Stewart's Eldora Event a "Prelude" To More Dirt-Track Exhibitions?

    It’s a shame that more races like Tony Stewart’s annual Prelude to the Dream at Eldora Speedway in Ohio, where many prominent NASCAR drivers return to their dirt-track roots, don’t take place over the course of the year. It’s true that the grueling 36-race Sprint Cup schedule doesn’t allow for more of these events to occur, and it’s also true that track promoters and owners would most likely reject giving up a highly profitable race date to free up weekends for these races to be run in, but the connection between drivers and fans at small dirt tracks like Eldora is perhaps the closest in all forms of motorsports worldwide - and that fact alone ought to encourage NASCAR stars to push for more dirt track events in the future.

    Stewart’s put on four of these events now - one-day-only engagements with 25 or so of the top drivers in the United States competing for supremacy in cars they haven’t raced in years on a surface they never experience in NASCAR’s top series. The dirt late models demand a completely different driving style than a stock car on a super speedway. In Sprint Cup, getting sideways is a bad thing; at Eldora, getting sideways is mandatory. Some drivers deal with the change in medium better than others, especially Stewart, who won the feature race on Wednesday night.

    The event’s popularity has grown to the point where the 25-car event now has a waiting list of drivers. With few drivers giving up their spots in the race - big names such as Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, and Ryan Newman returned after last year’s event - and the event getting more competitive every year (Newman and Denny Hamlin were reported to have tested dirt cars before the race, in order to try to gain an edge), Lowe’s Motor Speedway executives may find they have to worry about the supremacy of their annual Sprint Cup all-star race being challenged.

    The true beauty of Stewart’s event at Eldora is that it capitalizes on the background of many Sprint Cup drivers in order to create a fresh and new event that also returns many drivers to their roots. The prolific dirt track careers of Kenny Wallace and Ken Schrader are well-known around the NASCAR garage, but many drivers who raced in both this year’s All-Star Challenge in Charlotte and Wednesday’s Prelude can boast USAC or sprint car experience: among them, Gordon, Newman, and Kasey Kahne. Also, Clint Bowyer, who owned cars driven by himself and defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson in the Prelude, grew up racing on dirt tracks in Kansas.

    Of course, it helps that all the proceeds from the annual event went to a second branch of the Victory Junction Gang Camp this year. The charity, a camp established for children with life-threatening and chronic illnesses in the memory of the late Adam Petty, already has a facility in Randleman, NC, and will use the $1 million raised from ticket sales and pay-per-view orders on HBO to break ground on a new facility in Kansas City. The camp, a cause dear to many NASCAR drivers’ hearts, is run by Petty’s parents, Kyle and Pattie, two of the most respected people in the garage area. Certainly the camp is one of the worthiest causes any NASCAR driver (much less all of them) supports.

    The question, then, is why more of these events can’t be worked into the year, if they are so enjoyable for fans and drivers alike. Certainly drivers would get behind them, and find charities to support with these exhibitions: in recent years, Elliott Sadler and Jamie McMurray have both run schemes promoting autism awareness, longtime sponsor M&M’s runs a paint scheme supporting the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation every October, and NASCAR itself promotes an annual charity fundraiser in the form of NASCAR Day. There is absolutely no reason why the sanctioning body can’t tweak the schedule in such a way that drivers can afford to compete in events for the benefit of such worthy causes.

    Even if scheduling more dirt-track events takes the filling of Monday and Tuesday nights, or the few off-weekends Sprint Cup drivers currently have, many drivers would certainly be behind an extra two or three events per year in the late models. If an event generated even half the revenue of Tony Stewart’s Prelude to the Dream for some charity, the night would be well worth it for all involved.