Topsy-Turvy World of Nebraska Sprint Cars

According to Brad Brown's excellent site www.ibracn.com, Speedway Motors of Lincoln is pulling all of their sponsorships from racing. This will make an impact on a local level with Lincoln driver and defending Knoxville 410 champion Billy Alley losing sponsorship. In addition to Alley, Nebraska drivers Kyle Berck who runs late models and Kevin Larkins an IMCA modified driver are also losing their funding from Speedway. World of Outlaw sprint drivers Danny Lasoski and Jason Martin are out as well. In addition to those drivers defending USAC National Midget Champion Jerry Coons Jr. and the Wilke-Pak team.

I am sure there's more to the story than we know at this point, but this raises a lot of questions. There are many ways to take this news. Is it because Speedway is aiming higher with their sponsorships and needs all their resources for that? Does sponsoring even help Speedway sell their products? Are there financial considerations involved? Look at Ford dropping out of CART because of 2006 financial losses as an example. It's entirely all speculation at this point. I hope we find out more on this story. Make sure to check out Brad's site for further updates on this. In addition Jason Orth's www.heartlandracenews.com is also a great location for information.

Speaking of Billy Alley, www.ibracn.com is also reporting that Alley will drive at Nebraska's I-80 Speedway in the Nascar sanctioned late model division on Sunday nights. Alley will drive for Nebraska late model legend Ed Kosiski. Alley will also drive at Knoxville Raceway Saturday nights in the VerMeer #55 sprint car. Alley is the second Nebraska based sprint driver to include late models in 2007. It was announced earlier this month that Chad Humston will drive a late model weekly at Junction Motor Speedway. He'll run some ASCS sprints as well.

Is this going to become a trend? With two of Nebraska's top young talents including late model rides, should we in the sprint car circle take note? It seems that there is more places that run late models, and the pay for winning those races is fairly lucrative. Obviously this is an open wheel blog so I'm partial to sprinters. For Humston it's going to be an easier deal to run the LM financially and a lot closer to his home. Does this LM deal with Alley have anything to do with the Speedway Motors situation? Selfishly I hope that we don't continue to lose great drivers to the ranks of fenders. It's bad enough with Nascar, I hope that doesn't trickle down to late models as well.

Whew! That's a lot of news for a single day. I have to admit the Speedway Motors news bums me out. It's tough seeing a company long associated with sprint car racing pull the plug on their sponsorships. We certainly live and race in interesting times.