Midget Racing: Motorcross On 4 Wheels

"31ModelA" (car) 12/18/2015 at 11:30 • Filed to: None

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Midget Racing cars are 400hp grocery carts with more tires than they apparently need. That’s because these light weight, overpowered, under appreciated beasts are almost always drifting on 3 wheels, or drag racing on 2 enormous rear tires at upwards of 100mph into a hairpin dirt cushion.

This is Midget Racing. And Chili Bowl is Midget Racing’s Daytona 500.

Are these tires redundant? If they weren’t there would we still call this a wheelie?

[ Spoiler Alert: Darth Vader torches The Enterprise! Wait, that’s not right. No. It’s the video at the bottom. That’s what you want to see. So go there first, or you could read your way there. But probably not. ]

While it didn’t make Jalopnik’s Top 10 American Races, or whatever , the Chili Bowl Nationals ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ) represent the pinnacle of midget racing and is one of the most heart-pounding, jaw dropping series of races one will ever consume in a weekend.

Before we get into the Chili Bowl and midgets in general, here’s a driver !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! of explaining his car. It’s Kyle Larson at Perris Auto Speedway (starting at 1:18) calmly explaining, in next to no detail whatsoever, what a midget car actually is:

That’s right: 1,100lbs, 400hp (give or take), with a direct drive going 100+ mph around a dirt oval, mostly sideways, and rarely on all four tires. Now shorten that oval to 1/4mi, add 24 of the best midget drivers in the world, and then put it all inside and close the doors. That’s the Chili Bowl Nationals!

Even as compelling as that sounds to any fan of racing, the Chili Bowl, and midget racing in general, still falls short of being mainstream. And that’s perplexing considering what it’s got going for it: massive wheelies, insane speeds, heaps of dirt, crazy power-to-weight, tons and tons of contact, and always a crowd-pleasing flip or two.

Add in a flat brim cap and it’s basically four-wheeled Supercross. So why, then, do the kids want dirt bikes for Christmas and not midget cars!?

Why Can’t We Have Nice Things!?

Another way to ask that is why does midget racing have it’s pinnacle in an event named for a can of shelf-stable bunker beef, while Supercross has such things as flame throwing starting grids and half-naked Monster girls showing off a plexiglass case packed tightly with crispy $100 bills? Two words: Production. Value.

While Supercross production values looks like something out of the fever dreams of a deranged adolescent millionaire...

...midget racing’s media quality tends to be on par with a recording of your 8th grade recital. The videos are shaky and out of focus, and there’s always that one single camera just going around and around in a vomitous circle.

[C:\Kinja>play_this_gif.cmd] Did that work? Aww, hell. Just click on the link and watch the gif. And then come back. Or someone tell me how to embed this damn thing

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

What’s lost in boring production is what is still some of the most amazing racing you might ever see. Midget racing lacks absolutely nothing when it comes to putting on one hell of a show. What’s lacking is in the delivery.

So there’s two ways to go about it. Either you listen to me tell you how awesome it is and then you go check it out and be amazed. Or, the delivery has to improve to thrill the viewer the way that Supercross does. If it ever got to that level, then every kid would want a midget car for Christmas and a dirt track for their birthday.

If this kid isn’t named Jaxon, Maxon, Braxtyn, or just Xxxxxx, then I’ll eat my own head. Update: my head was delicious, Blake, thank you very much!

While bikini models with $1,000,000 bills and Braxtyn’s full-time racing career might still be a ways off, a good start to hook any potential fans would be a high quality heart pounding video that shows off just how unreal midget racing can be. You know what I mean - the kind of videos with the soaring music and the dramatic slow motion shots. The ones that makes you want to run out and buy Chili Bowl tickets for a chance to breathe in all the noxious fumes of an indoor auto racing event!

Well, as it turns out, !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! thinks so too. And because they love us and want us to be happy (and because they want you to see just how incredibly badass this race really is) they’ve given us exactly that. While it’s a recap of 2015, the good news is 2016 is right around the corner!

So, say “thank you !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ” and tell your kids sorry that you spent all the Christmas money on Chili Bowl tickets, and then watch this 2015 recap. And don’t worry about the kids - Chili Bowl 2016 will be totally worth it.

tromoly > 31ModelA 12/18/2015 at 12:37

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Hang on, wasn’t this exact article posted yesterday, or am I having a really bad case of Deja Vu?

Nomatter how you slice it that video is awesome.

31ModelA > tromoly 12/18/2015 at 12:38

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A really good case of deja vu?

tromoly > 31ModelA 12/18/2015 at 12:51

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I swear this was posted yesterday, that picture of the kid with the non-slick left front named Blake, the video of Larson, everything is the same.

horizonsofkhaos > 31ModelA 12/18/2015 at 12:52

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Not to knock midget racing in anyway, because it is its own breed of awesome, but we’ve already got motocross on 4-wheels. It’s called short course off-road racing.

31ModelA > horizonsofkhaos 12/18/2015 at 12:57

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I considered that. To me it still feels too much like “racing entertainment” than it does real racing. Which I realize now invalidates the whole premise since that’s exactly what motorcross/supercross is. But still.

31ModelA > tromoly 12/18/2015 at 12:58

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It was. I fixed some errors and republished on account of the lanesplitter article about the return of motorcross.

tromoly > 31ModelA 12/18/2015 at 13:42

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I’m not getting what you mean by “racing entertainment” and it not being “real” racing. Both Supercross and Motocross championships are governed by the AMA, and they handle all on-track action. Just because Feld on the Supercross side and whoever Lucas has do the Motocross side decides to put production value into the intros, interviews, and between racing rounds does not detract from the racing, it is 100% legit.

Same goes for Short Course. The people on both the TORC and LOORS sides put production values into the intros / interviews / etc., and the racing itself is left to USAC on the TORC side and whoever Lucas has on their side (can’t remember who they have, sorry).

Really, it depends on the downtime of each sport. Supercross has more downtime between heats than NHRA so requires a different production, same as NASCAR has a more front-heavy program than the Chili Bowl because NASCAR races for a couple hours straight so once action starts there isn’t downtime. It’s all about keeping the fans engaged for the brief time until the next on-track action begins, nothing sucks more than sitting in silence at a racing event.

31ModelA > tromoly 12/18/2015 at 17:31

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Oh, I’m definitely not saying that the racing is not legit or that the skill level is somehow lacking. And I am certainly not knocking the production value. I think the production value is what stands between supercross and midget racing. Where both can be done indoors in multipurpose arenas and on a budget, only Supercross/Motocross spends the cash (and has the cash) to actually do it and put on a bonkers show.

For me, it ultimately just comes down to taste. But it’s still not technically fair say one kind of racing is better than another, particularly between different“species”.

With midget racing you get 24 cars (give or take) and an oval, and that’s it. The thrills come solely from from what happens as a result of racing. You’ve got massive slide jobs, huge wheelies, drivers coming all the way from the back to win. It may also be a huge wreck or two or the on-track rivalries. Whatever the case, the basic-ness of it is what suits my taste.

I believe that if USAC or Lucas Oil (or whoever) could somehow organize and promote the way that Monster (or whoever) does for Supercross/Motorcross, that midget racing could be just as big.