DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Future sprint car star? Dale McDowell's future. The Mad Man's new deal. | Daily 3-5-2024

Donny Schatz gets 500, Landon Crawley impresses, Kerry Madsen has a newish ride, details on Dale McDowell's future, plus a bunch of thoughts on the current state of dirt racing streaming. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, March 5th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

At Volusia last night, a very nice Daytona bike week crowd watched Donny Schatz pick up career sprint car win number 500. He started fourth, and was in the right place at the right time when leader Buddy Kofoid exploded a left rear tire just past half way. Schatz assumed the lead on the restart, and drove on to Outlaw win number 312, topping Sheldon Haudenschild and Carson Macedo. Johnny Gibson said last night that Donny's 500 career wins started with his first that came in 1993 at the Red River Valley Speedway. It's pretty wild to think that Donny has 312 Outlaw wins, plus another 188 across other sanctions and unsanctioned events. With five shows in the books, Donny's win vaulted him to a tie for second in the standings with Gio Scelzi. David Gravel remains the championship leader. Last night's podium for Carson Macedo was his first top five and top ten of the season after a tough DIRTcar Nationals. That team made some changes during the off weeks and looked much more like themselves last night. As for Buddy Kofoid, he shredded that left rear and then got trapped in the work area with no guaranteed time. Both he and Jacob Allen were victims of left rear failures. They finished 15th and 16th. Donny talked in victory lane about how hard they were running through the 25 lapper, and that there was a bunch of wheelspin. He said in those instances, the left rear is the tire that ends up taking the beating, and not the right rear like you'd probably think. Interesting insight there from Schatz. Hat tip as well to Landon Crawley. Fast again in qualifying, and grabbed his first career Outlaw top ten. I think he may surprise people all season long, as just a 16 year old, and driving a car you haven't often seen run up front in recent Outlaw years. The World of Outlaws season continues Friday and Saturday with two nights at Kennedale Speedway Park. The 1/4 mile track sits about 20 minutes south of downtown Fort Worth.

In some sprint car news from yesterday, Kerry Madsen will sort of have a new deal for 2024. He closed out last season driving the Vermeer 55 after that car started with Hunter Schuerenberg in the seat, and then had Buddy Kofoid for a few races. In 22 All Star appearances in the 55, Madsen ended the year with a win, 12 top fives, and 18 top tens. That All Star victory came at Attica, and he also had a weekly win at Knoxville in May driving for Guy Forbrook. But Vermeer hired Chris Windom for 2024 and a full High Limit run, which came with the NOS Energy Drink sponsorship. For this season though, Vermeer and Madsen are partnering up to start a new joint sprint car venture to run Knoxville and the midwest. Madsen told Jeremy Elliott at sprintcarunlimited.com they are starting from scratch putting this team together, and that they hope to run 40 or 50 shows through the year, including weekly at Knoxville and Huset's, plus nearby World of Outlaws and High Limit races. Madsen again spent the offseason doing some racing down in Australia with Krikke Motorsport, which included a seventh place run in the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic. They still have plenty of time though to get the team together, as racing at Knoxville doesn't start until April 20th, and the Huset's opener isn't until May 12th.

I also wanted to double back to some late model news from a few days ago. I felt like this one got buried a little bit. During speedweeks, FloRacing's Kyle McFadden had a story about veteran racer Dale McDowell possibly looking at his career coming to an end. Back then he said quote "It could be one of our last years. We're having some sponsors move around at the end of this year, so if we have some partners to come in to create some opportunities, then we can (race in 2025)" unquote. Last week, thanks to a post from MSR Mafia that was also shared on the Shane McDowell Facebook page, it was revealed that the team is losing long time sponsor EZGO. The partnership began in 2015, but will end after the 2024 season. We know now that the Shane McDowell Racing 17M will continue in 2025 with Dale behind the wheel, the big question though is the schedule. In the absence of a new primary sponsor, or other associates stepping up, the team will scale back on the number of races they contest. In 2023, the 57 year old McDowell appeared at 42 events, winning ten times across XR, the Spring and Southern Nationals, the Hunt the Front series, and the big $50,000 score at the Topless 100. So far this season, McDowell has ten starts at Volusia and Golden Isles, with a best finish of 7th during the Sunshine Nationals with the World of Outlaws. The team is planning a similar schedule this season, but what a less aggressive schedule would look like, we don't know yet. There are certainly plenty of races near their Tennessee based shop.

Finally today, I've been asked a few times about some of the recent streaming stuff across the sport, so I thought we could dive in just a bit. I mentioned on the Sunday daily show that FloRacing would again only be streaming certain races from Lincoln Speedway, and not their full schedule. That will be similar to what we saw in 2023, and it seems to be a track decision. We also know that Bridgeport isn't back on the schedule for FloRacing this season. The track shared to social media in recent days that Flo had decided to opt out of their contract with the New Jersey dirt track for the 2024 season, and that Dirt Track Digest would be taking over streaming. This shouldn't be all that surprising, as we have seen FloRacing pare down their offerings over the last year or two. I've said this before, but we are several years now into this new world order of dirt racing streaming and monthly subscriptions, and these services have very good data now on what actually sells subscriptions, and what races people are tuning in to watch. There is no reason to continue paying rights fees for tracks and series that don't move the needle. I've been asked as well about the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series, which is a regional dirt late model series around the south. They race this week at Boothill Speedway, but neither show is listed on the Flo schedule. I've been told we will likely see them end up on another streaming service soon. I do think you will continue to see some consolidation on these deals over the next year or a few years. Where they have options on lower performing content, they will get out, and some of the longer term deals will start to expire and not get renewed. None of this should be surprising or unexpected, as Flo worked to gain a foothold in the space early, and now they will just focus on what really works for them. Certain events and series and tracks will want higher rights fees in the next round of contract negotiations as well, but without big numbers, it will be hard for them to have leverage for those new deals. In the aftermath, you'll see tracks and series look to other options for that revenue, including the existing more niche providers, or they will try to make a go of it alone. The Southern All Stars late models went that path, with their recently announced SASDIRT.TV. It's certainly an option that can be viable, but then you take on all of the risk with promotion and production costs. Some will make it work, and others will certainly fail. Regardless of whether it feels like things have solidified in streaming, this is still a very fluid space that will continue to shift and change in the coming years. FloSports as a whole continues to try and find a path towards sustainable profitability, moving out of that startup mode, while DIRTVision will continue to be a center piece of World Racing Group and making smart moves where they can for content outside the WRG sphere.

Alright, that's it for today's Daily. Hope you guys have a great Tuesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!