Tonight is the night! The 2017 Spring Season kicks off tonight and will be our biggest season yet! We’re excited to get back on the track, and here’s what’s new this season:
DIVISION CHANGES
In case you missed the Admin’s Blog (click HERE), we made some changes to our divisions this season. Monday nights will see the SK Modifieds move up to Tour Modifieds and will now be known as the Modified Series. The Street Stock division is taking on an ARCA-style schedule and will now be known as the Callaway Investments Sportsman Series. While we wait for the arrival of Dirt racing to come to SARA, we have removed the Pro Late Model division and we will be running a mini-season at Southern National in the Hides Pride Southern Series. The only thing unchanged this season, will be that our Super Late Model division will continue to be the premier SLM series on iRacing on Thursday nights, now known as The Button Box Shop Super Series.
PRIZES AND PAYOUTS
We’re extremely excited to announce that there will be $700 in cash prizes available during the regular season. Thanks to our great sponsors, and some league members who wanted to step up and support the league, we have a number of prizes and awards available this season.
For the first time, we will be awarding weekly payouts to the Super Late Model division, as well as an end of season purse. The top three drivers in each race will receive a portion of the weekly purse, and the top three in points at the end of the season will win a share of the season purse. The only restriction to the weekly payouts, will be that a driver must race in at least 8 races during the SLM season to receive their payout, otherwise the prize money will be forfeited and will be added to the end of season payout. This is being put in place to reward the drivers that attempt to run a majority of the season rather than someone who only shows up a couple times. ALL weekly and seasonal payouts will be paid at the end of the season all at once. See the chart below for the weekly and seasonal payouts:
| Weekly Payouts | Season Payouts | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st each race | $7 | Season Champion | $25 | |
| 2nd each race | $5 | 2nd in points | $15 | |
| 3rd each race | $3 | 3rd in points | $10 | |
| TOTAL | $15 | 4th & 5th in points | $5 each | |
| x11 Races TOTAL | $165 | TOTAL | $60 | |
| Weekly Payout Totals | ||||
| Driver | Payout | |||
| Joe Schaffer Jr. | $29 | |||
| David Krikorian | $29 | |||
| Trevor Edwards | $19 | |||
| Bill Martin | $15 | |||
| Colin Allman | $12 | |||
| Adam Benefiel | $11 | |||
| Ty Spearman | $10 | |||
| Jimmy Mullis | $10 | |||
| Matt Rolfe | $7 | |||
| Ty Majeski | $7 | |||
| Tim Bills | $5 | |||
| Landon Sciacca | $5 | |||
| Kyle Souza | $3 | |||
| Derek Robinson | $3 |
In addition to the weekly and seasonal payouts, the following prize money is up for grabs as well. These prizes do not have a minimum start requirement unless otherwise noted.
Super Series prizes:
Hides Pride Rising Star Award – $100 – In four select races, at Stafford, Oxford, Irwindale, and Lanier, there will be a $25 prize available to a “Rising Star”. To be eligible for a Rising Star award, a driver must have no previous Super Late Model wins, and must have competed in one of the select four races in the 2016 Fall Season and finished within 5 laps of the leader. The driver at each race that improves their finishing position the most from last season to this season’s race, will be awarded $25. (For example, if a driver finished 17th and -2 laps down in the Irwindale race last fall, and gains the most position out of all eligible drivers at this season’s Irwindale race, they will be awarded the $25 prize.)
Dean’s Satellite & Security Pole Awards – $70 – $5 will be awarded to the pole winner of each race, and a $10 bonus to the driver that scores the most poles at the end of the season.
Triple Crown – $40 – The top five drivers in the Triple Crown points at the end of the season will split a $40 purse – 1st $15, 2nd $10, 3rd $7, 4th $5, 5th $3
Most Laps Completed – $20 – The driver that completes the most overall laps throughout the season will be awarded $20.
Clean Driver – $20 – The driver with the lowest inc/race, with a full points season recorded (at least 10 out of 12 starts) will be awarded $20.
Most Wins – $10 – The driver that scores the most wins at the end of the season will be awarded $10.
Most Laps Led – $10 – The driver that leads the most laps at the end of the season will be awarded $10.
Rookie of the Season – $5 – The highest finishing Rookie at the end of the season (based on Rookie points outlined on the division page), will be awarded $5.
Modified Series prizes:
Triple Crown – $40 – The top five drivers in the Triple Crown points at the end of the season will split a $40 purse – 1st $15, 2nd $10, 3rd $7, 4th $5, 5th $3
Rookie of the Season – $5 – The highest finishing Rookie at the end of the season (based on Rookie points outlined on the division page), will be awarded $5
Sportsman Series prizes:
Towards the end of the season, we will be broadcasting one Street Stock race within the regular season. Details are still being worked on and will be finalized within the next couple of weeks, but the event will be a regular points race but with at least 200 laps, and a prize fund starting at $85. More details will be announced #soon.
ALL PRIZE MONEY WILL BE PAID OUT AT THE END OF THE 2017 SPRING SEASON
SARA PARTNERS
We’re extremely happy to partner with some great sponsors for the 2017 Spring Season, including five returning sponsors and five new ones. Click on the logos below to support those who support us:
DOWNLOADS
With new division logos, new sponsors, and a new season, we’ve updated all of our graphics on the Download Page, including new contingencies and new winner stickers. Please update your cars accordingly with the new graphics if possible.
WEATHER AND TIME OF DAY
For the past few seasons since the new Time of Day (TOD) settings came out in iRacing, we have utilized two different TOD settings for each practice/qual session and race session, and because of that we ended up limiting the weather to have overcast skies to minimize the track temperature changes between sessions.
New this season, that will change. Both sessions each night will utilize the same TOD setting. So any race listed as a late afternoon race, will qualify in those conditions as well as race in those conditions as well.
This will allow us to open up weather conditions to something other than overcast skies. We’ll be able to see sunlight again! We will continue to give a weather forecast for every race each week, and the weather will be static for both sessions each night. We hope these changes will allow the new surface model to have more effect on our races, which could in turn equal better racing all around.
MAJOR EVENT PLANS
Last year we introduced the Big 3 Series, three major events with one occurring each season, with the intent that these races would become our marquee events each year. The featured multiple divisions, lots of laps, and some big money.
However, as Dirt fast approaches, we wanted to put more of a focus this year on preparing for it. But with it being unknown when Dirt will come out it makes it hard to prepare for. The plan however will be to test Dirt for a few weeks once it is finally released and then we will prepare not only for full seasons of Dirt racing, but a major Dirt Week as well. It’s still too early to plan any actual details yet, but we think having a big event for Dirt will make up for not having a couple of Big 3 events.
The Fall Brawl will definitely be returning later in the year though, as the event has become iRacing’s biggest short track race for two years in a row and last year’s race proved why some of the best choose to race at SARA. More details will be released later in the year.
SITE FEATURES
We learned last season that many of our race articles were just simply not being read. We move towards doing a weekly recap article instead but that didn’t produce many views either, and we realized that it just wasn’t worth it to put that much effort into articles. What we have learned is that people seem to like some of the other features that we have produced other than articles.
We will fully reintroduce the Power Rankings as a weekly feature, ranking the top 10 drivers from across the league each week.
The SARA Podcast will make a return this season, as a few drivers will get together and discuss all things SARA. We’re unsure on how many episodes we’ll do at this time, but the first episode this season should come out within the first two weeks of the season.
The SARA Live page will continue to be a portal for all of our live broadcasts. This will be the go-to place to find the link(s) for the broadcast each week and you’ll be able to access our previous broadcasts from the SLM season on the same page as well.
And lastly, while we will be getting rid of the full race recaps, we will be posting the winners’ picture for each race as a post, so they can be feature on the home page throughout the season, and when the link it clicked on it will bring you to the division page for that respective race.
RULEBOOK
The Rulebook has been updated for the 2017 Spring Season. Not a whole lot has changed other than what’s been mentioned above. Click HERE to view the Rulebook. Anything mentioned in orange is new this season, and anything in blue is worth special noting. We will be adding notes to the rulebook specific to the payouts and prize money within the next few days.