Today's Short Track World with Matt Weaver

Matt Weaver of Motorsport.com and Short Track Scene joins the podcast and gives his view of what's ahead in the 2026 season.

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Watch the video version on Youtube: @MidwestRacingCentral

Midwest Racing Central Today is hosted by Pete Pistone and produced by Mia Pistone

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hi everybody, Pete Pistoni here from Midwest Racing Central today. I'm looking forward to our next conversation in the guy who is on top of it in the NASCAR world, also on the short track side as well. He's with motorsport.com, shorttracksteam.com, Matt Weaver with us here on Midwest Racing Central today. How are you doing, Matt? Good. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. I mean, we launched just a few weeks ago and we're having a lot of fun, but I really wanted to have you on, and I appreciate you getting getting your busy schedule together for us uh today. I I want to start sort of big picture with you. Um, kind of like me, we cover the NASCAR world, but we both have the affinity for the short track world, obviously. Let's go to the short track side. How did you sort of get that connectivity to the world of short track racing in your life, Matt?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Well, so my dad's a dirt track racer, and my grandpa before him was a dirt track racer. Uh, to this day, he still has a uh, I guess we'll call it a pure stock, is the division that they run there on the Gulf Coast. And uh a lot of my weekends were not at the dirt track with him, were either spent at the dirt track with my racing, or we would go down to Mobile International Speedway, which has had a ton of ARCA races. Uh Five Flag Speedway, which is where my love of the snowball derby comes from. And so, really, every weekend for me as a kid was spent in grassroots racing in some shape or form. And uh my entire life I wanted to work in racing, whether it was try to become a race car driver, realize very quickly that's expensive, or maybe I go to school and could find some other way to contribute to racing and uh found myself somehow in NASCAR and short track racing.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

That's great. Uh all right. So on the NASCAR side, as I said, you cover things through motorsport.com, but you also have the website Short Track Scene. When we created this, I've told you this off the air, I'll tell you on the air, we sort of emulated what you do. We're trying to do that here in the Midwest because it's sort of a labor of love, I guess, for me here. Um when you look bigger picture, let's just look big picture. What are you trying to accomplish for our listeners when they visit your website, Short Track Scene now?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Well, you know, it's kind of twofold. I mean, certainly I think that this is a a discipline, a series of sub-disciplines uh that warrant coverage and and warrant coverage with the same sort of uh devotion and and affinity that I have for what I do on Sundays. And I I want to give them uh that sort of legitimacy. I don't I don't know if I accomplish that, but that's certainly the goal. But I will tell you that it's kind of a um a self-serving thing too, in the sense that you know, I've I've been I've been covering short track racing alongside what back in the day was my pursuit of NASCAR kind of simultaneously. And so, you know, to kind of give you the reader's digest version, I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and what happened was I drew like a six to eight hour circle around my childhood home. And if there was a race of some national renown within that circle, I would go. And so what ended up happening was I covered NASCAR, I covered IndyCar, I covered short track racing, and I really discovered that I loved doing the NASCAR and I loved doing the short track racing. But as a result of how I did that early on in my career, I got to meet very young kid race car drivers by the name of you know Chase Elliott and Eric Jones, uh, Christopher Bell all kind of came through my my purview as I was trying to get where they were trying to get to. And and what I learned was is if I could build these relationships before anyone else really wanted to talk to them, it benefited me on Sunday too. And by the way, not just the race car drivers. It's remarkable the number of engineers and crew chiefs who now work on Sunday, um, who I created relationships with when they were working at short tracks on Saturday. Austin Polak, the uh Legacy Motor Club car chief, comes to mind. He was always the the car chief and crew chief for John Hunter back when they were running late models for Front Row Joe. And so to this day, even though I've quote unquote made it on Sundays, uh, there are still relationship reasons for me to continue to do short track scene in a way that benefits me on Sunday, even if I've already, you know, again, quote unquote, made it on Sunday.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

So I know this is a tough question because it's sort of uh broad base, but when you maybe take the 50,000-foot view, what would you tell our listeners, our viewers about how you feel the state of short track racing? Is there one blanket statement you can make about it, Matt?

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Oh gosh, it is tough, right? Like it's it's tough because it's more accessible than ever before. And so I think there's more of an interest. There's more of a casual interest. There's more people who talk about it in the mainstream than ever before. You see that it's more commonplace to be referenced in our press conferences over the weekend because someone like a Josh Barry or Dell Jr. will reference on their shows or their media sessions. I was watching the Cars Tour race, I was watching the High Limit Race, I was watching World of Outlaws, I was watching ASA. More people are aware that it exists. Um, but I still think despite that, obviously um purses are not where I think they should be relative to other forms of grassroots style uh racing. And I also think that sometimes pavement racing has a fun two fundamental flaws, to be honest with you. One is that they are perceived as NASCAR's minor league, and it's going to be so hard to overcome that because if you look at the the entry list, many of them tend to tend to be NASCAR prospects, the Tristan McKeys, um, the the Carson Browns. And I think short track racing is at its healthiest, and certainly the Midwest is different. And it's one of the things I do love about the Midwest, it's a lot more veteran heavy, and it reminds me of everything that you should be building around. And that other issue, by the way, is um awesome training of thought here. We did the um minor league thing. Oh, the the the backgate thing. I think they're club racers. And I I think that um it's if you look at dirt track racing, those guys cultivate their fandoms, they cultivate their social media, they are super clued in with their merchandise, they are brands. And I think sometimes pavement short track racers have this mentality of open the back gate for us, we're gonna go race, close the back gate behind us, we go home, and they don't treat it as either their business or this thing that they need to foster and grow. And I think those are the two big challenges that we face as a short track industry right now.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Well, I'm glad you're at a pavement late mile racing, because the other part of it, as you know, is uniformity and having rules where someone can take a race car and go from track to track or from series to series, which really and truly I know they're working. I've talked to promoters, you've talked to promoters, and trying to find a uniform set of rules map, but it just doesn't feel like that's a a goal that's gonna happen. Do you still see the splintered kind of notion that we have out there in pavement racing being detrimental to the growth of that segment of the sport?

SPEAKER_01 7:23

Well, it's it's challenging, right? And I'll give you kind of a a micro um example is that when when Bob Sargent, you know, bought Midwest Tour and CRA and entered into relationship with Southern Super Series to create the ASA National Tour, the new ASA National Tour, he wanted to streamline the rules. But he ran into a problem that he didn't realize existed, which is you know, if you look at most of the country and super late model racing, they're on the four-barrel carburetor package, the Midwest is on the two, and they don't want to change. And so it's really easy, I think, for me and you or people sitting in the stands to go, well, everyone should have the same car. Well, it's not quite that simple, right? There's always, you know, economic reasons because anytime you change a rule, you're forcing someone to buy something new. And, you know, I don't know that the economy is ever great for short track racing. We always use the excuse, not in this economy. I don't I don't know that there ever is an economy where completely you know swapping over large swaths of your car is a prudent financial decision. Owning a race car is not a prudent financial decision. Um, but it's never as simple as, well, it would be so much greater if we could just all be on the same platform. And and and by the way, there's some other things too, right? Like in the in the the mid-Atlantic here uh where I am in the Carolinas and Virginia's, they have the NASCAR-developed late model stock car, which is a you know, perimeter rail chassis with truck arms based on the old style NASCAR cup and bush series style cars, and the rest of the country is on a straight rail um chassis platform. And so there's just so many different, you know, political, economic, uh, geographic factors. And I think it's closer now than it's ever been before. Um, in New England, Tom Mayberry, who is a crotchety promoter in every sense of the word, has a very firm grip on chassis. And say what you will about his personality and the way that Tom Mayberry runs the past series, he is very protective of what racers can spend and preventing outside chassis builders from bringing cup technology into his series. And so every promoter kind of views this age-old question uh in a different light and they tackle it in a different way, in a way that doesn't allow for uniform rule packages because everyone in every region just has different needs, different requirements, different backgrounds.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

So when Bob Sargent came in and did what you said and tried to put an umbrella over all these divisions, I'm dating myself, but it reminds me of back what was called the StockCar Connection, when you had Rex Robbins and the ACT, Tom Curley and Bob Harmon all try to do sort of the same thing then. That was like 30 years ago. Since Bob has done this, now I'm here in the Midwest, so I kind of follow the Midwest tour. Greg McCarns has turned that series into something I think really special. Marty Mello now took it over. How do you see it sort of from the outside in about how the regional tours sort of support the ASA national tour that Bob's got going, Matt?

SPEAKER_01 10:34

Yeah, it's um that's that's a very broad question, right? Like I think each individual promoter, and certainly Greg is still super connected with the Midwest tour and is super involved there too, and which is a benefit. I think every short track promoter needs to have conversations with Greg McCarns because he and his family and his background, they they get it. I think I think the world of Tim Bryan and Marty Mello and Bob Sargent, but when it comes to the mentality of pavement uh short track racers, Greg is just clued in and gets it, right? Um, I think in creating this ASA ecosystem, um there's pros and cons because I remember when this whole thing first started, it was Tim Bryant who told me on the record. He's like, How does a national tour help my Southern Super Series? And I'm sure you know Greg could have viewed it the same way. I'm sure that RJ, uh RJ Scott and Glenn Luckett from the old CRA could have looked at it the same way. I think this is a multi-tiered, multi-step you know process that eventually you do want to get the rules packages a little more synonymous. Uh you want, to me, I always make comparisons of dirt, and that's so unfair. But if you look at the world of outlaws, if you look at high limit, the way that their individual events are structured, you know, you have your 11 to 12 full timers come to your local track, and your local track or your local series supplements those 12, and that's how you get your 24 to 30. Pavement cars aren't quite there, but you could have that on a scale, right? Like in a perfect world, you you have, if you can build this thing up, you can grow the purses, you can have your seven to eight national full timers, and when they roll into the south, they're racing against your southern super series guys. When they roll into Wisconsin, they're racing the Midwest tour guys, the mid the Midwest, kind of the Southern Midwest, Indiana, Ohio, the CRA guys. We're not there yet. That's the goal, that's the structure, that's the idea. They schedule with each other so you can go chase a regional championship alongside your national championship if you want. And therefore, that encourages you to enter those co-sanction races. Um, I think the economy, again, that's a nebulous term talking about race cars. Um, the economy has to catch up to the vision. But I will tell you, even Tim, who was super skeptical of the idea of a national championship, is more invested and on board now than he ever was then. And he says he sees the vision, even if it's not there yet, that they they need something like this, if especially in the streaming era, they need some sort of marquee championship to continue to grow the discipline. And um, that's been comforting to see everyone at least buy into the vision.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

All right. So then just to add to that conversation on the pavement asphalt racing side, on the late model side, is UARA, the Ricky Brooks division. Uh, I had Jess Stregel on from Berlin Raceway a few weeks ago, and Jeff's two big shows that he has during the summer, he's opted to go with Ricky and what he does with his series. How do you see that? And is there do we need two? I guess is the question I would ask you, Matt. Two national pavement late model series, ASA Stars National and U ARA.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Probably not, but I will I will say that you know, like everything, it's it's nuanced. I think we have too many races. You know, again, the economy, that dirty E-word talking about short track racing. I don't I don't know that there's enough racers to support so many races. But I will tell you, to Ricky's credit, and Ricky's always been very smart about this, is he he targets racers who otherwise would feel like the rules or the structure or the travel doesn't really allow them to participate. And he creates bigger events than they're used to having under his banner. I mean, if you look at his schedule, you know, most of his events are in Florida, South Alabama, and there's a certain subset of straight rail late model racers out of Florida who are just used to running tracks like Auburn Dale and Freedom Factory, New Smyrna. They don't like to travel, they they can't afford to travel to Michigan, to Wisconsin, to Indiana, even as far as you know, five flags. And Ricky has catered to a racer that probably isn't going to participate in the ASA ecosystem anyway. So that's the the nuance part of that. But I do think overall, when you look at even within the ASA ecosystem, there's probably too many races. Um when someone has a rainout and they have to try to reschedule it, the problem they inevitably run into is every other weekend they've got. By the way, Cordill, Cordille runs there super fast now. So there's five more races. There's nowhere to put the reschedule date because there's always someone else's race that you're trying not to schedule on top of, which to me tells you we have too many races and not enough racers to supplement them.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

So another conversation that we get, and I'm curious your take on this. We're talking about national tours, regional tours, but when you talk about short track racing, the importance of the weekly show. We got a lot of tracks here in my area of the country that still bank on their weekly shows, Fridays and Saturday nights. And we know that that's a challenge as well. I'll ask you sort of a two-part question. One, is it sort of the same in terms of the tracks more in your area in the southeast? And do you think there's still room for a racetrack to just have your weekly show week after week after week, or do they need other things and touring series and those kinds of things to come in, Matt? What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah, I I think in my perfect world, the super late model and the late model stock car here in the mid-Atlantic, I think those should be the touring car. And if you've got a weekly track, I and you've seen a lot of you know tracks do this now, is you know, Montgomery, Nashville, their weekly or monthly style program is basically a pro-laid model. Same thing with Berlin. Berlin's different just because it's so geographically isolated from the rest of the marquee tracks. Um, but their rules package, while called a super late model, that track certainly lends itself to less power, and there's tons of pro-late models in their super late model rules. Um, and so I think those those two premier classes, supers and late model stocks, have kind of evolved into the touring series. You see the same thing in in New England, by the way. I mean, the um tour type modified while certainly being the NASCAR modified tour car um was also the weekly track car. And that car evolved to the point to where you know Stafford and the Arutes had to come up with the SK modify. That's let's create a weekly track version of this platform. And it's funny, I think history continues to repeat itself because the late model stock car was born out of the late model sportsman becoming um too expensive. The late model sportsman eventually became the Bush series car. It became a weekly style car that then became a touring car that then started to race on big tracks. And once it became no longer feasible for the late model sportsman racer to race weekly at Hickory, Tri-County, um, Myrtle Beach, pick your local track, uh, they had to come up with an offshoot of the late model. And so I think in some ways it's the same in the super world. Uh, Mark Martin created the first ever straight rail late model, and that became more prominent, more prevalent, more expensive, and um we needed to create the pro-late model crate package to be more economically friendly to racers who didn't want to travel and be national racers. And so I think this whole conversation is one that I say we, I was born in '88, but we, the royal we as an industry, had 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. It's the same story just with a slightly different um remake.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Yeah, we're seeing here in the Midwest where the pro late models are the big eight style late models, but then we're seeing tracks like the Dells, Grundy County, even Slinger do like five or six race super late model kind of seasons within a season to try to make sure you kind of cover both worlds. So I I get it. Um I'll I'll I want to wrap up the conversation, and again, I appreciate your time. Uh, kind of what you talked about to start streaming and and how more money more people can now tap into the to the world of short track racing. Pluses and minuses, Matt. How do you see it now and how much further do you think it can go?

SPEAKER_01 19:31

I think the pluses far outweigh the minuses, and if there are any uh negative consequences, that's the fault of the promoter. And when I say that I think pavement racers are too much of a club racing mentality, I think the promoters and the track operators and the series operators are somewhat at fault of that. You know, any promoter who says that they blame streaming for fans not being in the stands just aren't doing their job, period. Because again, I I'm a big time dirt enthusiast too. I watch the dirt lay models, I watch the dirt sprint cars, and they've got no problem filling their front gates. And it just comes down to star power, you know. And so I I blame the racers and the promoter in equal parts because they need to create stars, and the racers need to create stars for themselves. I mean, Bubba Pollard did it through winning, you know, Stephen Nassey wins a lot too, but I think he's he's super engaged with fans and um he's got a big personality, sales merchandise. Um, there's been racers who have come through who who try to do that. There's just not enough of them. If you can't fill your front gate, it's because one, you haven't done a good job of creating big personalities and stars, and you're too fixated on how you can nickel and dime your backgate to where you don't have to worry about your front gate. And so there is no excuse to me, and I know that running a racetrack is not easy, but I I am gonna call them out a little bit because I think that a large number of promoters are still stuck in 20 years ago. Like it it took it took them the longest time in the world to even go to digitize ticket sales, uh, you know, the pit pay app type of situation. Um, you know, Frank Bolter has worked a long time on getting that system up to speed to where it makes it easier for tracks to um kind of get to know their customers, make it easier for their customers to come to the racetrack. They haven't bought into those technologies yet. So I know running a track is hard, and I'm not just criticizing out of hand, but I just do think that many promoters have not adapted to technology either in ways that they reach fans, the way that they communicate with fans, understand who they are. Are, but also utilize social media to create stars out of their weekly or touring series situations.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Well, we're hoping uh 2026 is successful across the board in short track racing. I know we're both uh very much in tune with that. I very much appreciate your time. Now busy you are. We'll check things out at motorsport.com, always in at shorttrackscene.com. Matt, thanks for being with us.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

It's Matt Weaver. Check him out, motorsport.com and the NASCAR side, and also shorttrackscene.com for the short track world. Now, Pete Pistoni, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time here on Midwest Racing Central today.