NASCAR’s management has been under question ever since Steve Phelps’ text conversations were made public, owing to the antitrust lawsuit. It also received flak for criticizing the Superstar Racing Experience (SRX) series, founded by Tony Stewart, Ray Evernham, George Pyne, and Sandy Montag. But now we have a twist.

Despite a positive initial reception, the Series faced a major downfall, seeing Evernham walk off. With messages from Phelps calling the SRX a “trash” series, NASCAR was thought to be a major reason for the series’ downfall, but Kenny Wallace recently cleared the air, as he revealed the true reason behind its collapse.

Did NASCAR have a direct relation with Ray Evernham walking away from SRX?

SRX’s concept was rather simple: spec-car races piloted by some of the most renowned drivers, held on short tracks. The idea was to put the best drivers in an all-equal test and see who emerged on top. The series received positive feedback initially, but led to an eventual downfall, which saw Ray Evernham walking away from it.

Discussing the issue with Chase Holden, Wallace explained that Evernham wanted to run the series in a particular way. However, it wasn’t quite possible because of the financial constraints.

“I know a lot about SRX. I know that Ray started it, I know that they needed to cut back financially and Ray was like, ‘No, we’re either going to do this right or we’re not going to do it’ So, he peeled out of town,” Wallace explained. 

Apparently, the broadcasting eventually became too expensive for the series, and they didn’t generate enough profit to keep the series running.

“And what I know to be true is that they simply could not raise enough money to pay for everything. You know, the TV was big.

“I mean, that deal was enormous,” Wallace added. “And if you notice, IROC fails, SRX fails, that deal. And if you notice all deals like that, all of that stuff, it always fails. Yeah. It costs too much money because TV wants you to pay them.”

The series’ concept was certainly interesting. However, there were bigger challenges that the founders had to face as they competed with some of the more popular racing series.

Ray Evernham found TV to be a “tough business” as SRX fell apart

Broadcasting can be difficult in motorsports with such competition around from other established series like NASCAR and IndyCar. Initially, SRX was broadcast on Saturday nights, averaging a million viewers in its first two seasons. However, they had to move the broadcasting to Thursday nights in 2023. This turned out to be a major setback for the founders. The viewership dropped by over 50%, and so did the ratings.

“It still didn’t rate the way that it needed to on the weeknight,” Evernham once explained. “Everybody thought it was a great idea, but you’ve got to raise the kind of money that it takes to do a program like that; it’s got to have a pretty big viewing audience. But, you know, TV is a tough business because you just don’t know when people want to watch what they want to watch, how long they want to watch.”

This led to SRX’s eventual downfall and cancellation. Skip Barber Racing School announced its purchase of the series in 2024. However, SRX claimed that they never fulfilled the deal, eventually filing a lawsuit. While there seems to be no plans for the series in the future, would it be interesting to have a striking return with a better schedule?