DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Dirt is moving for this track's revival... | Daily 2-27-2024

An update today on the progress at Pennsboro Speedway, the story of a commenter calling me an idiot and then deleting their post, and the insane amount of racing the late model teams have already done in 2024. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, February 27th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

Lucas and the World of Outlaws are done in Georgia and Florida now for the speedweeks portion of the season following Saturday's finale at Golden Isles for Lucas. We won't see either national tour now for a month, with racing set to resume later in March. Over the next few weeks, the focus in dirt late model racing will be on some of the regional stuff, with the Spring Nationals getting going, March Madness at Cherokee, the Comp Cams opener, and the Hunt the Front opener at Talladega among others. I was in looking through some early season numbers this morning, and one thing really stood out to me. And that's the number of times some of these guys have already raced in 2024. For some comparison, the most that any sprint car team has run to this point is eight races. Several teams have run all four Outlaw shows and all four High Limit races. That doesn't even come close to some of the late model guys. The first one I looked at was Brandon Sheppard. He ran a few nights of Wild West Shootout, and he's run basically everything down south. His current total is 23 races completed. So that made me dig in to find who has the most so far. Mike Marlar was a guy at Vado as well, and he's at 24 races, including a bunch of Outlaw and Lucas shows. From there, the easy one to look at was Tyler Erb. He's never afraid to run 100+ shows a season and we know he's been super active. He's got 25 races through Golden Isles. Everything at Vado, all the Lucas shows, Outlaws at Volusia for DCN, and a crate race at Brunswick. He did not run the early Outlaw nights in January at Volusia though. But even with that much racing, he's not the leader right now. That title belongs to Drake Troutman. He's run 26 race nights up to this point. All six at Vado, all four Outlaw nights, the three DIRTcar shows at Volusia, and every Lucas race. That's a lot of highway miles and a lot of seat time. And what none of these numbers include, are the test and practice days that have been available as well. There were two official practice nights at Vado, plus official extra track time at Golden Isles, Ocala, All-Tech, and East Bay. And then that doesn't include all the extra testing some of these teams have done as well. Through this last Saturday night, there had only been 55 days so far in the year. That means Troutman had raced every 2.1 nights. But several drivers have been in the car for well over 30 days so far, that means seat time at minimum every 1.8 days. That's bananas. I know most of these teams and drivers haven't seen their houses in a few months, so hopefully they are getting some down time over the next few weeks before things start to ramp back up again.

In West Virginia, the situation at Pennsboro Speedway is something we've been talking about for a while now. I first mentioned it's revival here on the Daily show back in October of 2022. Since then, there has been progress at the facility, including a now abandoned plan to create a smaller oval that saw significant dirt work happen on what was originally part of the infield and one straightaway. But in January of this year, Barry Braun and XR pivoted to instead bringing back the big track after working with local officials. The first race is scheduled for May 25th, but a warm winter has allowed them to get started on bringing the narrow, egg shaped, half mile back to more modern standards. Just a few days ago over on the Pennsboro Facebook page, images and videos were shared of the widening process beginning for the track surface. You can see heavy equipment on the property, like dozers and excavators, and they have already made what looks to be significant progress. Lots of challenges remain though, with the creeks and bridges still needing to be dealt with. There are two creeks that effectively traverse the track itself, with bridges in the middle of one straightaway, one into turn one, and another in turn three. All will need to be widened along with the surface and brought to current standards. One of the posts does say the corners and bridges will be addressed in the next phase of work. Other areas that need to be improved include bathroom and concession buildings, where they will have a pit area, plus parking and seating. In the past, the infield was used as the pits, and that could certainly happen again with modifications needed on the current grounds. The hillside seating will certainly return as well, but parking was always tricky in the past. It's no doubt going to be a busy next few months at Pennsboro in the leadup to their 2024 schedule of races. You can see all the videos and photos over at facebook.com/pennsboromagic.

Before we shut it down today, I wanted to jump back to Sunday's show for a second where we talked about High Limit and the prospect of promoting races and selling tickets. High Limit had a light Thursday crowd at Golden Isles, and my main point was that some tracks in this first big season will present risks. Golden Isles obviously in the heart of late model country, it potentially won't be the last time we see a light crowd. Ramping up ticketing and marketing operations is no small hill to climb, and it's an area where their main competitor in World Racing Group with the Outlaws has a significant advantage. WRG has a staff of people to handle these things at this point, and High Limit will get there, it just won't happen overnight. As we talk about the business of dirt racing, these are the areas where I want to shine a light for you guys, so you understand what happens behind the scenes and it gives you context for these situations. I mentioned on that Sunday show about High Limit starting from scratch, and I had a commenter call me an idiot because according to them, High Limit wasn't starting from scratch. I seemed to clearly not remember that they had purchased the All Stars. In my reply to their unnecessarily nasty comment, I reminded them that the All Stars didn't sell tickets to their events, so High Limit didn't inherit anything in that department by buying the series. The All Stars survived on sanction fees and sponsorships, and didn't have anything resembling a ticketing and event marketing department. High Limit has chosen a model more resembling what WRG does in trying to own more of the stack, so yes, they are effectively starting from scratch. Interestingly enough, that commenter has since deleted their post after my reply. As they move through the season, each High Limit event will be a learning experience. Brad Sweet has certainly promoted races before, and Kendra Jacobs brings in plenty of past knowledge, but they will still have a lot to absorb for the right mix of event marketing that will work. And none of this is a knock or a criticism of High Limit, it's just the reality of what they are going to face, and I think it's important information to know when you see a light crowd. One of my biggest objectives with this entire DIRTRACKR project is to help educate where I can, and my hope is that we are all smarter dirt racing fans after each show.

Alright, that's it for the Daily today. If you want some racing action tonight, IMCA modifieds and stock cars are on track at Northwest Florida. You can find the links to the broadcast over at dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

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