BUSINESS OF RACING – CASEY SHUMAN

the business of DIRT

Photos: Paul Arch

By Ashley Zimmerman

Casey Shuman, back in his racing days, running a non-wing sprint car at the Ultimate Challenge in Iowa.

WORLD RACING GROUP EXPANDS

CASEY SHUMAN ON THE NEW SERIES AND LATE MODEL RULES

ONE MIGHT AS well label it a tradition that exciting off season racing news will be released during the three days of PRI and last year the tradition survived. Between the unification of the late model rules and the creation of a new midget racing series by World Racing Group, both sides of the dirt track racing community were buzzing. Be it speculation, opinion, surprise, or excitement, there was much to be said on all ends of the spectrum. Casey Shuman, director of the World of Outlaws Late Model Series uniquely found himself right in the midst of it all from the round table discussion leading to the unification of the late model rules to the midget racer turned man behind the Xtreme Outlaw Midget series. Never one to turn down knocking out two birds with one stone, Dirt Empire managed to squeeze a few moments of the highly sought after Shuman post PRI announcements to talk about the fresh ideas coming to life for the 2022 race season.

Dirt Empire: Let’s start with talking about the creation of the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Sprint Car Series, you were kind of the brain behind the project and getting this off the ground. What made you want to push for this to become a real deal?

CS: I mean, it’s my background; midgets, sprint cars, that’s everything I’ve done pretty much my entire life. It’s always something I’ve wanted to be a part of. My wife and I owned the WAR sprint car series for a few years, so there’s a lot of history and background as far as that type of racing goes. We’ve talked about it the last couple of years, and it finally was able to come about. Obviously, with DIRTvision onboard we’re able to bring a whole different type of racing to the subscribers so that was appealing as well. It was the right time to do it.

DE: Obviously, you won’t be going at this endeavor all on your own. Who will be assisting you?

CS: With the schedule being only 10 or 12 races, I don’t know that it’s going to warrant a full blown team. I plan to be at all of them, there might be one I don’t get to be at. But that one will be in conjunction with the World of Outlaws sprint cars, so Mike [Hess] will probably take the lead on that particular event. But, a lot of it is going to be my late model crew. There’s a few of them that have expressed an interest in doing it, as well as a few of the sprint car guys. I think currently we’re going to try and utilize a lot of the staff that we have now.

DE: Obviously the creation of another midget series brings about the discussion of how this potentially affects USAC. Do you believe it will have any impact on the series?

CS: I don’t know that I think that it affects them, if it does, I think it probably helps. We’re definitely going to try and stay away from weekends that they are racing on specifically. If we’re going to

do a midget race that weekend, then we’re going to make sure they’re not doing a midget race that weekend. We’re definitely not trying to compete directly with them, we’re just really trying to enhance and get more eyes on sprint cars, not divide anyone up. We just want to enhance things a little bit and pick up on what they’ve being doing. I really feel overall it’ll help, it can really only help, it’s only going to grow purses, grow exposure of non-wing racing and midgets, and I think that’s all positive.

DE: From the background of having been a driver, how would you have felt about a series like this back then?

CS: There has been some stuff like this before, when I first started; my dad had a deal called the Non-Wing World Championship. It was comprised of eight or ten races, a few in the Midwest and a few out west in California, it was a pretty cool deal because it brought together all of the best in USAC and SCRA. That’s kind of where the idea came from to begin with. There for a while, ASCS had a deal called the Sprint Bandits, which was another 10-12 race deal kind of throughout the Midwest. Those two types of deals kind of built the idea; they were both deals that I really liked being a part of. A lot of people can’t commit to do 50-55 races from coast to coast, but a fifteen race deal, it’s a little easier to commit and concentrate on those.

DE: Now that there’s been some time for people to talk it over and ask questions, what do you anticipate car count to look like?

CS: Overall, especially for the first week in Volusia, there’s a lot of interest, it seems like a lot of teams are pretty excited about it. I would be happy if we were right around the 30 car mark for most of the races. I think that would be successful if we were right around 30.

DE: Switching gears, let’s talk about another major moment you were involved in during PRI, the unification of the late model rules. What do you feel like is the most impactful rule change?

CS: We truly only changed one major rule, with the body skew. That’s something there wasn’t really a rule about and we all came together on it. The other stuff was more just unifying that we were checking the same thing every night across the board, whether you run with us, Lucas Oil, or Southern All Stars, or whatever. That was a big deal. There are so many things to check and look at as far as tech goes, there may be certain things we focus on as the World of Outlaws, but there might be something entirely different that the Lucas Oil or somebody else would focus on. Just getting together and saying, these are the main eight or nine things we need to look at, and this is how we’re going to measure and where we’re going to measure it, is the biggest the thing. I don’t think that’s a major game changer, but just the fact that we’re all together and trying thing, everyone knows what to expect now. It’s not like you will go to one race and they check this, and they say this is illegal but they check it a different way, and if you go to another race they say it’s legal there. I feel like we’ve all talked about this at one time, but never really been in one spot together. It was really an impromptu thing, it wasn’t planned. There were probably 75% of us all kind of standing around in a circle at our booth and started talking about it. We just thought; well let’s call other people around here. It was cool how it turned out. It just happened, but I think it needed to. It was something we’ve all been trying to talk about and get a goal toward. Overall it’s a really positive thing.

DE: With things being so straight across the board now, do you think

There has been a lot of talk about unifying tire rules in the late model world in the future but the earliest that will occur will be 2023.

Photo: Josh James

this alleviates some costs or stress of money when trying to run multiple series?

CS: I think so. For some teams, not saying everyone, but there are certain teams that will build a specific car to run with the Outlaws, or Lucas specially, or for just their local show type deals where there might not be a lot of tech at all. You could see the writing on the wall where it was going to end up where guys would build stuff to race certain tracks. You know, one of the things we came together on was the droop rule. It’s measuring deck height, a different way to measure deck height, and now we’re all on the same page there. There were guys building cars specifically for drop rule races, and then a car for other stuff. I really think it’s just going to get everyone a lot closer, in a small box, and that’s gotta help the competition.

DE: Aside from the tire rule that goes into effect in 2023, could we expect to see any other changes come or the unification to ever be revised or adjusted?

CS: Talking with some of the other officials here in the last couple of days, I think there may be a few tweaks to some of the stuff we’ve talked about. But I think it’s a good start to the path of where we need to be. I would imagine at some point here in the middle of the year we’ll probably do some tweaks and announce them with enough time for the guys to get ‘em right for 2023. It’s a good start; I just see some small tweaks from here.

DE: Personally, how overdue do you think this was?

CS: I mean, me still being somewhat new to the late models, this will be my fourth year, and I mean, you could see it was progressively getting worse as far as how far teams were willing to push the gray area of some of the stuff that we just didn’t have rules on. You know for instance, that body skew, there wasn’t really a rule about it you, you could see from the first year I started guys were starting to move the cars a little and it seemed like every year they would just get a little further and a little further. It was almost like they were trying to wait and see, are they going to look at this? It got toward the end of this year that it got pretty extreme as far as how far guys were going with it. It’s something that we definitely needed to get pulled back in; we needed to get everyone back a little closer to being on the same page. I don’t blame them, especially when there isn’t a rule against it. I think a lot of these guys forget that I’ve raced. If we catch you doing something, I’m not going to be mad at you, I understand, but you have to put it back because that is the rule. They are going to go as far as we let them, and some of the discussions we had were about setting a rule and giving a tolerance of maybe an inch. There’s no reason to give them the tolerance, they’re going to go all the way out, and probably a little more. I know it’ll upset a few guys; you’re never going to make anyone happy. I think the important part is that all of these series got together and unified in saying this is what we’re going to do.

Photo: Paul Arch As a long-time racer, WAR Series owner and a son of National Sprint Car Hall of Fame Ron Shuman, who helmed the SCRA Sprint Car Series, Casey is wellpositioned to see all sides of issues affecting World of Outlaws events.

DE: One last question in regards to the tire program that will be in place in 2023. How do you think this will impact costs or complaints of having to keep so many different types tires on hand? With the sprint car world being much different than the late models when it comes to the tire game, do you think being somewhat of an outsider you were more easily able to identify that this needed to be changed?

CS: To a point, I think guys are going to use x amount of tires per night regardless, but I do think, the teams right now that have 70 or 80 wheels at their disposal, who a lot of times will run a weekend, go back home, switch out wheels and tires, and go to a different place because it’s a completely different tire rule, I think it will definitely save them some money. But when it comes down to

it, a top team is going to put on as many tires a night as we allow them. I think it is just going to make everyone’s job much easier, not only between the teams, but the racetrack, and the series. When I first started, and they showed me the list of tire rules for a year, I didn’t understand what they were doing. Sprint cars, you could go run the same tire basically coast to coast, right? If you have a nonwing, or wing, it’s all the same. So to hear you have to have certain tires for certain dirt or certain areas, I thought was kind of silly. It will definitely simplify a lot for everyone, they made things much more complex and difficult, the tire rules were the number one thing I thought we had to get rid of. I’ve been kind of pushing for this since I started. I think everyone just assumed this is how it’s been, and this is how we do things. Coming from the sprint car side, it just doesn’t need to be this hard; you don’t have to make it this difficult. I think once I got everyone to understand that it doesn’t have to be this way, and I thought we could change it if we really try, it’s taken three years, but I think we’re finally where everyone will be on board, and Hoosiers on board to do it, too.

Photo: Paul Arch