- Go Trucking at The Glen - Watkins Glen International - 1. (#63) Johnny Avila - 2. (#04) Cody Porter - 3. (#46) Oskar Jensen - 4. (#61) Nishil Condoor - 5. (#52) Jacob Fifield - 6. (#84) Corey Schramm - 7. (#82) Nathaniel Campbell - 8. (#34) Matthew Owens - 9. (#37) Joe Wright - 10. (#00) Garth Griswold - 11. (#95) Pete Morales - 12. (#51) Michael Deitch - 13. (#20) Jacob Abreu - 14. (#28) Jonathan Leger - 15. (#18) Austin Runkel - 16. (#56) Noah Spaulding - 17. (#30) Mason Hoeffner - 18. (#60) Cat Wheeler - 19. (#99) Zack Saunders - 20. (#97) John Conner - 21. (#86) Ryan Taft - 22. (#93) Stewart Harding Walker - 23. (#25) Jim Mott - 24. (#4) Tyler Krawczyk - 25. (#43) Shaun Dionne
A new era has arrived – but how did we get to this point? What have we learned? And how can we be the best version of ourselves moving forward?
How did we arrive here?
The Sunday Night Showdown held its inaugural race on September 11, 2022 – the Never Forget 165 (how many current league members can you spot?). The SNS was an early success, with an average of 13 drivers per race in the entirety of Season 0. As the SNS expanded to running on multiple days, the name no longer fit the league. The decision was made at that point to rebrand to “THE SHOW” – a slight modification to the SNS.
At this point, the community saw rapid expansion. Season 1 saw great success – with an average of 22 drivers per race in the season, and a top car count of 33 racers taking to the track at Talladega that season. But not all good things last…
MORE: Cup standings / Trucks Schedule
The Season 2 implosion came on the back of the biggest league expansions the league had ever seen. But the expansion was too rapid. The administration team was split, race craft was subpar, and the community was in chaos. With no fallback plan in place, the league had to back out of everything and enter a rebuilding phase. And thus, the Moving Chicanes Racing League was born from the ashes.
The Moving Chicanes era found the rebuilding from scratch, only maintaining a handful of original members from THE SHOW era. A three-month period was spent rebuilding including an invite-only Cup Series to clean up the Cup Series race craft, while incorporating our now second most popular series – the Sportsman Truck Series. These would be the building blocks for the MCRL 2024 project announced in September of 2023 which would see an Indy Car, IMSA, and Touring Car series added to expand the league into a significant amount of road racing for the first time. After some internal struggles relating to participation however, the road racing was later removed in the early parts of the 2024 season. This – however – was the beginning of the end of the nomenclature “Moving Chicanes Racing League”.
READ MORE: (Changes Article)
Why the change?
Competing leagues and disgruntled members would use the league’s own name against itself in times of trouble. This led to an overall negative connotation to the league name and made it an easy target for nay-sayers and competing leagues.
Ah, I see why it is called “Moving Chicanes” now.
Disgruntled League Member c. 2024
In an attempt to move away from negativity, we have decided it would be best to rebrand the league to a name more befitting of the racing we perform. During the brainstorming process, we gathered many ideas about past league events and phrases that related to the league. But, one always came back to us no matter where else we looked – Crown Jewel.
There’s another one of those “Moving Chicanes” again!
Former League Member, c. 2024
When assessing the potential names, Crown Jewel became the obvious choice due to the type of schedule we run in the Circuit Cup Series currently. However, we wanted it to become more than that. We wanted to surpass just the NASCAR Cup Series “crown jewel” events and take a look at motorsports as a whole – so that’s what we did. By implementing the “Crown Jewel” schedule across multiple disciplines of racing, we will be able to provide a taste of all famous motor racing events such as the Rolex 24, Daytona 500, Indy 500, 24 Hours of Les Mans, and many more.
READ MORE: (2024-2025 Crown Jewel Schedule)
Moving into the future, we are looking to bring a more positive outlook to the league and build strong, lasting relationships with the iRacing community. Having a general set of ideas and principles to work around as well as a strong brand that ties into those principles will ensure long-term success for the community as a whole. We hope you enjoy the rebrand, new look website, and all of the other cool features we are “ushering in” with this process!