Purple Helmet Preview🏁: US Chili Bowl Nationals 2026 — Dirt, Legends & some UK Grit

Right then. January in Tulsa, Oklahoma is usually freezing — unless you’re standing inside the SageNet Center watching a couple of hundred midges (that’s “midget cars” to the uninitiated) wheel-to-wheel on dirt so slick it could star in a shampoo commercial. Yes, it’s that time again: the 40th annual Chili Bowl Nationals powered by NOS Energy Drink, where laps are short, egos are large, and the word “logic” flies out the window somewhere around the third qualifying night.

What Even Is This Thing?

If you’ve never been, think of it as the world’s most intense oval racing week marathon — six days of qualifying, heats, features, G-Features, H-Features… honestly at some point it feels like they’re alphabetising races just to keep you awake. Every position counts, every lap matters, and everyone is trying really hard to convince themselves that this specific heat is the one they’ll remember forever.

The Chili Bowl routinely draws insane entry lists — this year’s roster is approaching 385+ entries, which would top previous records and is basically the motorsport equivalent of, “Yeah, I’ve got free time, why not this?”

Stars, Legends… and Your Mate Down the Pub

On the headline end you get the kind of names that make even seasoned dirt fans go, “Oh shit, that’s happening.” Defending and past winners like Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell and emerging cross-discipline talents like Jesse Love — back for his fourth attempt after honing his skills on dirt before NASCAR — are all signed up to duke it out for the Golden Driller.

And of course, Tony Stewart — yes, Smoke himself — returns to Tulsa in a more ambassadorial role as Grand Marshal, reminding everyone that the Chili Bowl isn’t just about speed, it’s about heritage, chaos and piles of BBQ.

UK Invasion: Harris & France bring some UK Grit

Now here’s the part Purple Helmet readers can really get behind — because while dirt in the UK is usually whatever your boots look like after a wet Sunday, a couple of British legends are actually making the trip over to battle in the clay melee.

First up:

Tom Harris. — yes, THAT Tom Harris, the BriSCA F1 champion from Banbury, Oxfordshire — has made the trip over and his team will be properly racing in the Chili Bowl with a car sourced from a past Chili Bowl winner’s constructor (Bob East, for the gear nerds). Harris has spoken openly about testing with sprint car legend Smiley Sitton and being competitive in initial runs, which is basically the racing equivalent of “yeah, we held our own in my mate’s garage”.

Harris sees the midget cars as being closer in feel to the stock cars he normally races at home, and rightly points out that if you’re going to get weird with dirt and power and no aero, a Chili Bowl is as good a place as any. He’s also invited UK fans to come make some noise — which we absolutely will because nothing says “support” like screaming in someone’s face at 105 dB.

Jack France. The BriSCA F1 stalwart from the UK is racing again at the Chili Bowl this year with Chandler Grand Prix in his Napa-sponsored machine carrying UK216 — basically a Yorkshire terrier with wheels and slightly fewer teeth, but absolutely ready to rumble.  

France’s entry marks a very real shot at holding his own among a massive global field, which is exactly the sort of thing that would make anyone back home cheer from behind a cuppa.

We just have to hope that the UK boys remember that their Midgets are not equipped with huge steel bumpers and that drilling someone into the fence is not ok on the other side of the pond.

Why the Chili Bowl is Unique

If you’re wondering why anyone would spend six days off work, thousands of miles from home, watching a bunch of tiny cars circle a lumpy oval while the world outside freezes… the answer is pretty simple:

It’s one of the biggest indoor racing spectacles in the world, dirt racing purists treat it like a pilgrimage, it’s tradition wrapped in horsepower and tyre smoke, and most importantly… it’s utterly unpredictable.

Seriously, one night you’re battling for a heat win, the next you’re scraping clay out of your helmet visor at 2 a.m. It’s chaotic in the way only grassroots and semi-pro motorsport can be — glorious, exhausting, and maybe a little bit ridiculous.

The Chili Bowl Spirit (aka Why We Love It)

If motorsport had a personality, the Chili Bowl would be that friend who insists on starting a fight in a bar just to see what happens. It’s equal parts brilliant and bonkers. It’s a week-long endurance test masked as a series of sprint races. It’s where legends are made, hopefuls dream big, and sometimes random mid-pack heroes become the ones you’re still talking about come March.

And yes, you’ll probably need a big mug of tea to understand why anyone would do this, let alone enjoy it. But that’s the beauty of muddy, fast-paced, mayhem-wrapped-in-clay that is the Chili Bowl.

🟣🏁 Purple Helmet will be watching on FloRacing, with a big bowl of Popcorn!