With its Silver Crown championship enjoying a growth spurt, USAC names a veteran racer and track manager as its new competition director for circle track racing.

The USAC Silver Crown Championship has enjoyed a growth spurt in recent years, and for 2023 it gets new leadership. In early November 2022, Tommie Estes, a name well known in dirt track racing for 45 years, was appointed competition director for USAC’s Circle Track division. Estes will lead the USAC Silver Crown National Championship, which has 13 events scheduled for 2023—seven on pavement, five on dirt, and one to be announced. The series kicks off April 16 at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.

Estes knows the landscape well. Starting out of high school in 1977, he competed extensively in sprint car and midget racing, including with USAC’s National Midget and Silver Crown divisions. He was a frequent competitor at the Chili Bowl and the Belleville Midget Nationals. After 22 years, Estes retired from driving.

“A week later, I went to work with ASCS doing their scheduling, and it snowballed from there,” he told PRI. He served as the competition director for both the ASCS National Sprint Tour and the Chili Bowl Nationals, and he oversaw racing operations at Dodge City Raceway Park for more than 10 years before moving to I-70 Speedway for 2021–2022.

PRI: What made you decide to take the position with USAC?

Estes: The Silver Crown is on an upswing but needs someone to give it full attention. I had done race directing and tech work for ASCS for 14 years, and I enjoyed being on the road for that. I felt the time was right to go back on the road. 

PRI: What are you most looking forward to in this new role?

Estes: The challenge of keeping it growing. Back when I raced, if you got to race a Silver Crown car, that was a really big deal. Races were events. I want to bring back that special event feeling.

PRI: Can you share your vision for the Silver Crown championship going forward?

Estes: The Silver Crown races used to be tied in with Cup races or IndyCar races. My long-range goal is to connect them to bigger races. That’s where you get the event atmosphere to draw more people.

PRI: What do you see as the most pressing concerns for open wheel racing today?

Estes: Live streaming. That has hurt a bunch of race tracks. When I was at Dodge City, we’d have 3,000 people in the grandstands for World of Outlaws. I’d be trying to sell a $40 ticket to basically just break even. But when you have streaming services selling a $39 monthly subscription, you could have 50 people over at your house watching on a big screen and have a party. That can be hard for promoters to compete with.

PRI: Do you see that situation changing?

Estes: Promoters must be able to get a little piece of that pie. There’s room for everybody to grow in this deal. Some groups doing the streaming are starting to understand what the promoters are talking about, especially at the smaller tracks. 

PRI: What is one professional or personal accomplishment for which you are most proud?

Estes: Probably the thing I’m most proud of is, if I tell you I’m going to do something, I try with all my ability to get it done. I was raised to believe you get out of something what you put in.

PRI: What is one recent mistake you’ve learned from—it could be yours or someone else’s?

Estes: I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I learn every day. I’ll tell racers the reason I do things the way I do them is because somewhere on the road behind me it bit me in the tail, and I learned from it. Once they see that side of it, they listen.

PRI: If you could have a conversation with anyone in racing, living or passed, who would it be?

Estes: I grew up the first 10 years of my life in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and there was a driver there, Buddy Taylor, that nobody in the Southwest could beat. He was basically my hero. He kept his car in his local gas station, and I’d always go over to look at it. He died at Manzanita Speedway in 1978, the night I went to pick up my new race car. I named my daughter, Taylor, after him. 

PRI: Who do you look up to and why?

Estes: Anybody who’s been successful in my business—any aspect of it. Back when I was promoting, I paid attention to other successful promoters, trying to watch what they did. I’ve seen plenty of guys come in and try to reinvent the wheel, and they don’t last very long.

Tommie Estes

TITLE:
Competition Director, Circle Track division

ORGANIZATION:
USAC

HOMETOWN:
Ada, Oklahoma

FAST FACT:
As a hotshot pitcher in high school, Estes attracted baseball scholarship offers from three colleges. “I could throw a lot of junk. I made it hard to hit,” he said. “But I decided to go racing. I already had my car purchased.” When his mother passed away in March 2022, in her home Estes found the ball he threw to strike out 17 of 21 batters in one game.