SRX at the Slinger Speedway: First impressions from drivers

SLINGER – Helio Castroneves was asked what he had about the Slinger Speedway, the super-fast quarter mile that he had just completed his first laps and that he would soon be driving.

“What?!” he has answered.

He heard the question. He got it.

“What?!?!” Repeated the four-time Indianapolis 500 winner.

“You can find out what the rest of the ‘what’ is.”

Ah. The.

Welcome to Round 5 of the inaugural season of the Superstar Racing Experience, which saw a highly unlikely combination of drivers unleashed on the tricky quarter mile in front of sold-out stands and well over a million people live on CBS.

“Unbelievable,” said Castroneves. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It looks bigger on YouTube. It’s small. You keep turning away, and man, banking makes it faster around the corner. “

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Paul Tracy described the slinger as a hula hoop.

Seen from the raised pits, that’s not a bad description. Tracy had won the Milwaukee Mile and 4-Mile Road America, Wisconsin’s largest oval and largest street course. But that … it’s more corner than straight.

“When you stand here, it doesn’t look that fast, but when you sit in the car, there is a lot going on,” said Tracy, who was advised by five-time track master Steve Apel. “Finding the right line, getting the right apex, is the trick here. He told me exactly where to go and I collected a few tenths (seconds). “

SRX, founded by Champion Crew Chief Ray Evernham, NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Tony Stewart and several partners, is a starting gun for the old International Race of Champions series, which ran from 1974 to 2006 and featured drivers of different origins in identical cars. Nobody is kidding anyone; It’s racing entertainment made for television, not racing in its purest form. The drivers are serious about winning, but Evernham isn’t afraid to throw a warning flag to clump the field together. The emphasis is on having fun, and that includes having fun people with great personalities.

To this end, Willy T. Ribbs wore a pair of boxing gloves to the drivers briefing and put them around Evernham’s neck.

“It’s going to race in a phone booth,” said Ribbs, a preeminent sports car who became the first black driver to qualify for Indy. “It’s fun to drive around. That’s it. It’s short and it has a high bank and is very aggressive. It will be our most aggressive race of the year. “

Of the 12 riders involved, only two had ridden for Slinger, two-time Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip years ago and Luke Fenhaus, the 17-year-old aspiring senior at Wausau East High School who earned a place in the national team by winning the Slinger Tuesday.

Twenty laps – half in the series test cars and the other in the ones they drove on Saturday night – was all the drivers had.

What did you learn?

“Not enough,” said Ribbs dryly. “With the exception of the young 17-year-old, he knows his way around here, everyone else is still learning. … We’re getting better, but in a place like this you have to race a couple of times to understand what to do. “

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Another on the long list of never-imagined-I-see-that interactions was third-generation Indy car racer Marco Andretti, who gave Fenhaus a congratulatory handshake and undoubtedly searched his brain.

“It’s busy, but man it’s fun,” said Andretti. “You have to look so far to the left because that’s where you’ll come out in the end. The perspective is different, the feeling is different.

“Closest would be Richmond (three-quarters of a mile that IndyCar had driven. But I’ve never been into anything like this.”

Greg Biffle, a champion in today’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series and Xfinity Series, called upon former Roush Fenway Racing teammate Matt Kenseth for advice as he drove to the track. Kenseth, the 2003 NASCAR champion from Cambridge, has won the Slinger Nationals eight times.

Biffle, who hails from Vancouver, Washington, came up with the Wenatchee Valley Super-Oval in his home state as a comparison, not that it meant much to everyone on Saturday.

“It’s so much fun coming back to those little – no disrespect – little holes in the wall that the guys race on Friday and Saturday nights,” said Biffle. “There is nothing better.

“These places are iconic. You are really, really cool. This circuit has so much character. Come to these races and be able to race on them. “

SRX has highlighted popular short haul routes across the country, from Stafford Speedway in Connecticut for the prelude to the Dirt at Eldora Raceway in Ohio and Knoxville Raceway in Iowa to Lucas Oil Raceway outside of Indianapolis, now Slinger and then up to next week to the finals at the Nashville Fairgrounds.

It’s undetermined how many of these drivers or circuits will return next season, but SRX has a multi-year commitment from CBS Television.

For drivers like Castroneves, the series was an opportunity to find completely new challenges in racing. At the ages of 46 and 23 in racing in the US, he doesn’t see many of them anymore.

“I think the secret of the series is the little tracks,” said Castroneves. “You give credit to the place. This is the root of American racing. I’m learning the roots. “