What It Means To Win The Chili Bowl Nationals

Column By: DYLAN FRIEBEL / RPW – TULSA, OK – The Chili Bowl. If you win it, it’s career-defining. Just ask Rico Abreu. If you’ve lost the shot to win your first, its heart-breaking. Just ask Kyle Larson.

For one week every January in Tulsa, OK, race fans from all corners of the world head to the River Spirit Expo Center to welcome another race season in. Reserved seating sells out months in advance, but they never stop selling pit passes. You’d think for an event that draws 350+ Midgets, the purse would be high. Well, the winner only gets $10,000, which is less than some Super DIRTcar Series races.

So why do fans and racers come? It’s the prestige of winning probably the hardest dirt race in the world. Sure, there are some other big races to win…the Knoxville Nationals, the Kings Royal, the World and Dream 100, Super Dirt Week…but nothing compares to winning the Chili Bowl Nationals. Even NASCAR Star Kyle Larson has said he wants to win this event more than the Daytona 500.

You wanna know how hard it is to make the A-Main for this event? Look at multi-time World Of Outlaws Sprint Car Champion Donny Schatz, who this year, didn’t make it passed the D-Main! He’s currently the best in the world to strap into a 410 sprint car. Rico Abreu, last year, had a terrible preliminary night and had the run the Alphabet soup on Saturday. He couldn’t make it and had to use the Champion Provisional after winning back to back in 2015 and 16.

Just making the 24 car field on Saturday is the goal from some. For a handful of others, it’s winning the whole thing.

Every year for us here in the Northeast, we have a few drivers to cheer for. Our bright spot in 2017 was Larry Wight, who finished top 3 in his prelim night and locked himself into the A-Main. Come Saturday, no soup needed for him.

This year was Billy Pauch Jr., who tried so many times before and couldn’t muster better than a C-Main. This year, he got the deal done in the B-Main come Saturday night and finished a respectable 18th in the A.

However a very promising Prelim night can turn bad quickly and Vermont-native Adam Pierson learned that all too well. After a good heat race, Adam spun from the front row in his A-Main Qualifier and B-Main. Even Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series star and 2006 Chili Bowl champion Tim McCreadie didn’t make the field this season.

However, winning wasn’t everything to the winner Christopher Bell. His comments in an article by Jeff Gluck caught my eye. He was, in his words, “heart broken” because fans didn’t get the battle to the end between him and Kyle Larson. The guy just won the Chili Bowl for the second straight year and he was worried about that.

“Man, I’m disappointed,” Bell told Jeff Gluck on Saturday. “That’s the right word. I feel like Kyle got robbed, I got robbed and the fans got robbed. I wanted to race it out. I’m disappointed we didn’t get that.”

Christopher Bell, who had a career year in NASCAR in 2017 winning the Camping World Truck Series Championship, cares more about the health of the Chili Bowl that winning. That’s something, ain’t it? However he is right, though.

The first 41 laps of the event were electric…watching slide jobs with traffic playing a part, and the back-and-forth battle between Bell and Larson. Without the excitement of a great battle year after year between motorsports biggest names, how can an event like the Chili Bowl survive? How can we expect drivers from every different dirt car there is in the country and everywhere else in the world to come back year after year.

Every walk of life take their annual vacation, not to the beach, but to the midwest of the United States for a week to watch race cars go in circles. It’s a sight to behold year after year.

If you’ve never been to a dirt race, the Chili Bowl is the best and greatest introduction to our little slice of motorsports we can offer. Bring someone new to a track in 2018 and see their face light up like a kid on Christmas.

Hats off to everyone who organized, raced and watched this year’s Chili Bowl.

Now, on to the next “Chili Bowl Week.”