May 25, 2022 | By Lee Spencer

Going to Xtreme: Outlaw Midgets shine in Millbridge debut

SALISBURY, N.C.—Remember Thursday Night Thunder? 

In the mid-to-late 80s, ESPN introduced sports fans to a variety of open-wheel series and race tracks. The program showcased the talents of a variety of drivers and helped launch the NASCAR careers of Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman, Kasey Kahne and the late Kenny Irwin.

Race fans rejoice. World Racing Group’s Xtreme Outlaw Midgets and  Xtreme Outlaw Sprint Car Series is ready to fill the void. The 20-race schedule will be broadcast on DIRTVision. 

On Tuesday night, the Xtreme Outlaws Midget Series presented by Toyota Racing debuted at Millbridge Raceway—about 40 minutes north of Charlotte. Plenty of drivers opted for double duty between the midgets and 600cc micro sprints, including NASCAR Cup champion Kyle Larson. 

Brian Carter, CEO of the World Racing Group, welcomed the competitors during the drivers’ meeting and thanked them for their participation. Five months after the new series was announced at the Performance Racing Industry show in Indianapolis, Carter was ready to see his new series come to life.

“We’ve got some big plans for the midget series and there’s a lot of opportunity,” Carter said. “We want to make sure we mesh in and the weekends are pretty much covered. We’re going to work on these weekday shows and see how successful they are. It needs to be a balancing act—successful for everybody. It needs to make sense for the race tracks and the series.

“We’re looking at all those options for growing the series for next year. We really like the exposure that we get on a weekday—especially here on the home tracks to NASCAR and all the guys here. And they have a great program here on weekly basis on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.”

WRG has picked up Millbridge's weekly racing as part of DIRTVision’s regular programming. That exposure alone has been an added bonus to aspiring drivers not only in the area but nationwide. With Millbridge nestled in NASCAR country, the one-sixth-mile track has been a proving ground for the kids and a playground for their fathers. 

The competition at Millbridge has attracted national talent as well as non-traditional dirt drivers looking for grassroots experience and fun. Third-generation dirt racer Chase Briscoe is one of the NASCAR regulars.

“What they’ve done with the mini-sprint class is pretty unbelievable,” Briscoe said of the track. “When they started they were getting maybe seven or eight cars and now they’re getting 40-45 every week. I actually mentioned to Jeremy and Ashley (Barnett, track owners) that I would love for them to start a special midget race once a month because there is already realistically 9 to 10 midgets in the area. I think Larson, (Christopher) Bell, myself, we would all go run over there, especially if it was in a midget, every chance we could.  

“I would love to see them maybe do it once a month or once every other month. I know from a purse standpoint it costs a lot more to run the midget guys, but it would be cool. The micro deal has really taken off and to give these micro kids more opportunities to run bigger cars and just get bigger cars in the area, I think, would be really special.”

This latest midget series has attracted racers from coast-to-coast. Tuesday night’s inaugural Xtreme winner was local standout Gavan Boschele, 14, from Mooresville, N.C. driving the No. 5 Bullet/Toyota for the Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsport juggernaut. The 35-driver field that was whittled down to 20 cars for the A-Main also featured Chance Crum from Snohomish, Wash., Chandler, Arizona’s Hayden Reinbold and Kevin Woody Jr.—a  life-long race fan and Army veteran from Rochester, New York, looking to jumpstart his career with the Oklahoma-based Dave Mac Motorsports.

Woody, 34, saved money from his deployment to Afghanistan to buy his first race car. Although the former Airborne Infantryman subsidizes his efforts from his business Combat Cleaning Services, he's hoping his performance will draw additional supporters. 

"My game plan is to run the entire Xtreme Outlaws schedule but it will depend on sponsorship," Woody said. "I need to show what I can do on the track. Getting in good equipment is half the battle."

Team owner Dave McIntosh, who also fields midgets for his son Cannon and other drivers out of his Bixby, Okla. shop in USAC, POWRi and now the Xtreme Outlaw Series, sees the potential of a better paying tour with solid exposure, particularly with the price of racing escalating.

“For me and my team, it gives us another avenue of racing midgets at a high level,” said McIntosh, who brought four midgets to Millbridge. “The thing is, we want to race at the highest level, and that’s what you get with the World of Outlaws in the Xtreme Series. Hopefully, it makes everybody want to up the playing field as far as taking care of the drivers and the teams that are struggling to get up and down the road to hit all these races. 

“I'd like to see the purses come up across the board. If there's no competition, if you're the only game in town, you just dangle out whatever they want to pay and we show up for that. I don't know that there's a lot of room for it to grow like that, but if there is, I would sure like to feel it with the cost going up just to get to the race track and have good quality help and drivers. For me, it's huge.”