SRX came to bat on Saturday night (June 25) at South Boston Speedway. The racing series, in just its second season, needed at least a line drive after an opening at Five Flags Speedway last week that failed to attract a million TV viewers on primetime network television.
We don’t have those week two ratings yet. But after a wild weekend of on-track competition, SRX responded with something even better: an out-of-the-park home run.
Before reading, take note that I myself have purposefully not seen last night’s CBS broadcast outside of what was said during the Tony Stewart interview between the heats and the feature race. That’s because I was busy covering the event from the press box and infield of this .4-mile gem of a track in southeastern Virginia.
Honestly, if you have the chance to go to an SRX race, take it. That was absolutely the most fun I’ve ever had at a racetrack.
The first thing that comes to mind, particularly as a media member, is access. The ability I had to go virtually anywhere, at any time, was ridiculous compared to any other series. Getting very good video content with drivers and really everybody involved was an absolute breeze.
There’s always this weird misconception people have about SRX that it’s supposed to be this super serious race series. I think that’s misguided. For me, it’s that these are drivers from your childhood going up against each other, with a local driver and a few surprises thrown in, in a fun little exhibition for six weeks. It’s a love letter to short track racing, one that mixes in up-and-coming drivers like Hailie Deegan or Ernie Francis Jr. with a legend like Ken Schrader.
Each week, those young drivers have a shot to make a name for themselves. And if they don’t? The fun turns to finding excuse after excuse to dunk on Paul Tracy for six straight weeks.
OK, Tracy hasn’t even been that bad this year. But it really seemed like the obvious ending to Heat 2 Saturday night – Ryan Newman dumping Tracy for the lead while Tracy’s eternal enemy Helio Castroneves slipped under both to make the decisive lead change – was too much for Tracy to take. Before being taken out relatively early in the main event, Tracy looked like he was backing up quite a bit every green flag run to try and be deliberately lapped so that he could wreck somebody.
If Tracy was trying to crash Castroneves, he’s only going to get one more shot at Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway in a couple of weeks. With…
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