World of Outlaws Late Models tackle Bristol for first time

When the World of Outlaws Late Model Series hits the track at 6 p.m. ET on Thursday April 8, it marks the first time the series visits Bristol Motor Speedway. That’s not surprising since the 0.533-mile bullring is typically asphalt, but when track officials and NASCAR decided to convert the surface for NASCAR’s Food City Dirt Race, it opened a world of opportunities.

Nearly 40 A-Mains were run March 16-20 when the track hosted the Bristol Dirt Nationals.

Martin Truex Jr. won the Camping World Truck Series Race on March 29 and Joey Logano was victorious in Cup competition later that same day.

Now it’s time for dirt professionals at the highest level to tackle the track.

All set up at the The Last Great Colosseum! Teams are rolling in and we are ready for a spectacular weekend at the @BMSupdates!

Tonight we will have practice LIVE on @dirtvision. Tomorrow we race with the @WoOLateModels and @DIRTcar_Racing UMP Modifieds.#DYNAMITE #ItsBristolBaby pic.twitter.com/iCVYaFU1aQ

— Ruben Mireles Jr (@Dynamite_Ruben) April 8, 2021

The anticipation for this event, as well as for the return of the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series April 22-24, promises to make this a marquee race everyone wants to win.

And, for that matter, it’s anyone’s race to win. In the first 10 races of the season, Kyle Strickler is the only driver with more than one victory. He won Night 2 and 3 of the DirtCar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.

Those wins propelled him into the points’ lead where he still stands, but he has not had a top-10 since leaving Florida. Strickler’s last four results ended 13th or worse.

Meanwhile Brandon Shephard enters the weekend with a win at Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C. and three consecutive top-fives. Compounding the issue is that nearly 30 different drivers have earned top-fives in the Outlaw Late Model Series, so Bristol is anyone’s to win.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR IN 2021 OUTLAW SPRINTS

And while the Outlaws Late Models have not visited the track, Bristol has hosted six Super Late races since 2000. Scott Bloomquist won two of those races.

“It was big, it’s a special place,” Bloomquist said at WorldofOutlaws.com. “Just going into [Bristol] is kind of breathtaking, there’s probably not a finer place you could race in the world.”

Bloomquist has two top-fives already this season in nine starts.

Chris Ferguson and Jonathan Davenport each won a Super Late Model race during the Bristol Dirt Nationals.

Fans can watch a special pre-race show Thursday night free on DIRTVision from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. (ET). It will also be free on Facebook Live and Youtube Live.

A subscription will be required to watch Friday, April 9 when the series runs a 40-lap feature paying $10,000 to win. Then, they will run another 40 laps on Saturday, April 10, with the winner collecting $25,000.

DETROIT – He helped spearhead bringing the town a Super Bowl 17 years ago, but Roger Penske believes the reimagined Chevrolet Detroit GP is his greatest gift to the Motor City.

“It’s bigger than the Super Bowl from an impact within the city,” Penske told NBC Sports. “Maybe not with the sponsors and TV, but for the city of Detroit, it’s bigger than the Super Bowl.

“We’ve got to give back individually and collectively, and I think we as a company in Michigan and in Detroit, it’s something we know how to do. It shows we’re committed. Someone needs to take that flag and run it down through town. And that’s what we’re trying to do as a company. We’re trying to give back to the city.”

After 30 years of being run on Belle Isle, the race course has been moved to a new nine-turn, 1.7-mile downtown layout that will be the centerpiece of an event weekend that is designed to promote a festival and community atmosphere.

There will be concerts in the adjacent Hart Plaza. Local businesses from Detroit’s seven districts have been invited to hawk their wares to new clientele. Boys and Girls Clubs from the city have designed murals that will line the track’s walls with images of diversity, inclusion and what Detroit means through the eyes of youth.

And in the biggest show of altruism, more than half the circuit will be open for free admission. The track is building 4-foot viewing platforms that can hold 150 people for watching the long Jefferson Avenue straightaway and other sections of the track.

We are live on pit lane this morning revving up for #DetroitGP with ⁦@CBSDetroit⁩! pic.twitter.com/FJScKXqsS0

— Detroit Grand Prix (@detroitgp) June 1, 2023

Detroit GP chairman Bud Denker, a longtime key lieutenant across Penske’s various companies, has overseen more than $20 million invested in infrastructure.

The race is essentially Penske’s love letter to the city where he made much of his fame as one of Detroit’s most famous automotive icons, both as a captain of industry with a global dealership network and as a racing magnate (who just won his record 19^th Indy 500 with Josef Newgarden breaking through for his first victory on the Brickyard oval).

During six decades in racing, Penske, 86, also has run many racetracks (most notably Indianapolis Motor Speedway but also speedways in Michigan, California and Pennsylvania), and much of that expertise has been applied in Detroit.

“And then the ability for us to reach out to our sponsor base, and then the business community, which Bud is tied in with the key executives in the city of Detroit, bringing them all together,” Penske said. “It makes a big difference.

“The Super Bowl is really about the people that fly in for the Super Bowl. It’s a big corporate event, and the tickets are expensive. And the TV is obviously the best in the world. What we’ve done is taken that same playbook but made it important to everyone in Detroit. Anyone that wants to can come to the race for free, can stand on a platform or they can buy a ticket and sit in the grandstands or be in a suite. It’s really multiple choice, but it is giving it to the city of Detroit. I think it’s important when you think of these big cities across the country today that are having a lot of these issues.”

Denker said the Detroit Grand Prix is hoping for “an amazingly attended event” but is unsure of crowd estimates with much of the track offering free viewing. The race easily could handle a crowd of at least 50,000 daily (which is what the Movement Music Festival draws in Hart Plaza) and probably tens of thousands more in a sprawling track footprint along the city’s riverwalk.

Penske is hoping for a larger crowd than Belle Isle, which was limited to about 30,000 fans daily because of off-site parking and restricted fan access at a track that was located in a public park.

The downtown course will have some unique features, including a “split” pit lane on an all-new concrete (part of $15 million spent on resurfaced roads, new barriers and catchfencing … as well as 252 manhole covers that were welded down).

A $5 million, 80,000-square-foot hospitality chalet will be located adjacent to the paddock and pit area. The two-story structure, which was imported from the 16^th hole of the Waste Management Open in Phoenix, will offer 70 chalets (up from 23 suites at Belle Isle last year). It was built by InProduction, the same company that installed the popular HyVee-branded grandstands and suites at Iowa Speedway last year.

Penske said the state, city, county and General Motors each owned parts of the track, and their cooperation was needed to move streetlights and in changing apexes of corners. Denker has spent the past 18 months meeting with city council members who represent Detroit’s seven districts, along with Mayor Mike Duggan. Penske said the local support could include an appearance by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Witmer.

Denker and Detroit GP president Michael Montri were inspired to move the Detroit course downtown after attending the inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We saw what an impact it made on that city in August of 2021 and we came back from there and said boy could it ever work to bring it downtown in Detroit again,” Denker said. “We’ve really involved the whole community of Detroit, and the idea of bringing our city together is what the mayor and city council and our governor are so excited about. The dream we have is now coming to fruition.

“When you see the infrastructure downtown and the bridges over the roads we’ve built and the graphics, and everything is centered around the Renaissance Center as your backdrop, it’s just amazing.”

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