Brent Marks is experiencing a career-best season highlighted with multiple victories, including taking $275,000 out of Ohio’s Eldora Speedway during Kings Royal weekend.
Brent Marks is experiencing a career-best season highlighted with multiple victories, including taking $275,000 out of Ohio‘s Eldora Speedway during Kings Royal weekend.
The results Marks has garnered are the things sprint car drivers dream about. The unique aspect about Marks‘ season for the ages is how his team is going about it.
Conventional wisdom suggests that unless you are Kyle Larson (who conventional thinking about racing does not apply to any discipline) following the World of Outlaws tour is how you become fast for the major races.
Over the years covering the sport, one of the terms mentioned by drivers and teams‘ reference “outlaw speed” and need to compete with the Outlaws to be able to compete at their level to be successful in sprint car racing‘s most prestigious events.
Marks and his team co-owner Allen Murray went a different route building off their 2021 success after returning to his family-owned team to pick and choose races that made sense for them.
If the weather looked bad further away, the team would opt to stay closer to home and vice versa, if the weather looked suspect in Pennsylvania. This also gave them the freedom to run some high paying shows with lower travel costs and more time at home. Marks has managed to do this, win races on a regular basis and maintain pace to be competitive with anyone in the country.
We have seen others such as Kyle Larson and Tony Stewart have success picking races around their NASCAR commitments.
The true Outlaw schedule does have some caveats. Not everyone is geographically fortunate enough to be able to pull off such a calendar. Central Pennsylvania‘s insatiable appetite for sprint car racing helps fuel that.
Historical Big One Finish
1 – Brent Marks
2 – Tyler Courtney
3 – Rico Abreu
4 – Brad Sweet
5 – Logan SchuchartKings Royal Finish
1 – Brent Marks
2 – Donny Schatz
3 – Carson Macedo
4 – Logan Schuchart
5 – Kyle Larson
There is no tow money or point fund money to fall back on and often Marks can‘t set up his merchandise trailer at events where that privilege is only available to members of the series. Some of the races Marks has competed in have paid decent money in the first few positions, but did not pay well back through the field. That means Marks must perform well every time out.
Marks has managed to do that with his pick-and-choose schedule yielding victories with the World of Outlaws at Williams Grove Speedway, Knoxville Raceway and Eldora Speedway, along with wins with the All Stars at Williams Grove and at Portsmouth Raceway Park during the Dean Kittle Memorial that paid $20,554 to win.
If Marks needed a sign his team was making the right decisions, the Kings Royal weekend provided validation. After taking off the weekend before Eldora to let his team rest after competing at Ohio and Pennsylvania Speedweeks, Marks picked up the feature win during the revival of the Historical Big One during Thursday night of the Kings Royal weekend and its $100,000 top prize.
When the Knight Before the Kings Royal was pushed back to Saturday due to rain, Marks and his team elected not to compete. After that daytime program was complete teams were thrashing away in the heat and humidity of Ohio in July, some of which had major car or engine issues to repair.
Marks, Heath Moyle and Dennis Christ (better known as “Fud”) were relaxing and doing some final checks on their race car at a relaxed pace.
The other thing this allowed the team to do is conserve resources. Marks went into the weekend at Eldora with two engines while waiting on others to be freshened due to delays getting parts.
One of those engines was giving Marks feedback that something wasn‘t right, so the team opted to change it out. Had Marks committed to running that daytime show for points he would have put that engine that ended up winning $275,000 at risk along with the expense of burning up tires and fuel during a daytime sprint car race.
Having no commitments to points or series to honor running that daytime program paid off with a $175,000 payday for winning the Kings Royal.
By the end of 2022 it will be fair to put Marks season up against others such as Doug Wolfgang, Sammy Swindell, Bobby Allen and others that were true Outlaws, won major events, and did not commit to following all the races of a particular series.
While it might not be feasible for certain teams to be able to do this from a location or financial standpoint, it gives us a season to appreciate that harkens back to the true meaning of the 
term Outlaw.