The Chili Bowl Nationals is a major midget car racing event that takes place annually at the Tulsa Expo Centre. The event is regarded as the biggest midget car race of the year in the country and sees several hundred cars enter the event. The race takes place mostly in the middle of January, around the third Saturday of the month.
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The original format saw a field of 52 cars compete over a two-day period. But with the steady increase in the number of participants, the current format consists of several qualifiers spread across five days which culminates with the A-main race on Saturday.
Drivers participating often go through several races across different stages indicated as P, O, N, M, L, K, J, I, H, G, F, E, D, C, and finally with B-Main races. Only after making it through all of them with a top result do a select number of drivers make it to the A-Mains. Basically, it is a way to funnel out the best of the best for the final race of the night on Saturday.
The event was started by Lanny Edwards and Emmett Hahn back in 1987 and the name Chili Bowl originated after a local company of the same name decided to sponsor the racing event.
How many NASCAR Cup Series drivers have emerged victorious in the Chili Bowl Nationals?
Over the years several drivers from the NASCAR Cup Series have made appearances as well as won the entire thing. Some of the more notable drivers to have won at the Chili Bowl are the likes of Tony Stewart (twice), Kyle Larson (two-time winner), and Christopher Bell (three times in total).
Another interesting individual who won the event back in 1993 was Dave Blaney. His son Ryan Blaney is the recently crowned 2023 Cup Series champion.
While Cup Series drivers do make a foray into this grand event every other year, the segment is mostly dominated by drivers coming in from the general grassroots motorsports scene. Participants mostly hail from series like the World of Outlaws or the Late Model racing series. So when fans get to see someone from a different discipline get into these high-powered race cars, it is often a fascinating sight to see them compete and at times utterly dominate the competition.
