DirtonDirt exclusive

Lucas Oil's shift triggers Speedweeks redefinition

May 22, 2025, 10:37 am

By Todd Turner

DirtonDirt managing editor

Volusia hosts a Speedweeks-high nine events in 2026. (joshjamesartwork.com)

A new era of Dirt Late Model racing’s Georgia-Florida Speedweeks is upon us.

With the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series revealing Thursday morning that it will boldly shift its dozen Speedweeks events to late February and early March for 2026, the informal winter miniseries that in years past was a tightly-knit two weeks between a few tracks will now stretch a record-long 45 days among at least a half-dozen ovals.

Action is tentatively set to begin with Jan. 22’s World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series opener at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., and run through Lucas Oil’s March 7 Speedweeks finale at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga.

It will mark the first time in 42 seasons that a Speedweeks-connected Dirt Late Model event will be run after the Daytona 500, the season-opening NASCAR event at Daytona International Speedway that for decades marked the symbolic conclusion of winter action for snowbird teams competing in all types of race cars.

Next season’s tentative 25-race Speedweeks schedule for DIRTcar, the Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series, Lucas Oil, WoO and perhaps other racing organizations also marks the first time Speedweeks doesn’t fit within a 31-day window.

The Lucas Oil Series revamped its schedule with post-Daytona 500 dates to provide drivers a longer offseason and potentially find warmer late-winter weather, tour director Rick Schwallie said, adding the series leaned on driver feedback in creating what could be argued is a newly created Speedweeks 2.0.

Dirt Late Model racing’s version of Speedweeks was mostly a dozen races or fewer from 1971-2000, but in the last 25 years has sometimes surpassed 20 races with multiple tours and tracks in south Georgia and Florida joining the loosely affiliated action. Six-race stretches at East Bay Raceway Park in Gibsonton, Fla., and Volusia often provided the crux of the schedule, so when East Bay closed after the 2024 season, it sent the Lucas Oil officials seeking a post-East Bay identity to replace the third-mile track that hosted 116 Lucas Oil events (and 205 Speedweeks races overall) from 1978-2024, second only to Volusia’s 270 Speedweeks events).

Mark Richards, who operates the Rocket Chassis house car team that has competed in hundreds of Speedweeks events, is willing to give the new-look Speedweeks the benefit of the doubt. The idea of a longer offseason before his team tackles Lucas Oil action is a positive.

"I think it'll be different. I don't know if it's better. I guess time will tell,” Richards said. “Traditional Speedweeks is over. Whenever we lost East Bay, traditional Speedweeks is no longer. We don't have traditional Speedweeks, so (Lucas Oil is) trying something new and time will tell. Will we ever see it back like it was? I doubt it.”

Joshua Joiner, who co-founded and manages the Hunt the Front circuit that’s scheduled to host Jan. 30-31 events at Needmore Speedway in Norman Park, Ga., likes the possibilities of Speedweeks 2026.

"I think this longer, more spread out Speedweeks schedule is going to redefine what the whole stretch feels like,” said Joiner, whose series joined Speedweeks for the first time in 2025. “Instead of everything being packed into a few weeks, it’s now turning into a kind of season of its own that gives fans and teams a chance to pick and choose their stops, stay longer in certain areas, and treat it more like a vacation than just a racing trip. I personally think that’ll make for a more enjoyable experience for everyone.”

In recent years, Dirt Late Model Racing’s Speedweeks crept earlier and earlier, thanks in part to WoO added its Sunshine Nationals beginning in 2021, a three-race Volusia weekend in January to open the national tour’s season before February’s traditional DIRTcar Nationals. Lucas Oil’s early-season dates soon shifted to late January from early February and in 2025 the tour opened Jan. 17 at Golden Isles a weekend ahead of the Sunshine Nationals.

The last five Speedweeks seasons have seen 36 of the 51 January events held since 2000.

“Teams have been looking for a change to Speedweeks. We listened,” Schwallie said in a Lucas Oil release. “Racing in mid-January has become too daunting for everyone. The offseason isn’t long enough, and the gap between Speedweeks and the regular season is too much. The weather is also very unpredictable. If teams and fans are going to travel for Speedweeks, we want to provide them with a sure bet and give them an experience they can enjoy.”

Richards likes the idea of potentially better weather, but wonders how spectators — some who have taken mid-winter vacations to Speedweeks for decades — will embrace the miniseries evolution.

“The weather starts getting better later in February, especially up (at Golden Isles). You won't be fighting that chance of such bad weather like you do in January,” Richards said. "My question about all of it is: does it change the landscape as far as the fans go? It may change that a little bit. Because the fans, you know, like that January break to get out of the cold and go south, and then the (Daytona) 500 seems to be the end of it. I guess time will tell whether the fans like it in February or they like it in January.”

Michael Rigsby, general manager of streaming partner FloRacing, the presenting sponsor of the Lucas Oil circuit, is willing to give the new Speedweeks era a chance.

"We certainly are entering new territory for Dirt Late Model racing in the winter, and I think overall the industry is going to like this change,” he said. “There will definitely be a getting-used-to-it phase, but when you talk to drivers, team owners and others, they were all looking for a shift later into the year, and this provides them what they were hoping for.

“Perfect? Don't know that yet, but I think we'll get to March of 2026 and say — especially without East Bay — OK, this was a step in the right direction.”

On 2026’s current Speedweeks schedule, WoO’s Sunshine Nationals at Volusia kicks things off before a pair of Georgia tracks — Needmore and Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga. — jump into action with a pair of two-day events the final weekend in January and first weekend in February.

Volusia’s DIRTcar Nationals, hosting a Speedweeks-high six nights of racing between DIRTcar and WoO competition, runs from Feb. 9-14, concluding one day before nearby Daytona International Speedway opens the NASCAR season.

With its latest-ever start to the season — an opening date matching its previous latest Speedweeks date from 2017 — Lucas Oil runs Feb. 19-21 at All-Tech Raceway in Ellisville, Fla., then Feb. 24-28 at Ocala (Fla.) Speedway. Golden Isles concludes Lucas Oil’s action March 4-7.

Provided there are no rainouts or cancellations, the 25 scheduled events would mark the most Speedweeks in history, surpassing the 24 completed events among eight tracks in 2022 from Jan. 21-Feb. 19, a year that included three low-profile Super Late Model events at Putnam Raceway in Satsuma, Fla.

Veteran racing racing historian Bob Markos, a vital part of the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame, saw many of the earliest Speedweeks races in the 1970s when racers from around the country descended on Florida for an annual tradition that’s now more than 50 years old. The tracks, sanctions and drivers have changed over time and the 2026 schedule brings a new wrinkle, he wrote in an email.

"It has evolved from just a few days of mud-slinging activities into enough dates to cover from late January thorugh a good portion of February,” Markos said of Speedweeks, which has long kept “fans hopping from one location to another across northern and central Florida, forever providing top-notch competition while yearly pitting the cream of the crop of Dirt Late Model (teams) from all points.

“With the announcement of scheduled March events now stretching the crusade across three winter months, Florida Dirt Speedweeks will most certainly now take on a personality of its own as a season in itself.”

Richards isn’t sure Speedweeks will return to what he remembers as its best years, but he plans to stick around and continue fielding cars during one of the most popular stretches of the Dirt Late Model season.

“I think we’re in a different world, we’re in a different time. I think the days of Volusia and East Bay — they pretty much were Speedweeks — then we turned it into Speedmonth,” said Richards, adding that the miniseries has lost some luster with East Bay’s demise and reaching that heyday again will take time.

HTF’s Joiner sees the restructuring of where the WoO and Lucas Oil circuits fall on the schedule as likely to draw more regional racers back to Speedweeks.

“One of the coolest things about Speedweeks back in the day was how it brought together a mix of cars you really didn’t get to see anywhere else. You had your top-level national touring stars, but you also had tons of regional and local racers making the trip south. I feel like that’s been missing lately,” Joiner said in an email. “A lot of those regional guys have stayed home rather than racing against crown jewel-caliber fields every single night. But with this new format, and with series like ours filling some of the gaps, there’s a real chance to bring that diverse mix back. You’re still going to have national touring guys racing every night, but it won’t be all of them. I think we’re going to see that open the door for more local and regional racers from across the country to be part of Speedweeks again.”