxville. This region is up for grabs.
I’m going to be honest, I consume a lot of sprint car racing but this is the area I know the least about. It was necessary to lump the Texas guys in here. I could be totally off on this one when it comes to driver placement. We’ll get it straightened out.
Ohio has some gassers that fly under the radar. I could see this being a mix of the vets and young guns.
What else is there to say? Some of the best in the business but not all of them can advance.
Peck might be an invader at this point. Could even be Posse but I know they don’t claim him. If he’s out, do all 8 automatically advance? Or do all of these guys need to be allocated elsewhere?
A lot of heavy hitters. The west coast guys always put on a good show. I really like the potential from this region. Does Cole Macedo belong in Ohio?
The POSSE would have some of the largest car counts on prelim nights. I think I can pick out 8 guys from this group that would represent PA well.
And those are the regions. I know an actual bracket would be hard to accomplish, but I still like the thought of having guys advance out of each region to either compete against another region or to advance to a nationals style race for the finals. Drivers likely wouldn’t show up when they could technically be eliminated for finishing in the top 5. If we could come up with some kind of tournament style event where fans can interact, it would be huge for the sport. Drop your comments on Twitter or below and tell me how dumb this is or how we can make this thing work!
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