By Jonathon Masters

The long summer days have arrived for the racing world. Every morning you can flip on your computer and see results from dozens of events that took place the night before.

Mid-summer is a time when we forget racing is typically a weekend activity and make every night free game to watch or race in a full-blown A-Main. No series takes advantage of this more than the DIRTcar Summer Nationals, also known as The Hell Tour.

It is a series that stretches from mid-June to mid-July with events held at a different facility every night. The only exception is a two-race finale at Wauseon, Ohio's Oakshade Raceway on July 14-15. It's a grueling endurance nightmare for race teams--and racing nirvana for fans. It's truly one of the greatest spectacles in all of motorsports, and it is the envy of all forms of racing outside of dirt late models.

Working in all forms of motorsports and having friends from all facets of sport, I've heard universal praise and admiration for the DIRTcar Summer Nationals. I've had diehard sprint car racers express to me how much they wish they could race the Summer Nationals.

NASCAR personalities who typically don't know a Dirt Late Model from a Mud Buggy know about the Hell Tour. Some even take a break from their everyday duties and race in it.

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So for all of you aspiring racers out there who want to know what it takes to race the legendary Summer Nationals, we are going to break down some of the costs so you can start your preparation for the 2018 edition of the Hell Tour early.

If you have been following these columns, you have already read about the cost of running a national tour in terms of equipment and crew.

If you've got your car and hauler ready to go, we are off to the races for the next month.

The first thing you are going to need to budget for is the fuel it's going to take to travel about 4,000 miles over the course of a month as you chase the series from track to track.

The average hauler averages about 5 to 6 miles per gallon. So we are talking about 700 gallons of diesel burned. Right now, gasoline is around $2.50 per gallon across the region, which means you will start out with a fuel bill of about $1,750.

The next thing you need to tackle is the other "fuel" needed to keep going: food, of course. Many teams get by with two crew members helping on the tour, but for some it's as many as four. On the Summer Nationals, most teams have little time to stop and eat anything decent. Between truck-stop dining and track food, you're going to be spending around $20 per person a day on food, drinks, water, and anything else essential to functioning. Being gone 31 days will see that bill at $1,860.

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Now you are fed, fueled, and ready to go. That means you can tackle the impact this much racing has on your racing program. Unless you pull off on lap one every single night of the series, you are guaranteed to tear up a lot of equipment. It's not called the Hell Tour for nothing.

Let's say you avoid huge wrecks and tear up the minimum amount possible and still be competitive. You still need to budget $5,000 in parts and repairs. The tire bill is unavoidable of course. You are going to be going through about three a night, and the price on a UMP tire right now is $170. So the tire bill is going to be hitting around $14,790.

The tires aren't the only thing feeling the pressure of so much racing. We are also talking about putting up to 2,000 laps on your motor.

The average cost per lap on most Super Late Model motors today is around $7-10 a lap. So you can pretty much bank on this series costing you around $15,000 worth of motor freshening and work. That is if you are racing with a standard, top-of-the-line motor from one of the major builders in the sport. Most motor builders will tell you that between 800-1,000 laps is the max amount of time to put on a motor before it needs to come back to them for a refresh.

We also can't race if we can't get into the track so be sure to save up at least $2,500 for pit passes and other expenses at the track.

So where does that put us? 

The total cost of our Hell Tour adventure is around $41,000 to race like the mid- to high-level teams. It may seem high for a month, but remember it's 29 separate events--and that is basically an entire season for some compressed into 31 days.

UMP/DIRTcar also does a segmented points fund now for those who can't scrape the bill to tackle the entire thing. There is still an option to race a section of it for points money. The DIRTcar Summer Nationals will continue to be a dream for many across the racing world for years to come, and for $41,000, a bottle of sunscreen, and an appetite for punishment in the best possible way, that dream can be yours.

-- Jonathon Masters has a lifelong connection with dirt racing. His family has owned and operated MasterSbilt Race Cars manufacturing dirt late model chassis for 35 years. He attended college in North Carolina for motor sports management and has written for various industry publications. Jonathon was an account executive at The International Motorsports Industry Show, founder of the Heartland Auto Racing Show, and has been a racing industry professional for over a decade. 

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