DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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High Limit won't be immune to tough nights, Updates on murky ASCS future | Daily 2-25-2024
A light Thursday night High Limit crowd draws attention, we've got updates on the ongoing ASCS situation, and more from the dirt racing weekend. Let's go!
It's Sunday, February 25th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Apologies for the late show today, but I spent the weekend down at Golden Isles for the Lucas and High Limit races and had to supertruck it home. It sucks we lost Friday to rain, but at least we still got two nights of racing in. If you haven't been before, Golden Isles is a solid facility. Not too far off interstate 95, they've got a nice grandstand setup, and the place has a cool vibe. The whole backstretch and turns three and four areas are all just fans with their trucks backed up to the fence and hanging out. Fires going, drinks all around, just a good tailgate spot for the night. I know the crowd was a topic of conversation after Thursday, with shots of empty grandstands making the rounds. The facility was much more packed on Saturday, and in talking to several people through the weekend, this is often the case there: lighter crowds early in the week, and then improvement through the event. The southeast isn't usually sprint car territory, so it wasn't all that surprising that a mostly sprint car only night was a little lighter attended. I would have thought with Kyle Larson on the property that they would have drawn more, but I do think this shows how tough the promoting game can be. There is no magic bullet to get folks to come through the gates, and convincing people to spend money on tickets and show up is actually really freakin' hard. I also think we will see this at some points through 2024 as High Limit hits up some of these race tracks that haven't been regular national tour stops. Starting this thing from scratch was always going to mean certain dates were going to be a slog, and Golden Isles was a risk for sure. It will take them time to build up their marketing efforts to sell tickets for some of these races.
As for the racing itself, I definitely thought last night was better than Thursday for the sprint cars. Having way more late models helped things widen out a bit more, and the battle out front was better. I wouldn't have expected two non-stop features for High Limit. Back on Thursday, it was all Tyler Courtney. He took advantage of that dash win, and led all 25 laps to score his second High Limit victory in three races. Brent Marks and Justin Peck were podium finishers. Last night we had a great battle out front, with both Jacob Allen and Justin Peck leading laps, and Tyler Courtney and Rico Abreu also in the mix. Watching Jacob drive around Anthony Macri on the high side during that last heat race was a warning shot to the rest of the field for the night. Allen ended up leading 16 of 25 laps and earning his first 410 sprint car win since he won the Gold Cup back in 2022. It was 72 races in between wins for the Shark Racing 1A. We hadn't seen this pace out of that team yet in 2024, as they only made one of four features at Volusia against the Outlaws, and his best finish to this point was a ninth at East Bay. That's a big boost though for Shark, and the sprint car world is just a better place when Jacob Allen gets a win. Courtney and Peck rounded out the night's podium. Leaving Golden Isles, Sunshine is now the championship leader by 18 over Brad Sweet. Brent Marks, Spencer Bayston, and Corey Day are the rest of the top five. Sunshine leads the series in wins and top fives, while Sweet, Marks, and Bayston are the only drivers to finish top 10 all four nights so far. High Limit now goes quiet for six weeks, with the next race scheduled for April 9th at Riverside. In talking to teams this weekend, you will see several find other places to race in the meantime, including with the Outlaws. They are back at Volusia this coming Sunday and Monday in the midst of Daytona Bike Week, and then they head to Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas for an eight race swing in March.
One other quick note, Austin McCarl and the Country Builders 88 team did not return for Saturday's High Limit race. They were out early on Thursday night, finishing 24th, but were not back in the pit area come Saturday. Some interesting rumblings out there about this team, so maybe on group to keep an eye on. The High Limit field though stayed at 26 cars for Saturday, as Kevin Newton's team rolled out a second car for him to drive alongside Cole Macedo.
With Lucas, they closed out their early season schedule last night at Golden Isles as well. Except for two brief moments where Chris Madden and Brandon Sheppard led a single lap each, last night's 50 lapper was mostly controlled by Mike Marlar. It was his first Lucas win of 2024, and his first since Brownstown last September. Sheppard and Madden ended up second and third. It was a tough night for points leader Ricky Thornton Jr., who had a hard hit in his heat race, and needed a backup car for the rest of the night. He pulled in early during the feature and finished 23rd. No harm done though, as not all of these speedweeks races count towards the standings. Guys are able to throw out some poor finishes. We won't see Lucas again until March 22nd at Atomic. RTJ still out front in the standings by five points over Hudson O'Neal. Jonathan Davenport, Daulton Wilson, and Brandon Sheppard are the rest of the top five. We'll see what Davenport decides to do going forward, and if he does indeed decide to stay out full time. I think Daulton Wilson has been very solid to start the year, and he's currently inside that all important top four. Tim McCreadie being way down in ninth and already 215 points back feels like the biggest surprise. He did grab that win at All-Tech, but it's his only top five through these first 13 races, and he's got just five top tens. Feel free to leave your comments below on the sprint car-late model weekend at Golden Isles.
Elsewhere, the Icebreaker at Lincoln Speedway was moved to today because of those cold temperatures. By the time you watch this, I'm sure action will already be underway. We'll talk about the results and the virtual flagging system on Monday's daily.
Other weekend winners included Matt Mitchell with the USAC CRA sprint cars at Perris, Tanner Carrick won the 360 opener at Marysville, Mark Smith won the USCS feature at Southern Raceway over Terry McCarl and Matt Covington, and the first two USMTS wins went to Jason Hughes and Jim Chisholm.
Before we close out today, just a couple updates on the ongoing situation around the future of the 360 ASCS. In recent days, Terry Mattox has removed references to his ASCS ownership from his social media accounts, and changes have been made to the contact page at ascsracing.com. At the moment, only regional coordinators are listed. There is no longer any reference to Mattox as owner, and Bryan Hulbert's name has been removed. Obviously Hulbert off to announce for USAC this season. As for this coming weekend's ASCS National Tour opener at South Texas Race Ranch, it seems as though that is in serious jeopardy. The event pages on the race track website no longer list the ASCS as a division competing, and all ASCS races have been removed from the RacinDirt.tv streaming schedule. There was some possibility that the opener would become just an ASCS Gulf South region event, but that might not be happening now either. Just a few days ago, the Gulf South Region posted to Facebook that their 2024 schedule was still on for all non-cosanctioned national events, and that they would release an updated schedule soon. They also shared that the South Texas Race Ranch event was still on, and that it would be for Gulf South points. The problem though, is that post has now been deleted. Several of the social media rumors had pointed towards some sort of announcement on a sale of the ASCS happening late last week, but as I said when we talked about this last Wednesday, that was all premature. And the week came and went with nothing official being announced. Supposedly a meeting or meetings happened last week with Emmett Hahn, but I have not heard what, if anything, came out of those meetings. This will be a situation we continue to monitor going forward, but for now, it looks like the early part of the ASCS schedule is not looking good.
Alright, that's it for the Daily show today.
Hope you guys have a great Sunday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!