INDIANAPOLIS — Open Wheel Showdown promoter Davey Hamilton Jr. announced more details regarding the Dec. 1-2 open-wheel racing extravaganza scheduled for the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Headlined by a $50,000-to win winged sprint car event on the three-eighths-mile track, the event will also include national pavement midgets and West Coast-style supermodifieds.
Hamilton and SPEED SPORT President Ralph Sheheen also tipped that the event will be broadcast by SPEED SPORT and will air on the SPEED SPORT 1 network and on SPEEDSPORT.tv. Additional details will be forthcoming.
Hamilton said his aim is to bring the open-wheel racing community together in much the way the Copper Classic once did at Phoenix Raceway.
“There are a couple of crown jewels in our sport, like the Little 500, but there is nothing that brings all the open-wheel guys together to compete at the same event,” Hamilton said. “For us to bring everybody together, it’s going to be a big event. To get everybody to want to come to this event, we want to blow everyone’s minds just from the money standpoint, and it’s Vegas.
“You want to make sure there is big money on the line.”
Hamilton said there will be a practice day on Nov. 30, with practice, qualifying and heat races the following day. All features will be run on Saturday, Dec. 2. Hamilton said a dash will help set the feature field.
“We are going to start the heat races by qualifying, so if you qualify first, you’ll be on the pole for the first heat race and if you qualify second you’ll be on the pole for the second heat race and so on and so forth,” Hamilton said. “The top two in each heat race will go into a pole dash. Then we’ll do a pill draw that will determine the starting positions for the pole dash.
“The pole dash will be 10 laps and that will set the first five rows of the feature.”
The remainder of the field will be set by C and B mains.
Regarding the main event, Hamilton said, “The A-main will be unique for pavement racing. It will be a 100-lap race, with an open red on lap 50. You can change the right rear tire and do anything else to the car that you want. We are doing something else that is unique, we are going to do double-file restarts and choose the lane the driver wants to be in.”
Racers can register by visiting OpenWheelShowdown.com and fans can purchase tickets at www.lasvegasmotorspeedway.com and go through their website.
“This is a big event. It will be a whole weeklong of things going on.” Hamilton said. “We are going to throw a pit party on Dec. 1 and have a concert and a barbecue for fans and racers to come together and have a good time.
“We have a lot of announcements to come.”