When Kyle Larson announced his bid for the High Limit Sprint Car series alongside his brother-in-law Brad Sweet, the NASCAR community had no idea just how action-packed the dirt track races were going to be. With the sport’s popularity on the rise thanks to Kyle Larson’s backing, it’s only a matter of time before the dirt track stars become social media sensations much like their Cup Series counterparts.

Speaking of which, the popular CARS Tour racer, Landon Huffman, took to X to spark a debate on the tarmac versus dirt track driver popularity contest. He delivered a hot take that didn’t sit well with some of the community, especially the co-owner of the growing national Sprint Car Series. Kyle Larson quickly asked Huffman to back up his bold claims and the conversation that followed saw other dirt track racers join Larson to defend their series’ popularity.

Kyle Larson indicates that national television is behind higher social following for asphalt drivers

Earlier today, Landon Huffman shared a controversial thought on Twitter about the dirt versus asphalt debate. He stated that many of dirt racing’s biggest stars had relatively small social media followings compared to some of the asphalt drivers, but the dirt series seemed to trump all tarmac categories when it came to sponsorships, participation, and viewership. He added, “Why is social less important on dirt? Is it the volume of racing that creates popularity? Geo covered due to travelling?

Whilst the comment section was filled with mixed opinions about who has more social engagement, many dirt track racers such as Max McLaughlin joined in to state that their fans were more likely to pay a visit to the races, which is what ultimately made the events more successful. Kyle Dager also pointed out some dirt track racers’ social followings. Rico Abreu was leading the field with 82k X followers and the majority ranged between 30-40k followers.

These numbers were pretty similar to most Cup Drivers’ numbers, but Huffman was certain the story was different. This prompted Kyle Larson to join in and ask sarcastically, “Have we found out who the pavement guys with big social followings are yet?“ to send Huffman hunting for an answer. When Huffman brought up drivers such as Josh Berry and Justin Allgaier, it did not impress Larson, who added, “All that really shows to me is which drivers have raced on national television in front of a bigger audience longer.”

With Kyle Larson swooping in to add some heavy-hitting points, Huffman’s take on the topic changed to include only the national television audience, which would make his argument lean in favor of the tarmac drivers once again. Huffman’s primary argument was that in a world where the metric for measuring a driver’s inherent value to the sport in asphalt categories was heavily tied to their social following.

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But clearly, that’s not the case with dirt track racing. While there was constant back and forth between various entities, a man who is himself evidence of this debate holding a little value, spoke up to settle things once and for all.

Bobby Pierce comes to Larson’s aid in defending dirt racing

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27-year-old Bobby Pierce immediately chimed in to deliver his take on Huffman’s debate as the prime candidate for such a scenario. He shared that he had over 130k followers on Facebook and 53,00 on Instagram. While he barely used X, he has still amassed over 30k followers.

He shared, “I think there are more true dirt track fans in the world than true asphalt fans. & I think dirt racers don’t need social media to be relevant cuz we race soooo much.. always in the public eye.” Pierce felt that more events translated to a bigger public presence in the real sense. He also added that most asphalt sponsorships came from sponsors with corporate interests and backgrounds. In their world, what mattered were social media metrics and engagement, which dirt racers provide less of.

However, when we talk about the world of dirt track racing, most sponsors are personal, which means they are either owned by friends and family or are small businesses that directly deal with the teams. This insight settled the differences, as both have varying marketing structures due to distinct audience profiles.

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Landon Huffman was successful in sparking an interesting debate that saw participation from many dirt track drivers, and the community loved every minute of the off-season action. But what is your take on the question?