DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Both Ford sprint car engines, but not the same? | Daily 5-6-2024
Jacob Allen and Tyler Erb get Sunday wins, plus Ron Shaver and Don MacAskill talk Ford sprint car engines and their upcoming launch, including some interesting nuggets that we'll discuss. Let's go!
It's Monday, May 6th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.
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Adams County had 30 super late models yesterday for a little Sunday MLRA action. Tyler Erb led every lap from the pole to pick up the $5000 win. It was win number two on the season for him, coming in just his third start since revealing he was off the tour with Lucas. Erb solid with the Outlaws over the weekend as well at Mississippi Thunder with two top tens. Earl Pearson Jr. ended up second after trying to challenge Erb through lap traffic. It was EPJ's first top five since the Pittsburgher last September. Benton and Farmington next for the MLRA teams in a few weeks, Chad Simpson your current championship leader over Chris Simpson and Gordy Gundaker.
At Terre Haute, the Maverick Winged Sprint Series got their season started yesterday. 20 410 sprint cars in attendance, and Jacob Allen getting the victory over Rico Abreu and Kevin Thomas Jr. It was an interesting mix of cars for that one, including some Ohio guys, obviously the national tour travelers, and some regular non-wing guys. I don't know everything that went on, but it sounded like there was some drama around refueling cars during the feature, and Bernie Stuebgen's social media posts point to some organization issues to work out for the very new series. The Maverick series is back May 17th at Bloomington. You can keep up with the series by searching for Maverick Winged Sprint Series on Facebook.
One quick stat note for you. I mentioned exactly one week ago that Anthony Macri was the first sprint car driver to cross $100k in earnings for the season, and after this past weekend we now have four. Brad Sweet's Lakeside sweep with the $50k from Saturday has him atop the list at $136,000. David Gravel is at $117k, Tyler Courtney at $103k, and Macri at $102k. Sheldon Haudenschild and Corey Day are the next two likely to break into six figures. Jacob Allen leads all drivers with 26 starts, while Macri still has the most wins with seven.
Over the weekend at Eldora, Donny Schatz was on the podium both nights, and nearly won the Saturday show, had it not been for a late move from David Gravel. At this point in the season, headed for Central Pennsylvania this week, Schatz is second in the World of Outlaws championship standings, and he's looking like the Donny Schatz of old. Already two wins this season, and an average feature finish of 5.83. Schatz hasn't had an average like that since 2019. Obviously there is still a long way to go with just 18 races complete of what will likely be near 70, but the signs are encouraging. One of the main changes to the Tony Stewart Racing 15 team going back these last five years, is the switch to the Ford 410 sprint car engine. Under development for several years now, many Schatz fans are quick to point to the Ford power as the reason why Donny just hasn't been the same guy that won 10 World of Outlaws championships. And maybe that's true, or maybe it isn't, but things are going in a positive direction for Schatz, TSR, and the Ford engine program as a whole. Back on the March 26th daily show, we talked about Ford Performance and Ron Shaver gearing up to offer customer versions of the Ford 410, and in a recent interview with EPARTRADE, Shaver and Don MacAskill provided a bunch of information on the engine and future plans. Shaver's Torrance, California based engine shop has been at the center of the development of the blue oval 410, and has worked closely with TSR, and Ford to make it all happen. At the moment, Chase Briscoe and his sprint car operation have the first couple of customer versions of the engine, and we've seen both Briscoe and Karter Sarff run that car over the last few weeks. Briscoe has a tight connection to Ford, having come up through their driver development program and racing currently in NASCAR for Stewart Haas. Briscoe ran with High Limit at Texas Motor Speedway, and with the Outlaws at Jacksonville. Sarff won a MOWA show in that car at Red Hill, and was at Lakeside this past weekend with High Limit. In that interview, Shaver and MacAskill revealed that the customer engines do differ from what we've seen Schatz run, and that will continue to be the case. Reading between the lines, the engines for TSR sounded like maybe they are a little more customized and bespoke, especially for various track configurations, while the customer piece is more an all around setup. They can be taken anywhere right out of the box. Shaver said they don't have all the secrets, but that customer engines will last a long time and are very competitive. As for horsepower, it seems like nobody ever wants to say what the real numbers are, we usually hear around 900 for 410 sprint cars. Shaver and Dyno Don talked about the engines being in the 950 range, while after the Saturday Eldora race, Schatz mentioned that magical 1000 number. Where it actually is, I guess I'll leave that up to you to decipher. The other interesting takeaway I had from the interview, was the two guys talking about torque curves. They said that they can make the Ford engine have the same torque curve as a Chevy based 410, but that their hope was to make the Ford better. I know that's been the talking point a lot, is that if Schatz went back to a Chevy, he'd be fast again. But if they can make the Ford have the same torque curve as a Chevy, maybe that's not it. The plan at the moment is for the Fords to be available to the public the first of next year, and that they will have a complete cookbook available in the Ford catalog, with customers able to either get complete engines, or buy all the parts and build one themselves. If you're curious about engines, and specifically the Ford piece, I would check out the interview. It's about an hour and there is a lot of good stuff in there. If you want to watch it, I'll link to it below in the video description on YouTube. It's over on the EPARTRADE YouTube channel.
Alright, that's it for the daily show today. If you ordered merch yesterday, it's been shipped out to you, so you should have it soon. If you want to check out DIRTRACKR merch, hit up shop.dirtrackr.com. If you are in the midwest today, please be safe out there, I know more nasty weather is incoming. Take care of yourselves. Find the streaming schedule and updated news at dirtrackr.com, and follow DIRTRACKR across social media.
Hope you guys have a great Monday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!