Charles Barwick (born December 11, 1951 in Queens, New York) is an American billionaire businessman and entrepreneur. While his career started with the ownership of a variety of upstart and franchised businesses, he’s most known for his ownership of professional sports teams. As the owner and CEO of ANY Sports, a firm that wholly owns major football and ice hockey franchises, as well as minority stakes in a wide variety of other sports teams and leagues.
One of the most unique properties owned and operated by Barwick and ANY Sports is the AMERICAN DIRT LEAGUE, a dirt oval racing league which began in 1996, shortly after he broke into the world of professional sports ownership. While Barwick‘s interest in motorsports was limited for much of his career, the idea to create marquee dirt racing events was born from the amount of tracks he saw across upstate New York. This led to him sponsoring an invitational race at the Meadowlands horse track in 1993, a de facto ‘state championship’ for dirt racing in New York. After the unprecedented success of the event, Barwick saw potential to bridge the gap between local dirt tracks and a national fanbase. In 1994 and 1995, Barwick organized and promoted a variety of one off dirt invitationals with big prize purses at tracks closer to city centers, and even hosted a pair of events in football stadiums during the summer, the predecessor to today’s Stadium Shootout events. With the success of these events, the American Dirt League was founded to create a national championship for the type of product Barwick had created. The league features a variety of events across both the inspirational large dirt tracks around the country, and a pair of major stadiums across the country each year.
Today, the
AMERICAN DIRT LEAGUE is the most prominent series for dirt oval racing in the country. The series found stable ground early thanks to Barwick‘s wide network allowing him and his series' drivers to gain a variety of sponsors and investors that they wouldn’t have otherwise. The series continued to grow into one of the most distinct championships in the world thanks to Barwick‘s desire to be an innovator in both the sporting product and the business, most notably growing quicker throughout the 2000s by being ahead of the curve with using the internet as a marketing and engagement tool.
Charles Barwick has remained the owner and head of the series from its inception, and shows no sign of slowing down soon despite being in his 70s. He gained notoriety across the world of sports for being vocal, engaged, and energetic with both staff and fans, and for being publicly blunt about his goals to grow his properties. Even today, he still attends the majority of
AMERICAN DIRT LEAGUE events when schedules don’t conflict with another ANY Sports property, and engages with fans and drivers like anyone else.
The series features a unique process for building the cars that race each week. Car bodies and chassis are built to specifications, however engines and powertrains have few specifications beyond a horsepower regulation, and require gas engines. This is intended to provide a sense of fairness and uniformity to be approachable to team owners, while at the same time giving each car a unique personality for drivers and fans.
Today, the series hosts roughly 30 races each season across the country, with its marquee events being the three doubleheader weekends. These consist of the two stadium shootout events, hosted once in the spring and once in the summer at two different major stadiums each year, and the American Dirt League finals, hosted at a major permanent dirt track that also rotates by year. The series uses a playoff style system to decide the season champion in its final few events, leading to the championship being decided in the final doubleheader. Additionally, you’re currently looking at the setup for the 2024 Paint Scheme Showcase as part of the American Dirt League’s offseason fan festival. It’s a tradition for teams to reveal their primary paint schemes for the upcoming year at this event, which also rotates to bring the series to new cities. In 2024, the fan festival is being hosted in Austin, Texas. As for the rotating race events, the stadium shootouts will be held in Tampa, Florida and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2024, with the championship race being held this year on the dirt surface at Bristol Motor Speedway.
Much like the original NAPARL series sets, this showroom will become the home to showing off all 36 unique cars for the American Dirt League, complete with driver and team info. I also plan to experiment with a few other details beyond the cars and boxes every handful of cars, such as showcasing more things for the ADL brand, summer shootouts, and more lore details. I’m out to make this the single most detailed fictional NR2003 set publicly.
This carset will be for the NPS17 mod, and feature a few new templates being created by me, the original versions of which will be released by me publicly shortly after the first car or two for them are shown off.
I’m building this carset around the concept of “Who Says We Can’t” because of my desire to explore how the tradition of motorsports can be combined with bold, new ideas, and the great things that can come from either. I’m by no means intending this to be seen as my ideal racing league, but I would like to explore that aspect thematically by going back to my own roots in design with more lore and unique twists. First cars will be coming in the next few days, as I get everything ready to optimize!
WELCOME TO THE AMERICAN DIRT LEAGUE!