Nationals winner will make Slinger SRX race
Winning the Slinger Nationals means a short-track racer has beaten some of the best drivers in Wisconsin and often some of the best in the country. It also means one of the best paydays of the year.
For the first time in the event's 42year history, it also will mean an opportunity to race against some of the world's best, on the champion's turf.
The winner of the July 6 Nationals will earn a spot in Slinger Speedway's round of the Superstar Racing Experience four days later, the series announced Friday.
SRX, which will launch this season, features an international field of drivers such as Formula One winner Mark Webber, Indianapolis 500 winners Helio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan and NASCAR Hall of Famers Bill Elliott and Bobby Labonte racing in equally prepared short-track stock cars.
The 12-car, short-track series is
scheduled to race on six consecutive Saturday nights with live coverage from CBS Sports. SRX is the brainchild of NASCAR championship-winning crew chief and former team owner Ray Evernham and driver-turned-owner Tony Stewart.
Having an amateur or part-time pro with local knowledge in each event provides the opportunity for what Evernham has referred to as a Rocky Balboa or Cinderella story.
“I did lobby for it,” said two-time and defending Nationals winner Ty Majeski, who is from Seymour. “I tweeted something a while back that the Slinger Nationals winner should get a chance at it, and I reached out to Ray – shot an email – and told him I'd be interested in doing it and would be willing to help in any way I could.
“Obviously we're going to be at Slinger Nationals and obviously it's going to raise the stakes for Slinger Nationals in general. Hopefully it's going to bring in some more race cars, some more race car drivers, and hopefully it makes the event bigger than it already is.”
The “Rocky Balboa” drivers were announced for the first five rounds: sixtime NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour champion Doug Coby for the opener June 12 at Stafford (Connecticut) Motor Speedway; four-time Knoxville (Iowa) Speedway sprint-car champion Brian Brown for the June 19 race there; fivetime Silver Crown champion Kody Swanson June 26 at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio; USAC and modified winner Bobby Santos III at Lucas Oil Raceway outside Indianapolis; and the Slinger Nationals winner.
Majeski, one of the country's top asphalt super late model barnstormers, also won the Slinger Nationals in 2018, and Bubba Pollard, a driver from Georgia who is one of his frequent rivals in big-money events nationwide, won it in 2017.
NASCAR champion Matt Kenseth, a Cambridge native, is the all-time leader with eight titles, having won most recently in 2019.
In the past 10 years, only one driver with recent weekly experience at Slinger Speedway has won the nationals, Dennis Prunty in 2015.
“If I was putting my money on somebody, it would be the 2021 Slinger Nationals champion to win the SRX race on July 10,” Majeski said. “The car is like a super late model, and obviously the Slinger Nationals is a super late model race. Whoever wins Slinger Nationals obviously has a great idea of how to get around Slinger and how to do it in that type of car.”