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From what I can find the first USAC Sprint Car race on less than a 1/2 mile was July 22 1981 at Kokomo with Tom Bigelow the winner. I recall the number of USAC sprint car races had been on a slow but steady decline for several years so racing on the smaller tracks became a necessity. Below is the number of USAC races around that timeframe. Despite the inclusion of the smaller tracks, the number of races didn't really improve mainly due to the decline of pavement races. The ESPN Thunder races brought the paved tracks back for a while but even then the number of races barely improved.
1977 - 51
1978 - 40
1979 - 39
1980 - 24
1981 - 21
1982 - 26
1983 - 17
1984 - 20
1985 - 27
1986 - 11
1987 - 14
1988 - 20
1989 - 20
1990 - 29
1991 - 24
1992 - 18
1993 - 19
1994 - 27
This year USAC put together a great schedule and I believe were on track to have 50+ races but unfortunately there have been 12 rainouts or cancellations. So far 40 points races have been run with 4 more to go.
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