What is the goal of the I-95 Showdown at Florence and Southern National?

From the standpoint of Steve Zacharias, the I-95 Showdown is all about strengthening the viability of the Late Model Stock Car as a weekly division platform along the greater Carolina coast and the eponymous interstate it is named after.

The promoter and co-owner of Florence Motor Speedway in South Carolina has joined forces with his counterpart at Southern National Motorsports Park in Mike Diaz to promote eight combined races, four each at both tracks and includes a combined $12,000 championship fund but also a chance to have guaranteed starting spots and paid entry fees for both the marquee South Carolina 400 and Thanksgiving Classic.

There will also be a combined championship banquet on a cruise ship with the top-three drivers having their fare paid for and discounts for crew, family and friends.

A format breakdown for the mini-series can be found here and below.

But again, the point here was to strengthen the Late Model Stock platform for these two weekly tracks. And anyone who knows Mike Diaz, who couldn’t be reached for this story, he has always dreamed of having his track be part of something similar to the Virginia Triple Crown as well.

This is no doubt an extension of that longstanding goal.

“Mike Diaz and I see both sides of the industry,” said Zacharias by telephone on Thursday. “We’ve both fielded cars and raced but also operated race tracks, right? So we’re always working together and talking about how we can come together and work together. How can we grow car counts?

“People don’t realize how much help he already is with Florence. The pre-race stage is his. I don’t even think he uses it right now but always lets us use it for the 400. But we wanted to make something fun for Late Model guys. It’s similar to what we did before when I was at Myrtle Beach with ‘Beach Madness’ and make it to where someone that has a bad race doesn’t get discouraged from coming back.

“It’s been a long process but we’re both really excited for what we’ve come up with here.”

For this to especially work, Florence regulars need to buy in to race at Southern National, which hasn’t had a true weekly program for several years. This past year, Diaz front loaded his entire schedule in the first half of the year to avoid summer races and is doing the same thing in 2025 and its part of what makes the I-95 Showdown have viability.

“To get where we wanted to be with this, I’ve picked the brains of my Late Model guys,” Zacharias said. “I felt like we had a good big picture thing but I wanted to check with them about some of the little things. It helped us come up with how to do payouts for the top-3 but also to pitch to them doing a banquet on a cruise.”

Zacharias concedes that racers aren’t in this to make a living behind the wheel but want to have an experience and good time.

“We wanted to give them that experience with their friends and family,” Zacharias said. “The money is great and giving them incentive to travel up and down the road more was important but we wanted to give them a good time.”

Florence renovations

Zacharias has also already ordered up improvements to ensure that what happened with the South Carolina 400 broadcast doesn’t happen again.

An event record crowd that tuned in to watch Dale Earnhardt Jr. race in the Budweiser No. 8 were subjected to buffering issues and stream crashes. It was a complete network collapse at the facility.

Zacharias said his track has the infrastructure to stream such an event with hard line Spectrum internet and a Starlink back up by the network was just congested. He said he realized it before the race when he went to play the Bulls pre-game song, Sirius, and there was no internet.

The Cat 6 hardline cable failed and the Starlink was congested.

As a result, Zacharias is putting a fiber-optic cable in to prevent that from happening again.

He also no shortage of infrastructure improvements on the to-do list as finances allow.

“The grandstands are going to be an undertaking,” Zacharias said. “I don’t even know where to start with those. I’ve had engineers look at them and the way they were built is so strange. We need to figure out what can work better than what we have now.”

He wants to improve the bathrooms and cover enclose the tech shed, while also covering the tire barn.

“There’s always things we’re trying to restore and we’ve shown that over the years, he said. “It’s just financially what can we do, one piece at a time.”