World of Outlaws Late Model Series Director Steve Francis has seen the sport from both sides of the pit wall, and that’s his strength. An adjusted purse structure, a more racer-friendly travel schedule, and the recent implementation of a national tire rule to control costs are just some of the ways he’s looking to benefit fellow racers as well as the sanctioning body.

Dirt late model racing has been the focus of Steve Francis’ working life. When the World of Outlaws Case Construction Equipment Late Model Series was rebooted in 2004 after a 15-year hiatus, Francis was at the height of his game. Coming from Ashland, Kentucky, and driving the Moring Motorsports, Valvoline/Mopar No. 15, Francis won the very first race of the new series. He was part of the “Dirty Dozen” pack of drivers who brought the series back to prominence. Francis went on to win the series championship in 2007 and claimed 28 career wins in the Outlaws series, plus many more in other venues. In recognition of his skills, the “Kentucky Colonel” was inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in 2014. 

After starting his driving career at age 15 in 1982, Francis retired from driving in 2017 at age 50 and took a position as the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series technical director. Then in mid-2022, he came back to the World of Outlaws Late Model Series as director of competition. This year, he’s been promoted to series director. We caught up with Francis as he was on the road to a race, to ask him how he plans to develop the series in its 20th year. 

PRI: You’ve been the director of the World of Outlaws Late Model Series for about six months now. How’s it going?

Francis: It’s been busy. We’ve had a lot of really positive things. We started off at Sunshine Nationals with 23 drivers signed up to run the whole tour, which really caught me off guard. We pay 15 positions, and we wanted 15 teams healthy enough to run up and down the road with us. 

PRI: That’s going to lead to some tough competition for the money. 

Francis: We’re doing our best to shy away from the “Dolly Parton” purses, for lack of a better term. We did add some money to first place, but that’s not what we want to be promoting. It seems like the racers have really got in behind us on that. Because you’re only going to have one winner each night, so we adjusted all of our purse structures to pay more for 3rd to 15th position to keep more race teams healthy. That was goal one. 

PRI: What else have you changed?

Francis: Goal two is to make sure that we keep our schedule where it makes the most travel sense. We can’t be zig-zagging from Iowa to Georgia to Texas to Tennessee, back and forth. So we’re doing our best to cut those travel expenses down. Now, we’re not going to be perfect on that. But our goal is just to make as much sense as we possibly can. 

You talk to any racer, and if he’s gone from home, he does not want to be sitting at the hotel, or the Walmart parking lot, or something like that. He wants to race and be able to go back home. So we’re trying to build a few little mini tours. You know, we have a Pennsylvania deal where we go out there and to northeastern Ohio. I think we raced seven times in 10 days. Then we do the drive out to Kansas and wind up all the way in Minnesota, but that’s seven races in nine days. 

PRI: Did anything surprise you when you became series director? 

Francis: The thing that did catch me off guard is there is a lot more, I don’t want to say paperwork, but a lot more meeting and planning than I really gave credit for. I knew there was a lot of that, but there’s a lot more behind-the-scenes things that happen than I expected. It’s all the other things that go with being series director. You know, it’s the meetings that you have to be involved in, making sure that you’ve got your staffing and your travel plans laid out for everybody. I knew it. I just didn’t really, I guess, give it the credit that it deserved. 

PRI: Are there things that you do differently from other series directors because of your experience as a racer? 

Francis: I’m very, very fortunate in this aspect because I was a racer for 35 years, but my wife and her parents were promoters for that same timeframe. Sometimes I get maybe a little bit too much of a racer hat on, and sometimes I get too much of the series director hat on now. But even though series director is my job, I still look out for the racer because I was one of those guys. I understand everything that they’re going through, everything that they tell me. I can say, “Been there, done that, seen that.”

PRI: Every series has been experiencing weather problems this spring. Are you getting what you wanted out of the early part of the season?

Francis: Well, no, and this is where we’ve learned a few things in scheduling. We’ve already moved our Illini 100 date at Farmer City, Illinois, for 2024. We announced that so everybody in that area of the country knows what our plans are in the future. You know, just a week to two weeks in Illinois generally makes a lot of difference in weather. We’re consulting with a meteorologist, and we’re learning more about areas of the country that you don’t want to be in during certain times of the year. We had two early March events in Tennessee, and neither event got in. So that tells us that maybe those need to be late March events now, or early April. It’s just learning things like that and still trying to balance the travel schedule and keeping it where it needs to be. 

PRI: Let’s talk about the fans. What does the World of Outlaws Late Model Series offer that competing dirt late model series might not?

Francis: We have probably the deepest roster that’s been built in recent years, probably all the way back to the “Dirty Dozen” group of the 2004 series. There are some strong rosters out there right now with other organizations, but I feel like we’re stronger, deeper than anybody else. Having been a racer, I want the racers to feel like we’re in this together. It’s not the series controlling the racers, and not the racers controlling the series. We’re in this together, and united we stand, divided we fall. That’s how we bring a better product to the table.

PRI: Are you doing anything new or innovative to get the word out to fans about the series? 

Francis: World Racing Group has developed a fan engagement team. Our motto is “Butts in the Seats.” We’re trying to do everything we can to get word out that the World of Outlaws are coming. Then we have Jumbotron video boards that we can set up at different locations. If you come to the race, part of the fan experience is you can now watch the Jumbotron and see the same replay the guy at home is watching.

We also provide the tracks with a lot of collateral. They get a ready-made commercial, posters, and whatever else they ask for. We try to make sure they have every tool available, and that generally gets to them 30 to 45 days in advance, so the race tracks have a chance to promote the events. Every promoter knows his market better than we do, so they know if TV or radio is going to be great, or the newspaper, or putting posters at the auto parts store. They know those things that we don’t, so we try to provide them with the tools and let them make the best use of the tools.

PRI: How do you use social media or any new media? Do you encourage your drivers to be interactive with fans? 

Francis: We’re racing at 411 Motor Speedway this week. (Editor’s note: This interview took place in April 2023.) A lot of our drivers are making posts about being at 411 yesterday and today on social media. Then we have a full-time PR person for every series of World Racing Group. His job is to make sure that social media is covered and our races are advertised. We have huge followings on some of those social media platforms.

PRI: What are you doing to bring the next generation of dirt late model drivers into the series? 

Francis: Under our dirt car banner, we have the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series, which is a regional series in the Mid-South. We have the Hunt the Front series that’s in the Southeast. We have the Iron-Man series that’s in the Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee area. And we have the MARS series in Illinois. We have the summer nationals that are all their own entities, but they all fall under the dirt car banner. Those are the regional series that we look to be the feeder. 

For a driver, those are your stepping stones. You go from racing on Saturday night at your local race track to following one of those four series. They’re generally 30 to 35 races a season, and then from there you branch out into the World of Outlaws full-blown tour. We had seven guys sign up for Rookie of the Year this year, and that’s good for our sport. The purses in dirt late models are the best that they’ve ever been right now across the board. There’s more opportunity to make money than there’s ever been.

PRI: What are you doing to keep the cost of competition down? 

Francis: One thing is the national tire rule. That’s just come up, and this is a very touchy subject in the dirt late model world. But the goal was to be able to run the same tire in only three compounds from Florida to California in a late model. That allows guys to travel more out of their area without having to spend $2,000 on tires to do it. 

PRI: World of Outlaws has great sponsorship. What does it take to land those big series sponsors? 

Francis: It’s value for dollar spent. We’re all competing for the same dollars, and you have to prove that you are the best value for their dollar. That comes from what you can offer them. That’s the biggest thing, just making sure that you can provide what you do and keep them long term. I don’t know that it’s getting harder to keep a sponsor, because now there are so many other avenues to prove yourself with social media and YouTube channels and things like that. The direction is, if I’m going to spend major dollars on motorsports, what kind of following do you have versus what you’re asking me for? I think everybody wants to see those numbers before they go spend dollars.

PRI: If you could offer one piece of advice to any racing business owner, and it could be any type of racing business, about how to get involved with your series, what would that be? 

Francis: I think the very first thing they have to do is decide what market they are looking to get into. If it’s the dirt late model world, then what we need to know from them is what they want to sell. Then we need to get with the marketing department and make sure that they can provide you with what you want. The one thing we don’t want is “in and out” people. We want long-term relationships. We’re not a company that’s about taking your dollar today and not producing. We want those relationships to be long-term.

PRI: Is there anything I haven’t asked that you would want to talk about? 

Francis: World Racing Group is a business that has to make money and survive. But at the same time, we are a racing organization. Our main objective is racing. We’re here to help Case sell tractors and so on, but our main objective is our show. That is our business. We are a motorsports business; we have no other entities. To me, that makes us the best. We have more people, more ability to do more things from hospitality to race track, from big events to small events. We’re kind of the one-stop shop, from our regional series all the way through our national series. We’re all tied in, we all work together, we all talk to each other. So if you’re a driver looking to come in, we can help you pick the series that’s going to work best for you, to help you develop your goals and what you want to become.