IHRA: It’s time to go racing

In baseball, opening day is signaled by the smell of peanuts and the crack of the bat.

In drag racing, it's the smell of burning rubber and the sound of a big-block V8 engine.

That sound, that smell and a whole lot more comes to Immokalee Regional Raceway, the historic eighth-mile drag strip just east of Fort Myers and Naples, Florida. The occasion: the first race in the Summit Sportsman National Championship Series, with tech and a test and tune set for today, and full qualifying and eliminations both Saturday and Sunday starting 9 a.m. each day.

That's the format of the Summit Sportsman National Series – two complete shows each weekend to make it more worthwhile for teams to travel. The 30-race series is spread over 15 weekends.

The classes are Top Sportsman, Top Dragster, Super Stock, Stock, Quick Rod, Super Rod, Hot Rod and Junior Dragster. Each class has a $15,000 purse for the national champion, with $2,000 for Junior Dragster. The individual race payout has been increased for 2017 as well.

As announced last Monday, this weekend marks the return of IHRA drag racing to ESPN's family of networks. Saturday at 1 p.m. ET, and Sunday at noon ET, the racing at Immokalee will air live on live streaming service ESPN3.

And next weekend, the IHRA does it all over again, with Sportsman racing from Friday, February 10 to Sunday, February 12, from Palm Beach International Raceway in Florida.

For more information on this weekend's racing, log onto Immraceway.com, and IHRA.com.