The 2025 Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals is scheduled for December 6th at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis. A recent update from Tindal Truck Sales has just turned up the heat with a stunning bonus announcement. Known as one of the most prestigious racing events globally, this year’s Nationals promises even greater thrills with added incentives along with a new registration format to go with it. The 2025 rendition will see its biggest purse ever and event promoter Cody Sommer opened up on the changes.

Big changes, bigger purse

Tindal Truck Sales is a business in Mayfield Ky., owned and operated by John Tindal. Tindal is a former Dirt model racer, and he has announced the addition of a bonus element to the prize money. Being the former promoter of the Paducah (Ky.) International Raceway, he announced a whopping $20,000 bonus for the ultimate Dirt Late Model winner. The bonus is an addition to the pre-existing amount of $50,000 for the winner’s purse.

This significant boost follows last year’s payout of $30,000 to 2024 winner Brandon Sheppard, making 2025’s event even more lucrative. The modified division is also seeing an impressive increase, with a $10,000 bonus doubling the final winner’s earnings to $20,000. 

All these bonuses take the total event purse up to $340,800 from $229,440, a 52 percent increase. Announcing the bonus, the official page of the Gateway Dirt Nationals posted, “The 25′ GDN will now pay a total of $70K to the winner of the SLM A-Main Event. The Modified A-Main will be $20K to win. In addition to the already boosted purse money..  Tindal Truck Sales has contributed the additional BONUS of $20K & $10K to the winners. Merry Christmas🎄🎅🏼”. 

Speaking on the increased purse, event promoter Cody Sommer said to FloRacing, “It’s just remarkable what we’ve done… $50,00 win and $3,000 start for the super late models.” To add to the winning bonus, with qualifying looking to get tougher than refer, the reward for starting the race has also been increased. Sommer added, “There’s also more money for the win and you’re in race… In 2016 and 2017 the first guy out literally got 150 bucks. Now he’s getting $2,500 next year.”  $2,500 will be given to the first Super Late Model non-transfer and the 12-car last-chance race will pay $1,000 to start.

To add to these changes, Cody Sommer opened up on the new registration format.

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Changes come to the 2025 Gateway Dirt Nationals

It seems as though not only the prize money, there are some changes in even the format of the race. Along with that, the driver registration process has seen a new upgrade as well. Cody Sommer spoke about changing the process for modified’s as well, but for now, it’s just the main event. A registration pool process will replace the prior existing process of a first come first serve basis registration. Drivers can choose to pre-register, but they would need official approval to receive an official entry. Regardless, the registration for this year was sold out within just 15 minutes, and a total of 250 drivers signed up for the same. 

Sommer spoke about the revamped registration process and noted the pressure to turn it into an invitation-only event, similar to how the Modified portion of the show is handled. Although he is not ready to do that just yet. Notably, Modifieds will remain on the schedule as invitation-only and continue to pay $ 10,000 to win the final race but will see an overall purse increase of $18,800. 

The 2025 Gateway Dirt Nationals is set to attract an even fiercer pool of talent. Drivers will now face not only intense competition on the track but also the added challenge of securing their coveted spot in this prestigious event. While the race does not air on national television, you will be able to witness the same on Flo Racing. So, mark your calendars and gear up for a high-stakes showdown as the Gateway Dirt Nationals promises to deliver heart-pounding action and record-breaking payouts in 2025.