Alli Owens to race at Daytona

[Boneman]

Florida teenager Alli Owens has been practicing in an ARCA car at Daytona and Talledega. She is sponsored, and will make a run at the race in February. I've seen her race at NSS a few years ago, but I've never seen her win. Her website shows a 4 Cyl. Bomber win several years ago at Volusia, but have there been any others?

[Frasson118]

This is one scary prospect. She may be a smart,person and a hard-working and dedicated racer, but she is not ready for a Superspeedway. Rockingham or Milwaukee, maybe, but Daytona or Talladega... I think not.

[ovalracer44]

Florida teenager Alli Owens has been practicing in an ARCA car at Daytona and Talledega. She is sponsored, and will make a run at the race in February. I've seen her race at NSS a few years ago, but I've never seen her win. Her website shows a 4 Cyl. Bomber win several years ago at Volusia, but have there been any others?

Another case where having a vageena or dark skin tone can help someone step past more talented people. Oh well thats the way the cookie crumbles

[JackTripper]

Another case where having a vageena or dark skin tone can help someone step past more talented people. Oh well thats the way the cookie crumbles

Your statement is ignorant, but she certainly does not have the experience yet to be on a superspeedway in an ARCA car. She may have some late model races under her belt, but that's not enough. Too bad Super Mario has to farm a car out to her to pay the bills, I would have liked to have seen Justin Drawdy in that car. He's always looked good the few times he's ran Mario's cars.

[bubba]

Hmmm....this does make me scratch my head. I can't say I know much about her career, but I haven't heard of anything that would put her experieince level where it would need to be to roll around Daytona or Talladega in a three wide draft at 190.
I'll tell you this, if she straps in and puts it out there during the race, she will probably have bigger cajones then me.

[Osmosis Jones]

While Ovalracer44's comment was a little crude and perhaps a smidge politically incorrect in these days and times.......he hits on a point we have hashed around on here for quite a while now. We even coined a term for it.

The Talent Pardon.

More and more this is the course being taken by NASCAR and some of the other major series whose sole purpose of existence is to suck every last dollar out it's few remaining fans wallets (and purses too from the way it looks these days)as it can.

I offer you this months Speedway Illustrated as my example.

Aric Almirola?

Please. This not only smacks hard in the face of every short track driver who ever earned a points championship, touring series victory or hell, even just one regular season race against a stellar field of Late Models, Modifieds or Sprints.

Where's the justification? When did mediocrity become a virtue we want to reward? How did we get to a point where skill and hard work can be exchanged for the right ethnicity and an ad-friendly headshot.

Driver development. No there's a great term. To start with if they were driver's then they wouldn't need "developing". Go to ANYtrack, USA on any given Saturday and you'll see thousands of driver development programs in full swing. Dads and sons AND daughters working and learning together to become better at what they love to do. Hands on, nitty gritty on the job training. Could there be a better way?

I'm not talking about the Fortune 500 daddy who thinks junior can be the next Jimmie Johnson if he just spends enough money. Those people make me sick. They have too much money to waste their time learning the basics in a lower division class but then are clueless as to why Junior gets smoked week in and week out by the guys who have had to actually work for success. Some of them do last quite a while before they realize this little hobby has become a little more expensive than they first thought. But then, Junior is having so much fun running around the pits with his buddies in the team's 4WD golf cart they just go and have the track champion build them a better car than the two they bought from him last year and then just hire him as a teammate for young Junior to learn from.

And then Junior starts middle school and forgets all about this racing thing.

I guess in a way though, it's good for a few of the regulars as they can sometimes pick up some pretty good deals on some high dollar racing equipment when Dad gets fed up (or goes broke) and sells off everything they bought for Junior's shot at stardom. Seen a lot of that happening too.

Thankfully, for some of these rich Daddies, the upper echelons of racing have waived the talent and performance portion of the application for their series events. Junior can have his journey through puberty broadcast on the big screen every weekend.


Okay.....rambled enough.

[ancrdave]

There are a lot of young drivers out there too that are very impressive but don't have the cubic dollars to go NASCAR... Look at Patrick Conrad, Sam Watts, Kory Abbott, Brandon Thomson and Chelsea Schillig... These "kids" (all either current or past Legend Car drivers) can run circles around just about everyone else. Conrad and Watts have already proven themselves in the Super Lates. Conrad reminds me very much of a young Gary Balough (driving, not personality, wise)... Unreal ability... Watts is learning to control his aggressiveness which will make him even better... Abbott is another kid with incredible natural ability but he now has a full time job at Disney's stunt show drawing a regular paycheck and benefits, so we'll see where his racing career goes from here... Thomson also has the natural ability to climb in anything and get the most out of it... He's bigger, but he reminds me a lot of Donnie Tanner - just give me a race car and let's see what it'll do... Looks like Brandon might have a pretty good deal up in GA this year, sure hope he gets the chance to prove himself... I'd really like to see someone put Chelsea Schillig in a FASCAR machine of some type this year... She really does have the talent, just needs the opportunity...

[JackTripper]

Glad to see someone else dump on Aric Almirola. Every time I post about he has no track record of wins whatsoever to warrant his moving up to any series beyond a local short track I get jumped all over. And as near as I can tell he also has no ability to get his own sponsors to bring to a team.

I called one of the opening posts ignorant because Alli Owens didn't get that ride because she has female reproductive glands, she got that ride because she went out and got sponsors and brought them to Super Mario. ARCA shouldn't let her out at Daytona because she doesn't have anything approaching big speed or big track experience, but that's another story.

Any racer that sits around today and complains about how they can't get break into the upper ranks of stock car racing because "it is all about bringing sponsors" better wake up and smell the coffee, because that pot has been brewing for a very long time. Look at your NA$CAR champion this year. Did he have an amazing track record in lower classes of racing? Nope. But he was smart enough to learn while a teenager how to hustle and get and keep sponsors. Combine that with decent talent and you're in, at least until your team gets tired of you finishing 30th.

I can't say this enough, if you are any of those teenagers listed by ancrdave, learn how to get sponsors. That means ask a pro. Hell, I offered my marketing/sponsorship consulting services for free to a paved sprint car driver I like that asked me for help and I still haven't heard back. I guess that driver doesn't need sponsorship that bad.

Anyway - young drivers, if you want to be like Alli Owens and get yourself some sponsors, go to this website and spend a little bit of money to learn how to make a bunch more.

http://www.saxtonsponsormarket.com/

[Boneman]

There is an excellent article in Speed Sport News this week that expands on what Tripper wrote; it is necessary to get a patron, or supporter, to carry you to the top in racing.

The article laments the lack of American open wheel drivers at the top levels of the sport. Apparently in South America and Europe it is the standard procedure to hook up with a wealthy sponsor or benefactor to support your racing from day one. In America, our route has traditionally been to learn the mechanics, set-up and even fabrication skills to race. So while we are welding in the garage, racers from other countries are smoozing the money. Of course I am speaking in very broad terms, but the idea has merit. We all know excellent drivers who will never get higher than the local bull rings, while others with less skill run Daytona or Indy.

[Edm]

I have to agree with Ovalracer 44 on this one. I would not let this girl drive my wheel barrel much less a racecar. She might be dedicated, hard working, talented etc.... blah, blah, blah, ask Chris Lawrence about her. She flat drove into the back of him on night. Mike ??? #11 late model, samething. Every week Ms. Owens would wreck somebody else or herself.

[Joe Dirt]

Another case where having a vageena or dark skin tone can help someone step past more talented people. Oh well thats the way the cookie crumbles

Who is ''VAGEENA'' ??

[ovalracer44]

Who is ''VAGEENA'' ??

Something that a lot of people on here need to get some more of.

[Benny The Mule]

Something that a lot of people on here need to get some more of.

Now that's funny right there!

[drtracer9559]

I don't know this girl but as the saying goes don't hate the player hate the game. In today's world of racing the cost is a huge factor and for whatever reason she has managed to find some funding. In today's world funding is as important to a team owner as talent. You can teach someone to drive, money buys the best trainers you can't teach someone to have money. I don't support this method myself either as I am a driver myself that has run againts guys that I ran circles around who now run late models and I wonder how. Now days skills is only one thing that you need. It sucks but it is what it is. I work for a race team so I see it from the inside also. Once again I agree it sucks.

[apk power]

I smell some jealousy