After a season of racing in virtual anonymity, the nation’s best short-track drivers are ready for their big moment.

The top drivers from NASCAR’s minor league touring series will all compete against each other for the first time Saturday night, vying for a purse of more than $500,000 in front of a national cable TV audience.

And with the race scheduled to start at 8 p.m. EST – long after the Busch Series race in Rockingham, N.C. – these 70 drivers that most fans have never heard of will get the spotlight to themselves.

“Anybody that knows anything about NASCAR racing is going to be watching these races,” said Jeff Jefferson, the champion of the Northwest Series. “Everybody knows about this shootout. If you can win that, you can definitely get your name out.”

The inaugural Toyota All-Star Showdown in Irwindale, Calif., is actually a pair of races.

The opener is a 100-lapper for the top 10 drivers from the Elite divisions of NASCAR (the Midwest, Southeast, Northwest and Southwest series) on the three-eighths mile Irwindale Speedway. The nightcap features the top 15 from the Busch North and Winston West series for 125 laps.

But there’s a twist. Each race will be run in segments, with the final one a 25-lap sprint to the checkered flag. In the first part, each driver will compete as part of a team for their division, and the team accumulating the most points wins a bonus – $20,000 for the Elite series, and $30,000 for the finale.

“It’s almost like combining the all-star game and the playoffs,” said Chris Boals, NASCAR’s director of regional touring. “It’ll be the biggest thing that NASCAR has ever done for these regional series. It puts them on a new playing field.

“I don’t think we’ve ever done anything this big for this level of racing.”

Short-track drivers usually compete for five-figure purses in front of small-town crowds and without TV coverage. The results barely get a mention even in local newspapers.

Andy Santerre, the Busch North champion, won the most money of the drivers this season, $81,525 in 17 races, all in the Northeast. The winner’s share from his race Saturday night is $25,000.

“I think most of the Busch North guys were a little leery at first, going all the way to California to run this race,” Santerre said. “But the more hype it brought, plus the big purse, I think that’s made everybody a little more excited. We’re all looking forward to it.”

Santerre and several other drivers will have one disadvantage, though. They’ve never raced at Irwindale, and many have never even seen the track.

The Southwest Series ran a race there this season, and so did the Winston West.

None of the other divisions did, although Irwindale, with its graduated banking in the turns, resembles a lot of tracks.

“I’ve been trying to do some snooping around to get some information about the track,” said Steve Carlson, who won his fifth NASCAR title this year in the Midwest Series. “We have a basic setup that we use at most of the tracks, so we’re just going to try that and hopefully get the car up to speed.

“If we’re off, we’ll just start throwing different shocks and springs at it and hope we hit on something.”

The rules shouldn’t be a problem, either. The series that are competing against each other this week follow the same rule book, and NASCAR sent officials to various events during the season to make sure the inspections were being done properly.

“I don’t think there’ll be any surprises,” Boals said.

So whoever wins won’t have a problem claiming bragging rights across the country.

“That’s be a notch in the cap,” Santerre said. “I’ve won two Busch North titles, and if I could win that national championship, well, I have mostly volunteers on my team. It’d really please them to win this championship.”

AP-ES-11-05-03 1619EST