Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series director Rick Schwallie hasn’t changed up the national tour’s schedule much in recent years. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

“I feel like we have a lot of success at our events,” Schwallie said. “We don’t promote any of them. All of them are promoted by tracks. The tracks are the ones financially responsible. All of our tracks are doing well. That’s why we routinely go back to the same ones year and after year because they do well. We’ve been able over the years to expand them as they’ve done well.”

But rescheduling consistently successfully tracks "doesn’t leave us a lot of room to go visit new places.” This week’s five-race swing from Eagle (Neb.) Raceway to Shelby County Speedway in Harlan, Iowa, and Huset’s Speedway in Brandon, S.D., opened with a pair of first-time series tracks ahead of a return to Huset's, which had its first national touring Dirt Late Model event two years ago on the Lucas Oil circuit.

The initial Huset's visit in 2022 made a grand enough impression to entrust the Silver Dollar Nationals — a race founded at the now-closed I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, Neb. — to the third-mile, sprint-car stronghold in South Dakota starting last season. And the first-time tracks provided a link between the 500-mile trip from July 13’s CMH Diamond Nationals at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., and Huset's for three nights of racing capped by the $53,000 Silver Dollar Nationals finale.

“We really needed to a fill void traveling to Wheatland up to Huset’s, but I didn’t expect to have two like this,” Schwallie said. “We’re hammering down racing on a Monday and Tuesday. And having a Wednesday travel day to get on up the road. All these guys are out here doing it for a living. Let’s keep them racing while they’re out. We’ve had a rotten start to our weekend losing Tri-City and Wheatland to rain (July 12-13) … but we’ve had a good week.

“It sucks we lost I-80, but we’ve been able to expand and take that weekend to reapply it at Huset’s. Now we have a great three-day event with a quarter-million-dollar purse,” Schwallie added. “We filled these little gaps here. Now we have two racetracks that want to do a lot more, and are capable of doing a lot more, and the race teams love being out here at them. It’s a tough spot when you don’t have enough weekends.”

Eagle Raceway ultimately made its way on the Lucas Oil Series schedule after last year’s ultrasuccessful High Limit Racing sprint car series midweek event. Schwallie calls himself “no sprint car guy, but I’ve gotten interested in sprint car racing” because he “communicates quite a bit with the High Limit crew.”

This year, the Lucas Oil Series shares two events with the fledgling national sprint car tour — Feb. 24 at Georgia’s Golden Isles Speedway and Oct. 1 at Ohio’s Atomic Speedway — and because of the cross promotion, “we’re tuned into their events and they’re tuned into ours.”

Upon Tuesday's finish at Shelby County Speedway, High Limit Racing series director Mike Hess sent Schwallie a message asking about the Harlan, Iowa, facility.

“The checkered flag falls and I get a text immediately from Mike Hess that says: ‘Shelby County, you think our cars could go around that?’ ” Schwallie said. “It’s been fun to share some common ground among our disciplines. Again, I’m no sprint car guy. There’s stereotypes that are sprint car places. I feel like sprint car is isolated in pockets, like siloed in pockets where they race. I think they’ve done a good job of expanding outside of that a good bit like Florence" Speedway in Union, Ky.

As High Limit Racing has ventured to new markets, specifically Dirt Late Model strongholds like Golden Isles Speedway in Brunswick, Ga., and Florence, Schwallie is compelled to do the same with the Lucas Oil Series. The race at Eagle was the first national touring Dirt Late Model event at the Nebraska oval since the World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series visited in 2004.

“Look at Eagle. It’s a sprint car track and I think we put on a helluva show. … It was awesome to get to come here and watch the High Limit race back in June,” Schwallie said. “I think, when the schedule came out, a lot of our race teams were like, ‘Eagle!’ I think they circled this one that it’d be cool to go do. I think it lived up to that.

“Our teams were energetic about coming and I think the fan base was glad to see us back. And it raced really good. It was a really good racetrack. All of that made for a great night.”

“Two years ago, Huset’s was nothing but a sprint car racetrack,” Schwallie added. “These are great racetracks and they’re a lot fun to go race. We can put on a helluva show, too. It’s been fun to see some of that come to fruition.”

Eagle Raceway management “has already expressed they’d like to expand to more than a single-night show,” said Schwallie, who noted he has “good problems” to solve with his tour’s schedule.

“I know these folks here (at Shelby County) are just as energetic,” Schwallie said. “It’s nice to find a couple racetracks that can produce really good racing.”

On Tuesday, Schwallie decided to run the Lucas Oil Series feature last following the support division IMCA Late Model feature to reward Shelby County’s packed crowd with more time in the pits at night’s end with drivers. Droves of patrons took advantage of Schwallie’s fan-friendly thinking.

“Just looking around right now, the amount of people in the pits, this is crazy,” Schwallie said. “This is like how it is after the checkered flag on Friday night at Knoxville or somewhere. There’s a lot of people down here. We’re enjoying it.”

Joe Kosiski, former promoter of Greenwood, Neb.’s now-defunct I-80 Speedway and Silver Dollar Nationals, supports the Lucas Oil Series midweek specials leading into the $53,000-to-win event he poured his heart and soul into. Living in Omaha, Neb., he’s “almost halfway in the middle of” Eagle Raceway and Shelby County.

“I’m glad that it’s up at Huset’s. … They’re doing the things we like to see happen,” Kosiski said. “But I’m also glad these couple races are on the way up getting here. I think after racing here and Eagle, I think the drivers are wanting to be here way more than anyone thinks. I think they’re walking away from both racetracks thinking they’re great venues (for the national series) to visit.”

Kosiski, among with his brother Steve, also sponsored Tuesday’s program at Shelby County, an event dubbed the Kosiski Family 53, honoring his father Bob and the family's long racing legacy in the region.

“A lot of people asked me what our involvement was in this race. Our involvement was we were just sponsors,” Kosiski said. “I told a lot of people, I hate waiting to have a memorial race. I’d rather do it as a family race and have my dad and mom here. And them being able to enjoy it as a family. That’s why it’s named the Kosiski Family 53. … I think it was well worth it, yes.

“Where does my involvement go from here? I have to figure that out. My dad Bob is going to be 90. Maybe we do it again next year and hopefully they’re going to be in good shape, and go from there.”

Considering all the above, Schwallie’s been so fond of racing Monday and Tuesday — something he can’t recall ever doing outside Georgia-Florida Speedweek — that “I can see us doing this a little more of this right here.” That, of course, is within reason because “I don’t know if this leaves you thinking we should be racing more or less.”

But Schwallie “wouldn’t mind racing a few more times, and coming and going to some places to put together two events between a race, especially when you race out here.”

“Racetracks out in the Midwest are so great,” Schwallie said. “It seems like Iowa races every night of the week. They do support it.”

Schwallie added that he “wouldn’t mind doing something like this in New York,” perhaps “a lead-up to a weekend after Lernerville Speedway’s” late-June Firecracker 100 weekend in Sarver, Pa.

“Or something like that before we race in Ohio" around the Fourth of July weekend at Portsmouth Raceway Park and Zanesville's Muskingum County Speedway, he added. “That’s been something on my mind.”

SSI Motorsports crew chief Anthony Burroughs “100 percent” approves of added midweek race nights “as long as they pay well.” It also helps touring teams and drivers that the series took the last weekend of June off and will go on a two-weekend break before Aug. 8-10’s North-South 100 at Florence Speedway. Schedules can quickly fill up for teams have, among all events, often total more than 80 starts per season, but Burroughs insists “we want to race every day.”

When we go to test, we don’t learn a whole lot,” Burroughs said. “It’s just not racing conditions. When we’re able to race, we can learn a lot more. Just racing, you can learn so much more than going to test with a couple cars. I like the midweek stuff. We’re racers. We make a living racing. We make more money racing than we do sitting at home.”

Schwallie believes “we have the right mixture of big events, single-day events … pulling in and pulling out, leaving to go down the road to another one.

“Our teams love that variety. We like it, too,” Schwallie said. “I think it’s been a fun season so far.”

The Lucas Oil Series this season boasts all-time highs with 17 campaigners and an average car count of 50.8 through 31 race nights. Seeing those numbers, Schwallie’s proud of the tour's schedule.

“We had two good nights,” Schwallie said. “We’re enthusiastic about getting up to Huset’s. Weather hampered that last year. We didn’t get the true side of it. The year before when we were there for our first visit, it raced very well. I think this whole swing was one everybody on our schedule had earmarked, that it was going to be a fun week. It really has been so far. I enjoyed both of them.”