SRX Puts Expansion on the Table for Future Seasons

• In an exclusive interview with Autoweek, Superstars Racing Experience CEO Don Hawk said next season’s six race dates—July 11, 18 and 25, and August 1, 8 and 15—are already set.

• Unfortunately for racing fans in distant outposts across the West Coast, it’s looking like SRX won’t be coming to your hometown any time soon.

• Hawk has had nearly 40 short tracks—both paved and dirt—around the country express interest to host SRX events.

The Superstar Racing Experience (SRX) recently completed its third—and by most accounts—its most successful season to date.

SRX had a record 26 all-star drivers that appeared in at least one and as many as all six races of the full six-week season, including NASCAR Hall of Famers Tony Stewart and Bobby Labonte, current Cup stars Brad Keselowski and Kyle Busch (who became only the second driver in SRX history to win both races he entered), 4-time Indianapolis 500 winner Helio Castroneves, former IndyCar driver Tony Kanaan, NHRA driver Ron Capps and many more.

For TV, ESPN took over from CBS, which had televised the first two seasons on Saturday nights in primetime. But ESPN changed things up, televising races on Thursday nights, bringing back its old “Thursday Night Thunder” axiom.

“So many people tell me they love the (TV broadcast) window of two hours,” SRX CEO Don Hawk said. “They know it's going to start on time and it's going to end on time. And they also like the season being compacted.”

SRX hosted its six races in 2023 on five tracks. A sixth track, Thunder Road in Vermont, was forced to cancel its SRX race (the second event of the season) due to flooding that inundated the Barre, Vt. area. But SRX pulled off a seamless substitution switch to Stafford (Conn.) Speedway, which hosted both the first and second races of the season.

With two races at Stafford and single events at Motor Mile Speedway (Virginia), Berlin Raceway (Michigan), the Stewart-owned Eldora Speedway (Ohio) and the finale at Lucas Oil Speedway (Missouri), SRX enjoyed sellouts at each venue.

So what does SRX do for an encore in 2024? In an exclusive interview with Autoweek, Hawk said next season’s six race dates—July 11, 18 and 25, and August 1, 8 and 15—are already set, although venues and drivers are still to be determined.

But expansion is definitely on everyone’s minds, particularly Hawk, a former executive at Speedway Motorsports Inc., who took over as CEO from another NASCAR Hall of Famer and SRX co-founder, Ray Evernham, after the inaugural 2021 season.

“What I've asked the owners to do is help me help you, in the words of Jerry Maguire,” Hawk said. “I want to get it down so that we're a really sleek, smooth operating machine at six, then maybe you get sleek at eight (races), then you go to 10.

“I already have in the budget for 2024 to build more race cars. Now whether or not we field more, that's a product of finances. It’s like I have to be a salesman, I have to sell 12 cars. That's equivalent to SHR (Stewart Haas Racing), JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing) and Hendrick Motorsports in Cup.

“SRX has owners that I can tell them, ‘Guys, I can run 10 more cars.’ But we’ve got to raise money then for 22 cars total, like having 22 major sponsors. And that's when everybody was like, ‘Yeah, that’s a lot.’ I want to grow it, but I'd rather grow it like we are now and it gets better and better.”

But there remains one downside somewhat.

“It's a tough grind (for traveling SRX team members such as mechanics, etc.), to go that hard for six straight weeks,” Hawk said.

If multiple cars are destroyed or severely damaged in wrecks, that further compounds the labor and time the SRX mechanics must put in.

“Take, for example, one race where we had an engine blow,” Hawk said. “When an engine blows on a racetrack, it’s normally not a problem. Okay, we blow an engine. But every single fluid in the car came out on the racetrack and we lost five cars with it (in a multi-car wreck).”

Still, the recently completed season saw significant growth.

“Year 3, we knocked it out of the park when you look at the talented 26 different race car drivers in our automobiles, big sellout crowds, escalating TV ratings, which is good when you switch from primetime to cable,” Hawk said.

In a sense, SRX is a product of its own success. Hawk has had nearly 40 short tracks—both paved and dirt—around the country express interest to host SRX events. And Hawk already has nearly 40 drivers wanting to be part of the game in 2024.

Unfortunately, he’s going to have to tell several drivers—including some big names—that there’s no room at the inn for them.