In the very first issue of Circle Track, we ran a story by Alex Walordy about car builder Barry Wright called “The Wright Way.” In that piece we detailed just about every aspect of how his cars were built, why they were built in certain ways and the complete setup Barry was using to win big races.
The age of dedicated car builders had already begun and Barry was right there in the mix. Along with him in 1982 were C. J. Rayburn and MastersBilt among others who specialized in Dirt Late Models. Let’s see where technology was at that time and how it progressed to the present since the first days of CT.
What surprised me when I read the Wright Way article was the depth of thinking that went into the design and setup of the car. Note that this car was winning against the best of the best at the time and Barry had some help from a few of the more innovative participants in racing at the time.
His aero package would be considered by today’s standards, advanced. He was running coil-over shocks in the front and composite leaf springs in the rear. The rear coil-over setups would come late on. His brake package was adaptable to any track condition and his shocks were the best money could buy at that time.
I will quote from the last paragraph before we move on, “Just having a race car is only half the battle; understanding ever-changing track conditions and having the ability to modify a race car to meet the challenge of those changes is another.” That statement is as true today as it was back then.
Dirt or Asphalt One Race Car – As I got into the progression of technology from the mid-1970’s up to our start in 1982 and beyond, I learned that there was a common ancestry between dirt cars and those running on pavement. In the years prior to the first issue of Circle Track in 1982, the cars were mostly built to run on both surfaces. Basically, back then, a circle track car was just that no matter where you drove it. So, they were mostly the same construction. Builders like Barry Wright started the evolution that would separate the two.
For our 35th Anniversary celebration, I think it would be interesting to look back over those years from out first issue through the eighties and nineties and analyze how setups were developed and how technology evolved for dirt track racing. I will concentrate on the Dirt Late Model because the stock classes basically used mostly cars out of the current manufacturer’s stable of cars the public drove.
Since the cars Ed Howe (our feature figure from the paved car section) was winning with were his own out of his garage, many teams began asking him to build cars for them. Out of that demand grew probably the very first full time short track race car manufacturing businesses in 1971. Many more would soon follow like Port City Race Cars, Lefthander, CJ Rayburn, MastersBilt, Barry Wright, Rocket Chassis, etc. And early on, most of the builders that came after used Howe parts.
It would not be until the late 1970’s that the dirt teams would seek out different designs for their cars due to the much different needs. The earlier cars that were built more for asphalt would be fine as long as the track stayed moist and had grip, but once it went dry slick it would be very hard to find grip.
Car builders began to experiment with different designs and what came out of those early attempts made up what we now call the Dirt Super Late Model. The front of the cars didn’t evolve much at all going from the standard stock type of lower control arm to a strut type of coil-over system. But the rear suspensions were all over the place. There were the four bar cars, swing arm cars and even a cantilever car design for a time.
Early Setups On Dirt – Most race cars then were setup up tight. That was to say they didn’t turn well, abused the right front tire, and ended up with a severe push or went tight/loose eventually. On dirt, the teams mostly lived with the push and were more interested in getting bite off the corners to win the drag race down the front stretch.
In Dirt Late Model racing, it was common to run a softer RR spring up until the mid-1990’s. Then around 1996, a friend of mine, who gets little credit for the way he has influenced Dirt Super Late Model racing, experimented with running even rated rear springs.
The New Age Of Setups – Dewayne Ragland decided to try running even spring rates in the rear much like asphalt cars to setup a Dirt Late Model at a local track in Indiana. On the Monday after the race he called me to report that they had won and were running four 400ppi springs on the car. After I told him you couldn’t do that with the rear springs, he explained the car was a swing arm design and the rear of the car felt half the installed spring rate, or about 200ppi. A new era of Dirt Late Model setups had begun.
A few more teams experimented with running even springs across the rear and lowering the front spring rates. This was against the advice of the car builders, some of whom were understandably irate. Then during Speed Weeks sometime around 2002, Don O’Neal ran a stiffer right rear spring (than the left rear spring) winning at East Bay and then Volusia.
In conjunction with the transition in spring rates, teams were fooling around with their front geometry and finding that locating the roll center in a certain area helped the front to gain grip and to help turn the car.
The design of both asphalt and dirt cars was influenced by what the racers were doing outside the manufacturers “playbook”. It upset some of the car builders and woke up some others. The smart ones realized that if a new technology could help their cars win, sales would increase. It had always worked that way and they did.
Things were looking good for common sense setups where the car was happy, the tires were happy and the driver, team and car owners were happy. Could there be more performance out there. We were soon to find out.
Mid to Late 2000’s – In what we can now call the modern era of dirt car racing, we see a gradual change associated with the way setups were developed and the goals associated with development of the Dirt Late Model setups.
Most of the car builders had been influenced by what the teams had done through the early 2000’s with improvements to their front end geometry as well as the arrangement of spring rates. The cars were now more balanced, faster and easier to drive.
We saw front runners starting to keep the left front tire on the track in a more level attitude, less rear steer and a more straight ahead driving style when track conditions permitted. But there was more to do.
That was a good start, but having four tires on the ground did not solve all of the problems. While the paved track cars were going with the soft front spring and stiffer right rear spring and bump setups, some dirt teams decided to try it out too. It came as an early surprise to see the attitude of those cars, but the truth is in the pudding so to speak.
The cars that were down in front, up in the left rear and that ran at an angle to the direction of travel through the turns ran faster and were winning. It really doesn’t matter what you are doing or how strange it looks, if you’re holding the trophy at the end of the night, strange becomes normal in a hurry. And it did.
Soon teams were rear steering the rear end to the right to cause the large flat side of the car to catch the air and put side force on the car to help it gain aero “side bite”. They were running on bump springs or rubbers on the right front while still keeping the left front tire on the track. It was the best of all worlds.
As of this year, much work is going into forcing load onto the right front and left rear tires under dry slick track conditions because it has been learned that two tires carrying most of the load will cut through the slick surface and grip better than four tires equally loaded that tend to skate across the slick surface.
It’s been fun watching these Dirt Super Late Models evolve through the years and I’m sure the evolution won’t stop anytime soon. These cars are still the most technically complicated race cars in the world and the most fun to watch compete. That is why dirt racing is the most popular motorsport and has the largest number of race tracks in the country. Long live dirt track racing.
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