Road America adds stadium off-road trucks to NASCAR Xfinity Series weekend – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Keeping four wheels on the ground is typically among the unspoken goals for racers competing at Road America, but next season’s schedule contains a notable exception.
The Elkhart Lake facility has added the SPEED Energy Stadium SUPER Trucks series to its NASCAR weekend schedule Aug. 23-25.
“We always enjoy adding more for our fans to experience and the Stadium SUPER Truck Series is the perfect combination for our fans and our facility,” George Bruggenthies, track president and general manager, said in the announcement made Tuesday.
“Wisconsin is truck country and this is going to be a new and incredible experience for our fans. We encourage everyone to stake out a good viewing spot because it’s going to be wild watching these racers race, jump and fly through the air around our legendary racecourse.”
The series launched five years ago by former NASCAR and Indy-car driver Robby Gordon is an homage to the old Mickey Thompson stadium off-road races of the 1980s to mid-’90s that put desert-style racing directly in front of fans. Gordon won the 1989 Mickey Thompson title, and seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson raced in the series early in his career.
SST features identically prepared 650-horsepower trucks that are built to take flight. Races will feature four 36-inch-tall aluminum ramps that launch the trucks as high as 20 feet and for hundreds of feet.
The series will use the front side of the 4-mile road course — cutting from Turn 5 to Turn 13 — while the NASCAR Xfinity Series and SCCA pro Trans Am Series will stick to the traditional layout. SST races are planned for Friday and before the Xfinity Series main event on Saturday.
Matthew Brabham, a two-race IndyCar starter and former Indy Lights regular, leads the Stadium SUPER Trucks standings through nine of 10 weekends on the 2017 schedule.
The series raced in conjunction with IndyCar four times this year — St. Petersburg, Long Beach, Detroit and Texas — and also alongside V8 SuperCar events in Australia. A typical field this season has been about 10 trucks.