PINELLAS PARK, Fla. – Showtime Speedway promoter Robert Yoho has announced that the Friday night preliminary program for the Feb. 25-26 third annual Dave Steele World Non Wing Sprint Car Championship 125 will offer a series of 20-lap Dash for Cash events that will pay $1,000-to-win.
The past two years the Friday night preliminary has featured a 25-lap event that paid $1,500 to the winner. This year’s format will see a series of 20-lap events with six cars in each race. Each event will pay $1,000-to-win. After qualifying, the field will be split into as many races that can be held with six cars in each race. If there 24 cars for example, then there would be four events with a total of $4,000 paid out in first place prize money. The rest of the purse for positions two through six has not been finalized.
Yoho is altering the Friday night format to give fans more racing and to give teams a chance to earn more prize money. The following night teams will battle it out 125 laps for the first place $5,000 prize money.
Although the race is still more than five weeks away, a handful of early entries have been announced. Kody Swanson currently headlines a list of northern drivers that includes Bobby Santos III, Kyle O’Gara, and Kyle Robbins. Swanson has won the past two events and will be back behind the wheel of the Doran Enterprises No. 77. Santos and O’Gara have each won Friday night preliminary events the past two years. The event annually draws drivers from Florida, the Midwest and the Gulf Coast.
This year’s event will be run the same weekend as the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The Feb. 27 Grand Prix is the season opening event for the NTT IndyCar Series. Both tracks are 10 miles apart. It will give fans the opportunity to see two different open wheel events on the same weekend. It will also be the final events of the 2022 Florida Speedweeks.
The final race of the 2021 Showtime Speedway non-wing sprint car series was postponed late in the 2021 season and Yoho vowed to reschedule it early in 2022. That event has now been rescheduled for Feb. 19, one week before the third annual Dave Steele World Non Wing Sprint Car Championship 125. It will be a 25-lap non-winged sprint car event that will pay $1,500-to-win. It will now give teams an extra race in preparation for the following weekends third annual Dave Steele World Non Wing Sprint Car Championship 125 weekend.
Currently, L.J. Grimm has a slight point lead over 12-year-old Colton Bettis for the series championship. It is unclear if Grimm will be able to challenge for the championship as he may have to compete in a Southern Sprint Car Shootout Series event the same night.