MidAmerica Outdoors in Jay, Oklahoma, will début a new Pro Lite truck racing championship in 2023 dubbed the MAO Racing Truck Championship Series with a four-round season. As the name and leadership suggest, the series will mainly race at MAO, though the opener will take place at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Missouri, in one month.
The series was introduced in December as a truck counterpart to the existing MAO Racing SXS Championship Series, which has existed since 2000 and began its season in mid-March. Although the SXS side has seven races, it will be present at all four Truck weekends.
Lucas Oil Speedway is primarily known for dirt track racing but has an off-road configuration that was previously used by the Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series until its demise in 2020. While LOORRS was a West Coast-based series, the Wheatland round was a combination weekend with the Lucas Oil Midwest Short Course League.
“If you were a person sitting in the stands, just to hear the roar and thunder and watch these trucks, you could not tell the difference between a Pro 2, a Pro 4, and a Pro Lite,” stated MAO race director Bill Champion in February. “The only difference is this is more the entry level, if you will. These trucks range in price $75,000 (€69,753.75) to $200,000 (€186,010). You get a lot more people who are able to afford this.
“We’re the largest short-course racing series in the country right now as far as racing and numbers. Then you throw in Pro Lite trucks and we have the recipe for a big event at Wheatland.”
A weekend consists of two races. Each is run in “waves”, which consists of a row of at most eight drivers. For example, a 24-driver race would have three waves that start thirty seconds apart from each other. The finishing order in a wave counts for points even if one starts overtaking trucks in other waves. While Race #1’s waves are randomly assigned, the results of said round set the starting order for Race #2; in th event of a tie, whoever has the faster total time gets a better start slot.
Both races gives out “race points”, which are added to determine the overall classification for the weekend. Like in golf, a driver wants to have the fewest points at the end of the round, with a race winner receiving one point, second getting two, and so on. Ties are broken by the driver with the better Race #2 finish. Only the final classification goes towards the championship.
The overall weekend winner earns forty points for the championship. Second is awarded thirty-five, with third getting thirty-three. The increments decrease by one from fourth place’s thirty points down to five for those classified twenty-ninth and lower.
MidAmerica Outdoors, whose eponymous owner oversees Ultra4 USA, will host a litany of major off-road championships in 2023 including the Championship Off-Road season finale in September. The Visions Off-Road weekend in June will also see the arrival of Nitro Rallycross, whose founder Travis Pastrana is basing his operations at MAO starting this year.
2023 MAO Racing Truck Championship Series schedule
| # | Track | Date |
| 1 | Lucas Oil Speedway | 27–30 April |
| 2 | MidAmerica Outdoors (Memorial) | 25–29 May |
| 3 | MidAmerica Outdoors (Visions Off-Road) | 14–18 June |
| 4 | MidAmerica Outdoors | 20–23 July |