How regulations aim to keep sprint car racing in check.

Race teams will go to extreme lengths to find a competitive advantage. The best engineers, builders, and crew chiefs are often renowned for their ability to exploit the margins of the rulebook—maximizing the infamous "gray area" to find speed.

Meanwhile, sanctioning bodies face the arduous task of effectively regulating racers to maintain fair competition without inflating costs or drastically widening the gap between large and small teams. This is a challenge for all race officials, but especially those involved in regulating the wild world of 410 sprint car racing.

"A lot of people try to compare what we do to NASCAR," said Tom Devitt of World of Outlaws, Concord, North Carolina. "But [this] is much tougher. NASCAR has to worry about 40 cars. We have to worry about 400 to 500 cars across the country and a guy building something in his garage." 

Powered by a methanol-burning, 410-cubic-inch engine capable of 900 horsepower, a winged 410 sprint car is a monstrous machine. Getting these race cars hooked up to an ever-changing track surface is a nightly struggle, but that's the dynamic and thrilling nature of dirt track racing. Every team is searching for any possible advantage, on any given night. 

The stakeholders are varied, involving media partners, builders, teams, drivers, tracks, and sanctioning bodies ranging from local to national touring series. While there are various regional and local sprint car series throughout the country, at the pinnacle of the sport you'll find the long-standing World of Outlaws and the newly formed High Limit Racing, which completed its first season in 2024. With many stakeholders come many opinions about rule directions, and every potential change carries some element of risk. 

"It's hard to make a rule change and absolutely know it's going to help anything," said Mike Hess of High Limit Racing, Mooresville, North Carolina. "You can talk to a lot of people and create a lot of theory toward helping or making something safer, but until you actually do it and put it in a test, you probably don't know."

For the 2025 season, both the World of Outlaws and High Limit Racing are implementing various rule changes. Some align, while other changes differ...

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