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The ASCS schedule changes aren't what you think | Daily 3-10-2024

I feel bad for Cade Dillard today, rain sucks, and everything you need to know about changes to the ASCS sprint car schedule that don't have anything to do with a WRG conspiracy against High Limit. Let's go!

It's Sunday, March 10th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

It wasn't a great weekend for dirt racing, as a whole bunch of big time shows were rained out. That included the entire World of Outlaws weekend at Kennedale, Lincoln and Port Royal in Central Pennsylvania, and the first night of late models at Boothill. It's unfortunately the nature of the beast when scheduling spring dirt races. It feels like all of those events are a coin toss at best. Does it make more sense to schedule and hope something good happens, or to take the month of March off, like we see a bunch of series basically do. I'm not really sure what the correct answer is. Hopefully we get some better luck going forward. The World of Outlaws are headed for Cotton Bowl Speedway on the 15th and 16th, and this next weekend will also include the opener at Attica, the Xtreme Outlaw midgets indoors, the ASCS opener, the Speed Showcase at Port Royal makeup, and more.

Last night at Boothill Speedway, we did get to see some super late models with the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series season getting underway. Cade Dillard and Bobby Pierce were you front row, and Dillard was out front for most of the main event. Lap traffic was absolutely brutal, and watching the highlights, you know the leaders were frustrated trying to work through it. At one point, Pierce actually spun a lapper onto the frontstretch, causing a caution, but there were a few other moments in there that could have gone bad. Definitely a tough night from that perspective. Dillard looked like maybe he had it under control, but things went sideways late. With five to go, he entered turn one high and absolutely pounded the outside wall. Dirt on Dirt reported that he flipped, and I saw somewhere else that maybe he had a tire going down. Watching the replay from Race On, it's really tough to tell what happened, as Dillard disappears from the frame for a bit, and we basically don't see him again until the accident is nearly over. He and Pierce were again in traffic, and it looked like Dillard was trying to go the path of least resistance up top, with the lappers down low. Unfortunately he didn't get the win in a race he dominated, and Pierce went on to the $10,000 victory. It was super late model win number seven of the 2024 season for Pierce, with Kyle Beard and BJ Robinson joining him on the podium. Spencer Hughes and Ashton Winger completed the top five. Pierce's next scheduled events are the World of Outlaws shows at Thunderhill in two weeks, and the Comp Cams series is back this coming weekend with races at Arrowhead and Springfield. Elsewhere in super late model racing, the Hunt the Front series opens their 2024 schedule later this week, and I think that event will draw plenty of names. It's $15,000 to win on Saturday, and both national tours are still off.

If you want some racing today, the Short Track Super Series is in action at Georgetown Speedway. They've got a 40 lap feature paying $8500 to win coming up. This is the season opener for the south region championship. Names to expect today include Ryan Godown, Matt Sheppard, Danny Bouc, Stewart Friesen, Brett Hearn, Mat Williamson, and more. Racing is scheduled to kick off around 2:30PM eastern time. This will be a good chance for the modified teams to get some racing in before they head to Port Royal next weekend with $50,000 on the line. If you can't get to Georgetown today, FloRacing will have live streaming coverage.

On the ASCS front, World Racing Group has been moving quickly to try and shore up the season for 360 national tour competitors ahead of the season opener this coming weekend at RPM Speedway. Back on Friday they announced the point fund and tow money plan for teams. For the 2024 season, teams will be racing for a share of $152,000, with the champion getting $40k, $25,000 to second, and $20,000 for third. The top five competitors in the standings will also earn $400 a race in tow money, with $300 available for positions six through 10. New this season as part of the WRG acquisition, teams will need to purchase a DIRTcar membership, but that will get them covered under the series insurance, and is also good for World of Outlaws events. Back when this deal became official, I told you guys that the schedule would likely change, and we have seen movement on that front. Both weekends at Texas Motor Speedway are gone, as is the Hockett at Lucas Oil Speedway. And there won't be ASCS racing at Lakeside and Lake Ozark in May. The easy conclusion that many seem to have drawn here is that World Racing Group dropped these races because of their connections to High Limit, maybe as some sort of punishment, but if that were true than why would RPM, Red Dirt, Salina, 81 Speedway, and Riverside all remain on the 2024 ASCS schedule? Those tracks are all also hosting High Limit races this season. The answer of course, is that the loss of those events has nothing to do with any sort of conspiracy against High Limit. It has much more to do with tracks and promoters moving in different directions because of the uncertainty around the future of the ASCS. Some of these situations were put in play before the WRG deal for the ASCS was completed. So for example, those Texas Motor Speedway weekends I've been told are being promoted by Kenny Brown, who owns POWRi. And in the period of uncertainty around the ASCS, he flipped those Texas races to POWRi 410 shows. Brown has also been involved at TMS for their Micro Mania event. Not coincidentally, Brown is also the owner at Lake Ozark, and flipped those races as well to his own 410 sanctioned races. That Lakeside race was scheduled for Friday in advance of the Lake Ozark weekend, so did it make sense to run Friday night, and then not Saturday and Sunday, especially when you're trying to help the teams and rebuild 360 racing? Probably not. So Lakeside gone. And what about Lucas Oil Speedway? Well, the May 4th sprint car show there was originally on the ASCS Sooner Region schedule, but as of last Tuesday, it's now a POWRi Ozark 360 show. Are you noticing a theme here? The ASCS has also been removed from the Hockett/McMillin Memorial weekend at Wheatland, and all signs are pointing towards the winged sprint car portion of that event also getting some sort of POWRi sanction. The non-wing portion of the Hockett/McMillin is WAR sanctioned, under the, you guessed it, POWRi banner. And if you don't want to take my word about all of this, the best part is, you don't have to. All of this can be found with a little online research. And to go even further, you had Brian Walker, who works for High Limit, weighing in on Twitter with this same exact sentiment, and Casey Shuman, who runs I-70 Motorsports Park, that is hosting multiple High Limit events this season saying the same. He tweeted Friday that quote "WRG didn't drop those races because of high limit.. most if not all made the decision to drop ASCS" unquote. I tweeted back on Friday that not every situation going forward in sprint car racing will have some sort of World of Outlaws vs. High Limit thing underneath it, and I think that's important to remember. There are plenty of other people, and decisions, and history, and politics, and relationships at work here.

Alright, that's it for the Daily show today. Make sure to drop by dirtrackr.com/watchtonight to see today's streaming schedule.

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