LAS VEGAS — Open Wheel Showdown promoter Davey Hamilton Jr. announced the event is expanding to two weekends of racing with action at two West Coast venues.
Scheduled Nov. 22-24 at Irwindale Speedway, the second annual Open Wheel Showdown will now be joined by an identical weekend of racing Nov. 14-16 for the same three divisions, paying an identical purse at The Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, which hosted the inaugural event last December.
Both weekends will include national midgets and supermodifieds and be highlighted by $50,00-to-win winged sprint car races from a total purse of more than $250,000 in prize money. Both weekends will pay the same purse.
Within one day of the entry process opening for the Irwindale weekend, all 65 sprint car entries were filled. There is currently a waiting list of potential entrants hoping for a chance to compete at Irwindale. With the addition of a second weekend of racing, there won’t be a shortage of winged sprint cars to fill both weekends.
The success of last year’s inaugural event fueled the addition of a second weekend. A sweep of both sprint car events will garner a driver more than $100,000 in prize money.
“I knew the Open Wheel Showdown was going to grow from how last year went,” Hamilton explained. “I genuinely didn’t think going back to Las Vegas was going to be possible for us this year. There’s a lot of moving parts and things with dates. It would have to be a perfect scenario. I didn’t think it was possible. So, I made a deal with Irwindale for us to go there.
“Then after talking with my title sponsor, which we will announce at a later date, we were all able to figure out how to do it. Now we have two events in the same week, which is pretty cool.
“It’s going to be an interesting situation. A lot of people were planning on Irwindale only. But I think there’s enough time for teams to plan throughout the year to be able to attempt doing both. We will try and work with everyone to help make it as easy as possible to be able to do both events.
“Instead of 50k to win now you’re talking 100k to win both events in the winged sprint car portion,” Hamilton continued. “The purse basically doubled. There are two events at two awesome race tracks. One event is great, but my overall plan is to have three events a year. Two events in the same week are a little tight, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go back to Las Vegas this year. We all enjoyed last year, and I think it’s gonna be good for years to come.”
Additional details of the Las Vegas weekend will be announced in the coming weeks including the entry process, RV sales, Lodging information and more.
For more information, please visit www.openwheelshowdown.com.
Aaron Willison won the inaugural Open Wheel Showdown Dec. 2 at the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.