The sport I love and grew up around has been growing and experimenting to make it better and more appealing to other people. One unique way it has made a stride in going forward would be the event, “The Gateway Dirt Nationals”. A man by the name of Cody Sommer had a dream that many thought was impossible and completely wack. He wanted to have an indoor Late Model and Modified race in December.

On December 15th though the 17th of 2016 the inaugural Gateway Dirt Nationals was born. The event took place in the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Missouri and drew in massive car counts and a huge crowd. The event was even broadcast live on dirtondirt.com so thousands more tuned in.

Beings the race took place in a football stadium it was extremely small: just a 1/5 mile. To put that into prospective, Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, TN hosted a college football game in their infield and the track is only a 1/2 mile. Now due to the small size of the track there was a lot of wrecking going on which frustrated many drivers and fans. Despite all the wrecking and the track being quite choppy the Feature events were action packed and provided some great door to door racing. The event has now been run four years in a row adding the Midget class in 2018. They already have dates out for the 5th annual running of the event this coming December.