How important is starting on the front row w/ High Limit & the World of Outlaws?

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-03

[00:00:06]Welcome back. So, before I get into this video, I did want to mention that this would probably be my last video for a while here. I leave tomorrow for Lawrenceburg, and if you watch yesterday's video, you know there's probably not a lot of time in between races this upcoming 2 weeks for me to squeeze in videos, but who knows? We'll have to wait and see. Just wanted to kind of let you guys know before I left. This video, there's a lot of numbers on the board. Coming in from sprintcarratings.com, uh Bill, his website. If you have not been there before and you are a sprint car fan, I highly, highly recommend going over there, especially if you are into the stats, right? So, thanks to Bill at sprintcarratings.com for all of these numbers. And very interesting stuff here. So, these are numbers from the last 2 years, 2024 and 2025. So, you will not see any numbers from 2026.

[00:00:53]Obviously, the season is underway right now, and so it just kind of doesn't make sense to do half a year of stats in this type of video, and so the numbers are from '24 and '25. So, we got the Outlaws on the board.

[00:01:07]We've got High Limit on the board. And what exactly are we looking at here? So, on this side of the board, we are looking at the out of those races, 134 races for the Outlaws and 105 races for High Limit, where did the winner of the race start start the feature, right? A lot of people, you know, you hear a lot of drivers say you it's hard to win these races from outside of the dash.

[00:01:29]And according to these numbers, the drivers are obviously very, very correct. And so, it's going to be interesting to look at this because there are a a few outliers in this, and there's also some weird numbers that, you know, I wasn't expecting when putting this video together.

[00:01:43]But for the Outlaws, in 134 races between 2024 and 2025, the most wins, of course, coming from the pole position.

[00:01:52]46 wins, that is 34% of those 134 races coming from the pole. And if a driver started on the pole, the green number is how many times that driver that was on the pole ended up inside the top five at the end of the race. So, it got wins, win percentage, and top fives from that starting position. And so, obviously the pole for both series is going to be the dominant uh number, of course. So, with High Limit, it's 29 wins from the pole, 25% of the races, and 82 times the pole sitters ended up in the top five. So, one thing that is very apparent, though, is the percentage from the Outlaws to High Limit for the pole sitter is a pretty big difference. It's almost 10% different uh that the pole sitter wins with the Outlaws more often than it does with High Limit Racing. Now, uh second place, if you start on the outside of the front row, 38 wins for the Outlaws, 28% of the time, 101 top fives from second place. For High Limit, 19 wins, 18%. So, another 10% difference there, and 71 top five finishes coming from the second position. What's interesting is second, third, and fourth are all the same numbers when it comes to wins, win percentage, of course. Uh the top fives are a little bit different, of course, but second, third, fourth, all with 19 wins from those positions, 18%. Now, let's look at the difference here. Third place with the Outlaws, if you start third, 15 wins have come from that starting position, 11% of the races won from third, and 91 top five finishes.

[00:03:23]Fourth place, there's more wins from fourth than there are third, 16 wins, 12% of the time, and 90 top fives have come from fourth place. Now, the big one here is fifth. Only four wins have came from a fifth starting position in a feature with the Outlaws. With the With High Limit, it's double. It's eight wins, and 8% of the time the winner comes from that spot. 51 top fives when you start in the fifth position uh with High Limit Racing. Then you kind of go down the line here. Look, there's seven wins for six place but only two uh for high limit. When it comes to eighth place, three wins compared to five. And then here are the outliers. This is very weird to me. Both series from 24 to 25 had one race that was won from the ninth position, which of course is 0.7% of the races for the Outlaws, 1%. It's not exactly I'm not putting 1.23% I'm just putting 1%. I kind of rounded it up or rounded it down. 1% for you know, the Outlaws or sorry, 0.7 for the Outlaws and 1% for high limit. 19 top fives from ninth compared to 21 top fives for high or for the Outlaws. 12th place. So, nobody in either series has won from 10th or 11th place in the last 2 years.

[00:04:37]No one. But for some reason, somebody's won a race from 12th place with both series. I don't know how that exactly happens.

[00:04:44]I don't remember who these drivers were, but I can tell you that the farthest starting position back for the Outlaws, 21st place. That was Kyle Larson at the I-55 Raceway Park in Missouri. And this 15th place run was Corey Day at Lake Ozark. So, uh and if we continue on here, that's only 0.7%. That's 1% for high limit.

[00:05:07]Three top fives from 15th starting place and three top fives from 21st starting place.

[00:05:13]So, I thought that was very weird, which means that there have been no wins from the last two full seasons with the National Tours from 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th, 22nd, 23rd, 24th. So, basically, if you start 10th place with one of these series, you're you're just not going to win. Uh that's pretty much what it's looking like here. According to the last 2 years, if you start 10th, no chance that you are going to win one of these races, which is so weird to me. But for some reason, ninth place, it's fine. You can get a win every now and again. So, yeah, that was uh some interesting stuff there. And then I wanted to go over here and talk about some qualifying numbers as well. This is the same thing from 2024 to 2025, a minimum of 40 races between the two big series. So, David Gravel is the best qualifier, and we've known that obviously for a long time.

[00:06:03]131 races for Gravel during this time span we're looking at here, a 5.1 qualifying average, and a ridiculous 35 quick times in those 131 starts. The next best is actually Rico Abreu at 119 races, a 7.7 qualifying average, and 15 top five finishes. So, David Gravel from 2024 to 2025 had 2.4 positions better average qualifying per race than the next closest guy being Rico Abreu. Then, uh it's Carson Macedo, 133 races, a 7.8 qualifying average, and 20 uh quick times in that time span. 49, Brad Sweet, 119 races. Of course, he doesn't race full-time anymore, but he was still he was racing full-time in the years we're looking at here. 119 races, an 8.1 qualifying average, and 11 quick times.

[00:06:57]And Aaron Reitzel's in the top five with 79 races cuz he did not run full-time in in 2024. 8.4 qualifying average, and 14 quick times. So, with 40 less races than Brad Sweet, Aaron Reitzel had three more quick times. Anthony Macri makes the list at 79 races, 8.9 qualifying average, and five quick times. Uh Kyle Larson, 48 races, a 9.7 qualifying average, and only three quick times. Gio Scelzi, 130 races, a 9.7 qualifying average, and six quick times. Sheldon Haudenschild on the list, 130 races, a 9.8 qualifying average, and 10 quick times. And then Brent Marks is at the very bottom there of the top 10. 117 races for Marks, a 10.0 qualifying average, and eight quick times uh during that two-year span. So, obviously there are some guys that are not on the list that are interesting, of course, Buddy Kofoid. He is not on this qualifying list here.

[00:07:53]Uh 2025, of course, he was full-time with the Outlaws. 2024 was his rookie season. Uh and so struggled a little bit there, so was not very good in qualifying. Uh Donny Schatz does not make this list. Qualifying has not been very good for him here the last couple of years. Logan Schuchart is not on the on this list as well. Tyler Courtney not on the list. So, a couple of names that are interesting to not see on uh this top 10 list, but David Gravel, uh the qualifying for him and obviously the race pace has been there as well. Uh he has been dominant in that category for the last two years. So, uh definitely some interesting, you know, numbers on this board that I thought would be fun to share with you guys here today. Once again, thanks to sprintcarratings.com and Bill over there uh for all of the work that he does. Uh I love that website. I use it almost every single day I'm on that website uh because I'm kind of nerdy when it comes to my sprint car stats. So, let me know your guys' thoughts in the comment section down below about all these numbers. I would love to hear your thoughts and more down in that comment section. Hit like, hit subscribe, and we'll talk to you guys again soon. I'm not sure when that will be here on the Rodman Rundown.