Building on a Solid Foundation

(Jack Kessler photo)

By Ken de la Bastide

ANDERSON – Veteran campaigners in pavement sprint cars believe the 500 Sprint Car Tour is heading in the right direction. The 500 Sprint Car Tour presented by Auto Value Bumper to Bumper Part Stores is entering a second season with racing in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

Kody Swanson was crowned the inaugural champion in 2022 and was the winner of the first race at Plymouth Speedway. “I enjoyed the first year because it was great to have pavement sprint cars on an annual season schedule,” Swanson said. “A chance to go to some new tracks and it was a lot of fun”.

“It was really encouraging to be supported by not only new fans, but also the new teams that joined us,” he said. “It has the potential to be better and continue to grow. Seems like there are more teams gearing up to go on the road and run more races.”

Tyler Roahrig is coming off back to back victories in the Lucas Oil Little 500 presented by UAW and said the sprint car tour was “wildly successful”. Roahrig expects the car count to be higher in 2023 because there is a lot of interest in the tour. “It had a great car count, the racing was good and competitive, and we went to a lot of cool race tracks,” he said. “I think the fans really enjoyed the racing and seemed like everyone had fun and that was part of it.”

Bobby Santos III said the first year was more than successful, it was a great year for a start-up series. “The car count and competition was great and the quality of cars was great,” he said. “I only see it getting better.”

“The Little 500 is the premier event and to build around and create a series around it,” Santos said. “The second year I think the quality of the competitors is going to be better.”

Santos said the addition of Nashville and Toledo is exciting and the series will continue to go in the right direction and keep building on it. “I've raced at all the tracks and I'm excited about every one of them,” he said of the 2023 schedule. “I'm looking forward to Nashville because of the history, I like the bigger tracks.”

Billy Wease said the first year of the Tour was awesome. “We had some exciting races and everything was really competitive,” he said. “They've done an amazing job with the series, giving us cool tracks to go to and the car count seems to be getting bigger.”