1/9/2024
Postman 68
The Allen Effect
Sprint car racers are a hard-core bunch; barn-storming the country for 70, 80, 90 even more than 100 races a year. Nights sleeping in hotels or haulers, working of cars in hot parking lots, 2:30am sessions at the car wash.
It is not for the faint of heart.
For years many whispered about the grind and occasionally team owners would openly worry about maintaining crew members. But overall, it was simply considered “the norm.”
That norm was shaken in July when World of Outlaws driver Jacob Allen abruptly announced he was sitting out of the families’ Shark Racing car. This was even more shocking because it was at one of his home tracks, Williams Grove Speedway in Pennsylvania.
In a post to his social media channels, Jacob said:
“The reason is simple; I am just mentally exhausted. I am not the only race car driver that also feels this way. Not only drivers, but also crew members, officials, and the ladies and gentlemen in t-shirt alley.”
He laid out further details.
“Mentally, I don’t feel like it’s good for us year after year, to sacrifice so much of our time away from our families, travel thousands of miles, and put in over 12-hour days,” said Allen. “Our homes for the majority of the year are either in a parking lot, or a hotel room that is most likely shared with someone else.
“As a driver, each race you risk your life, and we never get a break from that. We don’t have the freedom to have even a couple weekends off in a year. If you do decide to take off a weekend, you are basically taking the risk of getting fired from your job.”
A funny thing happened in the rough-and-tumble world of sprint car barnstorming, many stopped whispering about the issue and started stating that Jacob was not wrong.
In the second half of 2023 drivers started schedule some time off.
Brent Marks and Danny Dietrich, two of Pennsylvania’s best shut down operations for a week and got away. Brian Brown opted out of a couple of races siting not wanting to burnout everyone, particularly before the biggest event of the year – the Knoxville Nationals
“It’s an extremely hard thing to manage, just because of the amount of opportunities we do have to race,” said Brent Marks on Winged Nation in September. “This year especially there seems to be more and more races paying really good money. So, you want to be a part of all of them.”
And it did seem that each year more races – and good paying racers – were popping up on the schedules. Something a younger Brent Marks would have been all over.
“I’m 32 years old now, not as young as when I started in sprint cars,” continued Marks. “I wanted to race seven days a week and 200 times a year if I could. But life changes and you mature. You realize what is more important and that is where I have been the last couple of years.
“Our life outside of racing is extremely important and it is healthy to have a good life outside of racing, and not have your life revolve around just one thing.
“When you are going through some struggles, you just keep beating your head against the wall and all you are going to do is injure yourself,” continued Marks. “Everybody is putting on so many races, especially in the mid-summer; it’s hot, your team is getting drained, the driver is getting drained it just becomes too much.
“You have to realize, if you are mentally strong and your mental state as a team is strong you are going to be more successful. And, when you get to the point where you are drained and just going through the motions, you are not going to be successful.
So, sometimes you just need to take a step back and take a break, wind down and get away from the sport. We all love sport; it is what we love to do. But it’s a performance-based sport and the mental capacity it takes to be successful in a performance-based sport is a lot.”
As the fall of 2023 wound down others shared similar concerns and wondered what 2024 would look like. And, when the 2024 schedules were released, it became obvious that the schedule-makers heard the concerns.
The World of Outlaws still presented an 86-race schedule, but with a 13-day break around the July 4th holiday. Compounding matters this year is the upstart High Limit Series stepping up to challenge the Outlaws as a national tour. High Limits will have 60 races, with many breaks including the same 13-day window in early July.
In July of 2023, the often whispered about “burnout” became an open topic. It has resulted in changes in the way sprint cars will be raced in 2024 and going forward.
One driver putting his personal health and wellbeing ahead of the sport he loves with all his heart has changed the landscape – it is The Allen Effect.
? Postman
Submitted By: Steve Post
