Roger Diez
Happy New Year, race fans. Good news, the 2024 racing season opens next week with the Chili Bowl Nationals. Practice and qualifying starts on Monday with the final A main on Saturday. There are already 320 confirmed entries, with more expected. Interestingly, only three former champions have registered so far — 2022 champion Tanner Thorson, 2023 champ Logan Seavey and five-time champion Sammy Swindell. No word on NASCAR stars and former winners Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell. Thorson calls Minden home and cut his racing teeth locally in Outlaw karts. His qualifying races will be on Thursday, Jan. 11. Check out his website at tannerthorson.com or follow him on Twitter/X. All the action will air on FloRacing, which requires a paid subscription. For more information and to see the entire entry list, check out chilibowl.com.
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After the annual Midget racing extravaganza, it’s only a week until we can see an entirely different type of racing. The Roar Before the Rolex 24 at Daytona comes along Jan. 19-20. This event consists of practice and qualifying for the twice-around-the-clock classic endurance race and will air on Peacock. It will also be streamed on IMSA TV at imsa.com/tvlive.
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In a recent interview, Geoff Bodine weighed in on NASCAR’s Gen 7 car, bemoaning the fact that the cars were too equal, and teams couldn’t “tweak” them anymore. Given NASCAR’s origins in moonshine running and the rampant cheating that characterized the sport for many years, I guess I can see where an old school guy like Bodine comes from. But my take on it is that we are seeing better, closer racing than ever before. Instead of half a dozen drivers who can win on a given Sunday, we now have nearly half the field with a realistic chance of victory. In my mind, that’s an improvement on the old days when drivers would sometimes lap the field several times. Spec cars put the emphasis on driver and team performance as we see in IndyCar and now NASCAR. I’m not saying that Formula 1 needs to implement a spec car, but if they don’t somehow corral the Red Bull in their China shop, fans are going to lose interest.
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Finally, the last checkered flag has flown for a couple of racing legends, Gil de Ferran and Don Schumacher. De Ferran competed for Roger Penske in both the CART series and the Indy Racing League, winning 13 races in all, including the 2003 Indy 500. More recently he was a consultant and driver coach for Arrow McLaren. He suffered a heart attack while competing in a club race at the Concours Club in Opa-locka, Fla., with his son Luke. He was 56.
Don Schumacher was a Funny Car driver back in the 60s and 70s who became one of the giants of the sport. Don Schumacher Racing scored 19 championships and 367 “Wally” trophies in NHRA racing, with Don scoring five of them as a driver. He was responsible for the Funny Car roof-mounted escape hatch and the Top Fuel enclosed canopy, among other innovations. More than 25 NHRA racers drove for him and he was the only team owner to score wins in all four of NHRA’s professional categories. He was inducted into the NHRA Hall of Fame, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, as well as winning NHRA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022. Schumacher died at 79 from complications of lung cancer.