CONCORD, N.C. The World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series will have six rookie drivers this season and more than half the touring racers have two seasons or less experience on the tour.

Though experienced sprint car racers, Cole Macedo, Hunter Schuerenberg, Zach Hampton, Skylar Gee, Garet Williamson and Chris Windom will all take on the full series schedule for the first time.

Noting that todays young drivers race differently, World of Outlaws champions David Gravel and Donny Schatz provided insight to the rookie vs. veteran dynamic on the Outlaw trail.

Its going to be interesting. Theres going to be a lot more fireworks, said reigning World of Outlaws champion David Gravel. I feel like this past year the top seven, eight guys, theres a lot of fireworks with them. Now were going to have it, 12-13 cars deep.

Windoms more of a veteran guy, not going to drive wild. But youre going to have Zach Hampton driving wild. Garret Williamson, hes a gasser. Hunter Schuerenberg, hes a gasser too, Gravel added. I know Hunter really well. Its something I know he was always a non-winged guy and transferred over to wing racing. Happy for him to get the opportunity to race the World of Outlaws. I think Garret Williamson has a lot of talent as well. I think hell have a solid season.

Through 29 years on the circuit, 10-time series champion Donny Schatz has seen rookies come and go.

I dont have a responsibility to do anything for them, Schatz said during a Jan. 28 interview. I know that I had to earn the respect of Steve Kinser and I had to earn the respect of Sammy Swindell, Dave Blaney, Danny Lasoski, Mark Kinser and all the guys that were there when I came out. You dont see that in todays environment.

One thing that I always say is that youll have guys who come and race with us and they will do magnificent when they pick the shows they want, but if something doesnt go right, they get to go home and hit reset, he noted. When you commit and you pack your bag and load up and go World of Outlaws racing, now it changes and I have seen it effect so many guys who dont expect it. Guys who think they are ready. They go and do it and it can be the ultimate beat down. I think that you are going to see that this year.

Asked specifically about this years rookie class, Schatz said: They are all fairly seasoned, so it is going to be an interesting scenario. They are going to find themselves in positions where they get in trouble and it gets to be a beat down and it is hard to keep up. Maybe not all of them are going to make it the whole time.

I hope they do, but I can tell you the toughest season I ever had was my rookie year. Just getting to the end is a tough road. If someone wants to come and ask me for advice, I will help. I have no problem with that. I try to encourage them to do things the right way. Obviously, there are guys I have raced with that we had problems with who have become some of my closest friends.

Gravel had a similar opinion.

Everybody wants to be a World of Outlaw guy, but when you go and do it, it really changes your opinion on if you really want to be a World of Outlaw, because it is grueling, Gravel said.

Night in, night out, you got to perform. If you dont, you could go on a 10-race stretch that sucks and you could get really depressed and really down on yourself.

Schatz makes no bones about todays younger generation of racers being different.

I think a lot of that comes from the younger generation, they going at it a little differently than maybe my era did, he explained. We worked on the cars. I owned the cars and have done all those things. Todays generation, they just go for it at all costs, over, through or on top of, it doesnt matter. Its all about getting the results.

I think you have seen the most generation that has done it by feeding off of what I did or what Steve (Kinser) did. We all feed off of each other, but todays environment with live streaming, you can go back and replay everything. Thats a completely different scenario than what I was subjected to.

Back then if you wanted to see Steve Kinser race, you needed to be at the race track, and you needed to watch him when he was on the race track, Schatz noted. Now, you can go back and find footage of these guys and watch and learn from their mistakes for countless hours. I am sure there are a lot of people that do that. What took me a lot of years to figure out, now people can watch all those things and see how things transpired in a short amount of time.