PINELLAS PARK, Fla. \u2014 Grassroots racing has a charm to it. Robert Yoho can recall working at Showtime Speedway in Pinellas County as a kid.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Showtime Speedway is a grassroots race track in Pinellas County
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Robert Yoho worked at the track as a kid, and now owns Showtime
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The track hosted the Outlaw Figure 8 World Finals earlier this month
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Showtime has overcome a number of challenges to stay open, ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to natural disasters<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a vendor here saying \u2018Coke\u2019 \u2018Pepsi\u2019 sold them for a quarter apiece and then I went in the military I did my time,\u201d Yoho said.<\/p>\n
Yoho joined the Army, served four tours overseas and when he finished his service, he came back to what he knew best: Showtime.<\/p>\n
\u201cCame back 20 years later and it was closed down… I made a bid… and I\u2019ve been here since 2011,\u201d Yoho said.<\/p>\n
Now Yoho owns the track in a joint agreement with the state of Florida, which owns the land.<\/p>\n
But the lights went out at Showtime a couple of times in recent years. COVID shut down the track during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Then in 2024, after hurricanes Helene and Milton, Duke Energy took over the track for their trucks. Later, FEMA used the grounds as a landfill for 90 days. Yoho said the track still hasn\u2019t recovered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand it, but when COVID came in and killed your crowd and you\u2019re trying to get back to where you were and then they stop and do that again, I still have people stop over here and dump garbage, out in the parking lot, anywhere, they think it\u2019s a landfill,\u201d Yoho said.<\/p>\n
Well, it\u2019s not a landfill anymore. The track is open and hosted the Outlaw Figure 8 World Finals earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Mark Tunny has won this Outlaw Figure 8 title six times, the most of any driver. He wasn\u2019t going to miss the chance to get No. 7.<\/p>\n
\u201c$10,000 and the bragging rights, obviously,\u201d Tunny said when asked what the stakes are for this race. \u201cWe come down from Indiana every year, every February, and we look forward to this. Grassroots racing \u2014 I don\u2019t think you find anything better than that… I don\u2019t care what NASCAR fans have to say. F1. IndyCar. No, the short track racing with the guys that got money on their line, whether it\u2019s their bank account or their sponsors\u2019 money \u2014 I think that\u2019s where you get the best racing.\u201d<\/p>\n
That is why Yoho worked so hard to re-open this track; there is culture here. These drivers take time off their day jobs to race.<\/p>\n
Yoho, the owner of the track, throws on a fire suit and races from time to time as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t get to race when I was little. Now all my friends that raced when they were little are watching me race as I\u2019m older,\u201d Yoho said.<\/p>\n
Auto racing is at a pivotal moment for the sport. It has been a struggle to attract new fans. But the fans they do have still absolutely love it. There were kids running figure eights around trash cans during the intermission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re having a ton of fun out here at Showtime Speedway. It\u2019s so much fun running around and watching the cars go round,\u201d young racing fan Cooper Meyer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love it here, you got the beach down the road and like I said we can\u2019t do any racing at home in February so we come down here we all get sunburnt we all have a real good time and go racing,\u201d Tunny said.<\/p>\n
This track, which opened in 1960, has entertained generations of race fans. Through multiple closures and name changes, Showtime Speedway keeps finding a way to put on a show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PINELLAS PARK, Fla. \u2014 Grassroots racing has a charm to it. Robert Yoho can recall working at Showtime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1238,1236,70639,115,596,110,1237,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,26795,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-164248","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-app-sports","9":"tag-florida-sports","10":"tag-michael-epps","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pinellas-county","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-sports-news","15":"tag-st-pete","16":"tag-st-pete-headlines","17":"tag-st-pete-news","18":"tag-st-petersburg","19":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","20":"tag-st-petersburg-news","21":"tag-tampa","22":"tag-topic-latest-local-sports","23":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}