DUQUOIN, Ill. – For some reason, indoor races featuring the USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget Series tends to create first-time winners.

Is it based mainly on the fact that the tracks are usually on the smallish side, which produces tight racing where the variables for trouble are more prevalent?  Is it because passing opportunities are more inopportune on such close quarters?  Is it because most indoor races occur early in the year when most teams have yet to hit their stride, thus opening the door for several different teams and drivers to thrive?  Or is just pure happenstance?

The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle of all those theories, as it’s never easy to win a USAC National Midget race. One thing for certain is that over the first four years of the Shamrock Classic, four first-time USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget winners have emerged in Shane Golobic (2016), Justin Grant (2017), Logan Seavey (2018) and Cannon McIntosh (2019), all of whom are talented wheelmen who have earned their victories at the Southern Illinois Center in DuQuoin, Ill., where the series returns March 7 for the fifth edition of the event.

While Lucas Oil Raceway in Brownsburg, Ind., has produced the most first-time winners in USAC National Midget competition over the years with 21 different drivers reaching victory lane for the first time, by sheer percentage, the most often spot you’ll witness a first-time winner is at an indoor facility.

Twenty-seven drivers have won their first USAC National Midget feature event indoors, which have come at nine different venues.  Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Ind., has hosted the most with 11, followed by Southern Illinois Center (four), Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum (three), Cincinnati Gardens (two), Louisville’s Freedom Hall (two), Chicago’s Rosemont Horizon (two), Chicago’s Int’l Amphitheatre (one), Seattle’s Kingdome (one) and the Mecca in Milwaukee (one).

The first race in USAC’s history took place 64 years ago indoors in Fort Wayne, Ind., and obviously, the event found a new USAC Midget winner in Gene Hartley.  The most recent indoor USAC Midget race produced the same result with Cannon McIntosh becoming the 27th different indoor winner with the series in just 148 indoor points race opportunities, meaning that nearly one out every five times USAC National Midgets race indoors, there’s a new winner.

Thus far, the Shamrock Classic is batting 1.000 in the new winner department.  There’s several names out there set to keep the streak alive coming up, namely Buddy Kofoid, who is driving the same Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports No. 67 that Logan Seavey raced to a Shamrock win in 2018.  His teammate Daison Pursley has been fast in the early going of the 2020 season as has 2019 series Rookie of the Year and Ocala third-place finisher Andrew Layser.

Like Kofoid, Cole Bodine is set to pilot a car for a team (Clauson-Marshall Racing) and number (No. 39BC) that has been to Shamrock Classic victory lane once before, in 2017 with Justin Grant. Robert Dalby, the reigning USAC Western States Midget champ, is looking for a breakthrough National win as is five-time Western States Midget titlist Ronnie Gardner.

Indoor midget racing has forever been unpredictable, and unpredictability has been the theme since the dawn of the Shamrock Classic in 2016. You can predict that to be the motto once again on March 7.