The list of top drivers who have raced for Kunz and his associate Pete Willoughby is impressive. He will occasionally bring a veteran back into the fold, but in recent years he has spent the bulk of his time developing young drivers.
As one might expect Kunz views the current hubbub about youthful midget racers as overblown.
“I really don’t think it’s the drivers,” he said. “I think it’s social media. The kids are not just wiping people out like people want to blame them for. They are racing hard and they may make mistakes more than others, but the way midget racing is now it is all about momentum. You have to carry corner speed. Do they always judge right? No. But neither do the veterans.
“Here’s the thing. I feel the veterans do it intentionally. They will stick it in there and they know how to use a guy up and get by with it. The young kids don’t do it intentionally and when it happens it is because they aren’t as good. Yet, when the veterans do it people cheer them on.”
This is part and parcel of the ongoing dialogue about the level of respect in racing today. This issue is far more complicated than some might think. In a recent conversation with announcer Chet Christner, Justin Grant noted that in today’s world a driver can carry much more speed into a corner than a few years ago. Kunz would agree, and he feels that the style of racing has changed accordingly.
“I watch winged sprint cars and they don’t drive the same as they did 10 years ago,” Kunz observed. “It’s not even close. They go down the front straightaway and they chop a guy’s nose off like there’s no tomorrow. And everyone thinks that’s a great move. Not long ago, Rico (Abreu) said, ‘I’ve never been crashed by a slide job. I see it coming and I have a brake pedal.’ I think blaming the kids is an easy out for everybody and a social media problem. Some of the veterans also seem to think the younger kids should just move out of the way.”
Chad Boat moved seamlessly from the cockpit to the ownership ranks but there was a time when he was a young driver, too. One thing Kunz and Boat agree on is the difference in today’s car. Kunz feels the modern midget is far more stable and Boat in a similar vein calls them “more drivable.”
Changes in shock technology alone have made a big difference. If the cars are more stable and carry more speed in the corner, then slide jobs are simply more likely. For this reason, Boat thinks one of the major culprits when mayhem ensues is the tracks midgets now visit.
“People just race different ways now,” Boat noted. “I don’t think it is necessarily for the better, but I also think the tracks we go to lend themselves to this kind of racing. They are slower, you can bump and bang a little more and it becomes Chili Bowlesque. You bang around more at the Chili Bowl than when you go to a place like Lincoln Park in the summer. Even the veteran drivers are racing more like that too, so they really can’t come over and give a kid a hard time when they’re out there feeding wheels, too.”
Boat understands the dilemma faced by sanctioning bodies and promoters. Car counts are better on bullrings than at larger tracks. Nonetheless, Boat feels for the good of the sport and driver development it is important to take on a stiffer challenge.
“The biggest thing is the driver must respect the track and the equipment,” Boat said. “Going to higher speed places makes the driver say, ‘OK, I need to respect this place a little bit more.’ I think that goes hand in hand with how the racing unfolds. You go to Port City and it has tight corners, and it isn’t that fast, so you really don’t respect the speed of the track. That’s when you see guys run into each other. You take them to Eldora and you don’t see them running into each other because they realize the consequences.”
Putting all of this into a larger frame, Boat noted midget racing “is not a place where someone is going to come to make their career. It has a shelf life. They come to develop and try to take whatever is the next step for them. They need to understand the level of danger that comes with racing because it doesn’t get any easier when you move up. If you want to race a 410 sprint car, you are going to places like Eldora and Knoxville and those are places you can get in real trouble if you don’t respect the equipment or the race track. That’s something that needs to be instilled in midget racing a little more.”
Jay Mounce of Mounce-Stout Motorsports shares concern about the choice of tracks and highlights a recent Xtreme Outlaw race that garnered some negative attention.
“It had nothing to do with the drivers,” Mounce said. “It was a product of where they were racing.”
Yet, accountability is an issue for Mounce. He’s not leading a factory supported team with a plethora of mechanics at his disposal. When one of his cars is mangled or taken out by another, it is a real problem.