DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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I feel guilty about wanting Logan Seavey to go winged racing | Daily 2-20-2024

Coming up, I want to see Logan Seavey get in a winged sprint car on the regular, and I feel guilty about it. We'll discuss that, plus some thoughts on the current state of weekly dirt racing. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, February 20th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

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I want to start today off with a discussion about Logan Seavey, which will really end up being a commentary on the larger open wheel scene and existing in the dirt racing content space. As I mentioned on Sunday, Seavey has a real opportunity this year to attack the USAC Triple Crown. It's something that's only happened twice in history, where a driver won all three USAC championships in a season. Tony Stewart did it in 1995, and JJ Yeley did it in 2003. Seavey won both the midget and Silver Crown titles a year ago, but had a so-so season in the sprint car, and was only ninth in the final rundown. Things did start to turn around late in 2023 though, and his last 11 USAC sprint car starts include four wins, nine top fives, and 10 top tens. The sprint car was his weakest area in 2023, but no finishes worse than third through the opening six races in 2024 seem to point to that being rectified with the new Abacus team. In the crown car last year, it was three wins and nine top fives in 11 races, and his pavement racing took a step forward. And he's continued to show why he's an incredible midget racer, bagging eight wins and 24 top tens in 27 races, to say nothing of back-to-back Chili Bowls. I feel like based on what we've seen from Seavey the last year and a half, he should be getting talked about more, but clearly that's a symptom of him being a non-wing racer. And regardless of whether he actually completes the Triple Crown in 2024 or not, he's still on one of the great non-wing runs in history, especially recent history. All of this non-wing success though has led to questions of when we'll see Seavey do more winged racing. And supposedly that's coming when he has some off days in 2024. We talked back in January about Swindell SpeedLab working on some stuff to get Seavey some starts in the 39. It's a great move for Seavey, and something I'm excited to see. I don't see any reason why his talent won't translate, and he's had good runs in winged cars before. See the Trophy Cup in 2023 as one example. If I'm the car owner of a winged 410 team, I'd definitely have Seavey on my radar, because I feel like he could be on a similar trajectory to Tyler Courtney. Sunshine obviously a very good non-wing racer, but is now well on his way to being one of the top winged guys in the country. The status and notoriety though, is very different for those two groups. I myself almost feel guilty for wanting Seavey to make the jump, because shouldn't we just be okay with what he's doing on the USAC side? I think too, that Seavey is an interesting case study of how driver development isn't a linear or exponential curve all the time. Yes, guys like Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell rose quickly, but for others it takes time. Seavey was once on that same track, and did get a few chances on pavement and in NASCAR and ARCA. That window is likely closed now though, based on whatever judgements from driver development boss people. It's taken him some time to rise up again out of that, but clearly looks to be on his way to, at the very least, dirt racing stardom. I get messages and comments and criticisms all the time, because I don't talk about this driver, or that series, or this other car type enough. But when you're in the content business, as I've said before, it's difficult to make those other things front and center when they don't draw in eyeballs and ears. I don't get to decide what people click on and watch or listen to. My last three TikToks for example, all USAC related, and all three of my least viewed videos in some time. So you can see why the motivation gets lower to talk about those other things. Even look at today's YouTube video thumbnail. It's been 229 days since I last featured a non-wing car on a thumbnail. Maybe that's one reason I want Seavey to go winged racing... So it will be easier to justify talking about one of the top young drivers in the country, who deserves the accolades.

Moving on...

In the last 24 hours or so, Huset's Speedway in South Dakota announced bumps to their weekly purse payouts, joining several other tracks to make such increases this season. Other examples include Knoxville and Attica. And a year ago, almost at this exact same point, we were talking about Port Royal doing the same. Drivers and teams in a lot of areas have been clamoring for these increases, and some tracks are attempting to keep up. This is obviously on the heels of big pushes by lots of central figures to get increases from the national series, not just in sprint car racing, but in other car classes as well like late model racing. We do though seem to be at an inflection point for weekly racing. The upper levels of the sport certainly look like they are continuing to do well, but others a little further down the chain are struggling to keep up. And some in the industry are incredibly negative about the future of weekly shows. We just had East Bay's Al Varnadore say several weeks ago that he thinks weekly racing will be gone in five to ten years, and pointed towards his issues keeping weekly racing profitable as a central reason behind selling off the race track. He blamed, as many others have, the streaming services for his issues and talked about the money not filtering down to the tracks. But not every big player thinks this way. World Racing Group's Brian Carter recently told Jeremy Elliott that he thinks the places that do well weekly will continue to succeed, but that the marginal race tracks are at a real risk. And Tod Quiring, who owns Huset's Speedway, said on David Gravel's YouTube channel not long ago that he loves streaming. He said it's not going away, and you have to find a way to adapt to it, find the right sweet spot. And from where I sit, I think more promoters need to take Quiring's perspective. Instead of just bemoaning why these factors are keeping you from suceeding, the tracks that do survive will be the ones who find ways to integrate streaming properly, and also diversify revenue streams. I do think there is a significant case to be made that not every dirt race needs to be on a streaming service, but at that point, where fans can't easily tune in, it's going to take effort and investment to get race fans to come out to the track on Fridays and Saturdays. The same old playbook just doesn't work anymore, and there is just not enough progress and innovation happening at the race track level when it comes to event promotion. There is a way forward for weekly race tracks, the question will be who will actually embrace the challenge.

That's it for the Daily show today. Appreciate you tuning in. If you want more dirt racing content, make sure to check out dirtrackr.com, plus I've been pumping out posts across the DIRTRACKR social media accounts, so make sure you're following on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, wherever you have accounts.

Hope you guys have a great Tuesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!