ST. LOUIS, Mo. (Dec. 4) — Each year, thanks to event promoter Cody Sommer and his staff, the Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center continues to grow in stature. 

More tickets were sold last year than ever before and this year, Late Model driver registration sold out in 15 minutes when it opened on Aug. 11. Those are the two most glaring developments that testify of the indoor spectacle's ever-growing hype and importance on the calendars of Dirt Late Model drivers, teams and supporters alike.

But even as the event widely known as “the Dome” amplifies in stature, Sommer, the founder of the event now in its eighth year, feels like managing the event only becomes more enjoyable as the years pass on.

“We do this big pre-con meeting on Tuesday before the event with the entire staff, the building departments, and these are people that do this for careers, whether it’d be concerts, wrestling, the Final Four (NCAA men’s basketball championship),” the 37-year-old Sommer said late Wednesday evening at the conclusion of setup day inside The Dome at America’s Center. “These are people that are professionals in entertainment and event functionality, and they have even complimented the absolute transformation from this event.

“Not only from an attendance and popularity standpoint, but every aspect. To move in and do what we do in two days is remarkable. It truly is. I even have to remind myself, ‘This is crazy.’ It goes to show you how we fine-tune this thing over the years. Every year I’d say, ‘Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.’ But I sure in heck am tweaking it. I have a 2025 notes in my phone, already started. And it’s already long.”

There are a noteworthy features new to the mega indoor event this year, including a restart zone on the racetrack’s fifth-mile layout sponsored by Octane Race Products. Two concrete bunker walls in the middle of turn four are painted red to denote the restart zone.

“Getting guys to fire at the same time is important,” Sommer said. “Our Octane Race Products Restart Zone is a cool thing.”

The Dome’s back pit area has also been reconfigured to accommodate a vendor row that’s “doubled in size,” so that “when the fans flow through the pits, they’re in an absolute cool vendor space, and the TV is right there when you walk in.”

There’s also a few more degrees of banking in the racing surface, too, as the bottommost part of the indoor oval has three degrees of banking as opposed to virtually none last year. Twelve degrees of banking encircles the top this year whereas last year, the track didn’t exceed 10 degrees of banking.

When asked what goes into refining the fifth-mile layout, Sommer said: “It’s a little bit of all of it. I’m a racer, too. That’s one aspect. I’m also logical, right? When there’s certain people like Nick Hoffman and Bobby Pierce, you name it, big-name guys that do it for a living, when they give you advice, you listen.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going to do what they’re telling me, but I’m going to listen and compile all the thoughts,” Sommer added. “I think a lot of it is just really common sense if you understand racing. That’s why the racing has gotten so good. We’ve done what we’ve needed to do to make the racing so good.”

Among other new Dome additions: Overhead lights in the arena, a 32-foot Christmas tree that’ll go in the back pit area, and champion’s banners hanging from the pit area’s rafters that honor past winners of the event from the Late Model and modified divisions.

“This event has grown … I don’t like to use the word crown jewel, because I believe we are one and nobody’s going to argue different to me. I have a lot of reasons we are (a crown jewel),” Sommer said. “The point is, we’ve grown to an event that the magnitude that means to win this event is so big, I want to honor it. I want to show people that this is our history now.” 

“It’s cool to put this into perspective that we’ve been here for a while now. It’s important to me not only to recognize those guys, but the history of the event. On top of it, now, I want these guys to walk in this pit area and say, ‘I want my name up there.’ It just gave me chills saying it right there. Think about these guys who are going to look up there and want that.

“I’m all about the small elements, they add up to big things. To me, you have to have an emotional connection to the event, for not only fans, but the competitors.”

The interactions that always put a smile on Sommer’s face are the competitors who tell him face-to-face that they never want to see the event go away. Sommer had many of those Wednesday.

“As we’re parking ‘em, they’re saying, ‘Don’t ever stop doing this,’ ” Sommer said. “They’re in love with it. It’s humbling. It’s mind-boggling.”

The Dome indeed isn’t going anywhere anytime soon as Sommer and his crew announced this summer a three-year extension at the St. Louis-based arena through 2027. Sommer has never doubted his vision since the event’s inception in 2016, but if there was ever time his vision felt appeared in limbo, it was the inaugural night in 2016.

“People don’t know this story I’m about to tell … so, Thursday, on Year One, it was midnight and we had a total s---show on our hands,” Sommer said. “I mean, it was not going good. I’m looking at this, like, ‘Everyone is right. It’s going to fail.’ I wasn’t feeling that, but I knew that’s what everyone was thinking who was in the building.

“Normally, that late, you don’t stop the show. But I knew in my gut I had to talk to people. Everybody was down and sad. I didn’t want to end the night that way. We literally had to reset. I stopped the show and took my team in the staff room for 30 minutes.

“I said, ‘We have this, this, and this left to do tonight. We are going to rally through as long as it takes tonight because tomorrow, it’s a new game.’ I had this pep talk, like, ‘Guys, don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on this dream, I’m telling you.’ ”

That Friday morning, Sommer recalls meeting with the Dome’s operations staff and how “they had some very serious concerns about the ability to do this event because of what had happened Thursday event.”

“I said, ‘I’m telling you, trust me, we’re going to do it. We’re going to do something here. It’s going to work,’” Sommer said. “It’s like anything, our first time out, you gotta give us a chance, right? I even had to sell them Friday morning that this is going to be OK, I promise you. Friday morning turned into Friday night and everybody knows what happened.”

Shannon Babb, Scott Bloomquist and Darrell Lanigan put on what’s still one of the most thrilling features at on the tight oval. Actually, for Summer, “until this day, it’s my favorite moment because it’s validation.”

“On that Friday, when we delivered, I was proud in the coach sense of ‘yes, we did it,’ ” Sommer said. “They all bought in. They all believed.”

Sommer guesstimates about 250 staffers have some kind of working function at this year’s Gateway Dirt Nationals. While he still has to get through this week, Sommer’s already planning for 2025’s installment of the indoor spectacle. 

There’s actually “a lot of changes that I’m planning,” a statement that’ll remain vague for the next two days as he’s “pondering decisions over the next 48 hours, let’s say.” By Saturday, however, “I think I’ll be ready to make some announcements what my plans are for next year.”

“I do have some things I’m not comfortable saying yet,” Sommer said. “Let’s see how these two nights of racing goes. Let’s just say, this event has gotten to a magnitude I believe that it deserves to be seen as a magnitude event. It is, for the most part it is.

“We still have our haters and people who call it a joke. I don’t think people who really love this event care about that. There’s a lot of people who love this event. I don’t care about that as much as the relevancy of that. I want this to be big time. We’ll continue to grow it, we’ve done that together. That’s really where ’25 stands.”