An open letter regarding the future of
West Coast pavement sprint car racing.
West Coast pavement sprint car racing.
My name is Jeff Trout.
For those of you not familiar with me, my history is that I raced in several
forms of oval racing, dirt and pavement, in California from the early 90's
until the early 2000s. I was a Bay
Cities Racing Association (BCRA) board member as well as a competitor and car
owner. I also raced late models and
tracks. I made two starts in a pavement
sprint car with the United States Auto Club (USAC) and I must say that was the
best racing of my life. Recently, I've
been involved in road racing, which I will discuss later.
I have been looking
at how to improve pavement sprint car racing on the west coast for a couple of
years. It started when I decided to get back into oval racing after spending a
few years with another fellow BCRA racer, Richard Miglori, racing sports cars. During that time, I learned a lot about the
Chevrolet Gen III/IV engines like the current Knoxville sealed sprint car motor
(CT525) and Tim Schwanke's sealed sprint car engines.
I was at a Northern California Modified Association (NCMA)
meeting recently and gathered information on what
their plans were for this season and to submit a request to try a new engine, an
LS that I would have built, tested on a dynamometer, sealed and then submitted
for approval to NCMA to run on an exhibition status as a proof of concept.
I feel that this engine can reduce costs, especially
maintenance costs. We road raced a stock
LS3 engine (except for a cam change) for 4 years in endurance races from 3
hours to 25 hours for four years with only an annual valve change with zero
engine failures!
In the Midwest, they
use the LS engine in two sprint car series and they have saved their sprint car
series. they have gone from a hand full
of cars at one track to over 100 cars at several tracks over two series about
200 miles apart. Admittedly, it is dirt,
but I feel the business model is the same.
After my discussions with the Midwestern racers, I concluded
that with their help, I can put together something that in the short term can
increase car count and exposure while lowering the cost of racing a sprint car
and provide a competitive playing field.
It is my pleasure to announce that my company, Pacific
Racing League, LLC has acquired a national sanction with Performance Open Wheel
Racing, Inc. (POWRi) to hold pavement sprint car races under the POWRi Pacific
Sprint Series banner. This sanction will bring sponsors, and exposure through
POWRi's in-house TV company,
We plan on making the series an
experience for racers and fans on and off the track with a lot of innovative
marketing ideas. I named my company Pacific Racing League, because I plan to
use what I have learned working for the Anaheim Ducks and approach this venture
as a sports league, treating each car owner, driver and track promoter as a
partner in our success.
The key to this series, short term, is to use rules that
have been proven to equalize the competition around different engine
combinations using balance of power measures with weight and restrictions on
the most powerful engines to increase car count, and therefore leverage that
growth with local track promoters.
Hopefully, racers can use what they have be competitive. The physics of pavement, non-wing sprint cars
is that less power and less weight can be competitive against high horsepower,
heavier cars because they hook up much better and can use all their power band.
This has been proven in several pavement stock car series that run engines that
make from 385 to 600 horsepower (HP) together.
We plan on putting on some demonstrations later this year
with the potential for a race or two toward the end of the year and a 12-race
schedule in 2019. We have already extended an invitation to enter a co-sanction
of these events with NCMA.
You can find out more at http://prlsprints.com/ and we are on twitter at @pacificsprints and on
Facebook at POWRi Pacific Sprints, or you can email me at jtrout@powripacific.com.
I look forward to working with all of you and please spread
the word.
Thank You
Jeff Trout
President, POWRi Pacific Sprint Series
8605 Santa Monica Blvd #52394
West Hollywood, California 90069-4109
(805) 380-8106
