Your gonna find that most people who decide to run sprint cars have more money than they know what to do with. Then you a the group of guys who truly don't have the money, but have the talent and/or the desire to run sprints. You guys all talk about the 30K engines and there are lots of them. I've won races with the patriot sprints, ESS, ELS, and open shows with a $6,000 360 engine (and yes i still have the receipts to prove it). In 2003 we were on a good run and we were tore down a few times and that's what was putting me out of business because I could afford to keep putting the thing together. The nice thing with sprint cars is the set up means alot. They are very tough to get the things hooked up to put the power to the ground. Sprint cars are like all forms of racing you'll always have the guys that can't drive a lick and try to make up with it by spending more money, some on legal parts and some on illegal parts. You have things like traction control that are destroying our sport. The non driving fools think this makes them look good, but they still suck.
Now for the spec engine for the sprint cars, that 305 class has become that in my opinion. You can pick on of those up that's all good stuff for less than 5K. I'm all game for the crate engines in beginner classes. The problem is you still have all the jerks that cheat. I thought the crate mods were the ticket and then you have all the cars getting busted cheating.