World Of Outlaws...The Home Of Sprint Car Racing

World of Outlaws is the home of winged sprint car racing. More to the point, it is the sanctioning body of two major national motorsports touring series, the original sprint car tour and, later on, late model stock cars. Sprint cars are open wheel race cars that are purposely built to race at very fast speeds, at 140 miles per hour or 230 km per hour. The reason for this high speed is a combination of the car's extremely light weight, at a required 1,375 lbs, including the driver, and that the methanol-driven 410 cubic inch engine runs on 850 horsepower. These sprint cars race in dirt oval tracks all over the country, in key cities included in the World of Outlaws tour.

Racing at these extreme speeds is incredibly dangerous, which is why the World of Outlaws features only winged sprint cars. That's the large wing that you can see at the front and on top of the car. The wing's sideboards are facing different directions to help the car turn corners at the fast speeds. The wing itself adds a downforce to the car, which prevents it from suddenly flying off the ground. Even if the car does somehow become airborne, the wings efficiently absorb the energy and break off, keeping the impact off the driver inside the car.

These wings, which were first installed by sprint car drivers in the 1970s, are actually what inspired the World of Outlaws to come into existence. The safety provided by the wings allowed the sanctioning body to actively promote the potentially dangerous motorsport. In 1978, Ted Johnson established World of Outlaws, to give sprint car drivers a regular race series with standardized rules and cash rewards.

The sprint car series begins every year in Florida every February. It travels coast-to-coast through different race tracks all over the country, including the famous Eldora Speedway in Ohio, the Silver Dollar Speedway in California, the Williams Grove Speedway in Pennsylvania, and a special race event in the middle of the series called the Knoxville Nationals at the Knoxville Raceway in Iowa. The series concludes in November. The 2007 race culminated at Lowe's Motor Speedway in North Carolina, with Donny Schatz emerging as the 2007 champion.

A resident of Fargo, North Dakota, Schatz followed in his father's footsteps as a sprint car racer by abandoning go-karts for sprint cars, racing at the regional level at the young age of 15. By 18, he joined the World of Outlaws series and was awarded Rookie of the Year in 1997. Adjudged as one of the best racers of the series, Schatz won the championship in 2006 and retained his title in 2007.

Before his 2006 win, Steve Kinser was the reigning champ and is famous for winning the series a total of 20 times. Deemed as the world's all-time best sprint racer by sports journalists and rival racers alike, Kinser was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 2005. His son, Kraig, is also a sprint car racer and won the 2005 Knoxville Nationals. Although Steve Kinser's participation in the 2007 World of Outlaws series is considered his most frustrating, he continues to race with guns blazing, finding success in the Australian Open, winning the race at the Parramatta City Raceway on New Year's day.

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