By Jonathon Masters

It has been an exciting end to the 2017 racing season. So many big stories have broken in November and December that keeping track of them is difficult. Legendary driver Steve Francis has stepped into a non-racing role, a young driver in Bobby Pierce has moved to an established ride while leaving his family team, and Jonathan Davenport has joined a newly formed team.

It has been the silliest of silly seasons in memory.

In the midst of all these big announcements and exciting changes it can be hard to see the forest through the trees. Taking a step back from the hype, one can’t help but see some disturbing trends that have been created by all of the offseason changes. The fallout of this winter will be the foundation (good or bad) of the sport's future.

One trend noticeable in all of these announcements is consolidation.

Some of these ride swaps are the product of racers who run their own teams or compete with smaller teams now accepting rides with high-funded touring teams.

In some capacity this could be seen as a great thing. It could be seen as a driver who has worked hard getting a shot with a big team.

On the flip side it can just as easily be seen as one driver losing a ride to a newcomer. Consequently, the team that the newcomer raced with is likely to be phased out. Instead of two teams we are now left with one well-funded team and a previously established driver out looking for a new ride.

The biggest problem with this scenario is even if the displaced driver finds a new ride it will not be funded to the caliber of his old one. It may not be this season but soon this scenario will play out several times a year. When that happens the displaced driver will not always find a new ride, and that is going to result in lower car counts.

But this trend will also end up producing more retirements by big-name drivers. Francis was the forerunner. In the coming seasons we are going to see many more great drivers with plenty of wins left in their careers stepping out of the driver’s seat too early.

Staying with the topic of drivers stepping down is how different this torch-passing era will be from the last one. When drivers such as Freddy Smith, Charlie Swartz, and Jim Curry stepped away, most of them kept racing off and on for a decade or so — well into their 60s. They sort of eased out of the game. This torch passing is going to be more like dropping a match in a magician’s flash paper supply.

We're going to see drivers in their 40s retire and early-to-mid-50s drivers quickly fall in numbers. Get ready because it’s going to be a wild ride.

The next trend is a little harder to see if you’re looking at it from a fan’s perspective instead of an industry one — and that is conflict brewing between manufacturers and the racing series.

There were a few rules announced by series at the Performance Racing Industry Trade Show, and some manufacturers have been vocal about them. This season will see some manufacturers pulling support from certain sanctioning bodies based on rules changes. Series have started to think about the costs to the common racers and are trying to figure out ways to make their races more affordable.

Nobody is at fault. Manufacturers need to keep their market share and series are trying to keep their racers on the track. Sometimes, those agendas are at odds. The middle ground has not been found yet, but this will go down as the silly season that kicked the discussion into high gear.

The last trend is the fact national dirt racing is now NASCAR with a few less zeroes at the ends of everyone’s check. There are press conferences with corporate sponsors, drivers vacating teams in search of bigger checks elsewhere, major decisions based on what makes sponsors happy, plus cars and components that have more engineering then an Air Force fighter jet. We are a few Fortune 500 sponsors and one February snow storm away from Pierce playing spokesman for an insurance company he’s never heard of before.

Whatever the long-term takeaways from this season may be, we will always be able to look back at these crazy couple of months in late 2017 and say that is where it all started.

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