DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
Dirt racing news, results, discussion, analytics. Sprint cars, late models, modifieds, you name it. From national series, to top local shows. Brought to you five days a week. Email the show at info@dirtrackr.com.
There are answers if you know where to look | Daily 5-16-2024
A busy dirt racing weekend starts tonight, Hunt the Front teases their new paint scheme, we've lost a dirt racing legend, and I'm starting a hall of fame campaign today. Let's go!
It's Thursday, May 16th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.
In your email inboxes this week, a new issue of The Slider dropped in featuring an interview with World of Outlaws full timer Bill Balog. Bill is in the midst of his rookie season, and has been very impressive, leading laps, and picking up top five and top ten finishes. He chatted with Jordan Wilman on how it's all gone so far. If you don't get The Slider, you can sign up for free to get periodic emails featuring pieces from a number of different contributing writers. Check out the Balog piece and subscribe free at dirtrackr.com/theslider.
Also, I'm putting up a quick discount code for DIRTRACKR merch for the next 24 hours or so. You can get 25% off stickers and the remaining shirts with code DAILY2024. Use that code at checkout, and save some cash. That's code DAILY2024 for 25% off at shop.dirtrackr.com.
The dirt racing weekend kicks off tonight with two national series in action. First, the World of Outlaws late models begin a busy four race stretch with Raceway 7 tonight in Ohio, and stops at Bedford, Marion Center, and Path Valley coming up through Sunday. Ryan Gustin is the most recent series winner, from May 4th at Mississippi Thunder, and Brandon Sheppard is the Outlaw championship leader over Nick Hoffman and Cade Dillard. Hoffman with already three wins on the season, and I think he and Bobby Pierce will be the toughest contenders for Sheppard. Pierce is still 118 points back in seventh after the tire penalties, and he struggled last weekend in Illinois, but I would expect him to continue charging up through the standings. Hopefully the weather plays nice through the weekend.
In New York, High Limit is in action at Outlaw Speedway tonight, with Utica-Rome up next on Friday. Remember that the Saturday show at Fonda was cancelled. We'll see if the rain holds off, but if it does, I would expect some of the High Limit teams to hit up Port Royal on Saturday to get laps in before the Weikert the following week. Looks like the series is expecting mid-30s for a car count tonight, and with these races traditionally being All Star stops, it could be some good chances for Tyler Courtney to try and chip more into Brad Sweet's lead. Some notable drivers that are still winless this season with High Limit include Rico Abreu, Justin Peck, Spencer Bayston, and Zeb Wise.
As for the World of Outlaws, they begin a ten day swing of races through Ohio starting tomorrow at Attica. They'll follow that with a Saturday race at Sharon, then to Atomic for two nights the following week, and Fremont on Monday, May 27th. David Gravel continues to edge away from Donny Schatz in the championship, and Schatz will be under fire from Gio Scelzi and Carson Macedo for second. Those two trail him by four and 22 points respectively. Gravel already with six wins on the year, and just two finishes outside the top ten. We'll see if any of the Ohio locals can have better luck than the Central PA guys did and challenge the Outlaws for wins this weekend.
Out in Kansas, the USAC midget season finally gets underway this weekend with two nights at the Belleville Short Track. They'll be joined on both Friday and Saturday by the Silver Crown Series. Logan Seavey begins his midget title defense after taking the big trophy last season, and starts the third leg of a serious run at the USAC triple crown. He currently leads the sprint car standings, and is seventh in the Silver Crown race after just two events, both on pavement. I am not convinced at this moment that any of the other midget full timers can bring the fight to Seavey all season.
A couple of race weekends that won't happen because of weather include the Hunt the Front series at Whynot, and the USMTS modifieds at RPM Speedway. I don't believe either race weekend will be made up. Hunt the Front is back May 31st at Swainsboro, and the next USMTS race is May 22nd at Hamilton County.
Speaking of Hunt the Front, here is a little sneak peak of their new design for Joseph Joiner's 10 car. This got shared to Facebook yesterday. We won't get to see it on track this weekend, but it should be revealed very soon. Like maybe today soon. I don't know if you noticed this as well, but it was interesting to see who liked the Hunt the Front teaser photo... It appears as though a certain tractor company is a big fan of Hunt the Front. You know, an orange tractor company. I wonder what that's about... Stay tuned...
If you pay attention to sprint car social media or the World of Outlaws website, you may have seen things going around yesterday about Eloy Gutierrez. Eloy is a long time World of Outlaws official doing timing and scoring, and he's currently battling a cancer situation in Houston. You cannot have spent any amount of time around World of Outlaws sprint car racing over the last 30 years and not either seen Eloy at the race track, or benefitted from his work. He and his business partner BD Shafer brought electronic timing and scoring to dirt racing, and they buried the very first electronic scoring loops at tracks like Knoxville, Eldora, Williams Grove, and many more. Eloy and BD started working with Ted Johnson and the Outlaws in 1998, and when Eloy retired from his full time career at Sandia National Labratories in 2007, he went on the road full time with the series. Pushing timing and scoring data to television broadcasts, pit area monitors, and later websites and mobile apps wouldn't have been possible without Eloy's work. In recent years, Eloy has tried to pull back from so much traveling, but can still be found at a lot of sprint car races. And he's trained up the next generation of scoring officials, including Anthony Corini, who was with the Outlaws for a long time and now does work for High Limit. I got to spend a bunch of time with Eloy during my time at World Racing Group, and he was always down to improve the experience for fans and teams. If you've been around a while, you may remember social media posts with pictures of sheets of paper with qualifying results and heat race lineups. Somebody would sit next to a printer and make those posts to keep fans updated throughout the night. I built a little app while I was at WRG to solve that problem and make the outputs to social media cleaner, where the results could be exported straight from the software and uploaded to Twitter automatically. I'm sure you've seen the tweets captioned "From WoOSPrint Timing & Scoring." It freed up the PR people, but it did add a step to Eloy's work flow all night long. When I told him about the idea, he was all about it. He worked with me on file formats, and we built the admin side so he could do it quickly on the fly. That was a game changer for our social media coverage, because now we were getting very nice results and lineups for social, and the PR people were not tied to a printer in the pits, and could instead be out and about getting photos, video, and those important details for their coverage. The work flow has changed a bit these days, but the industry leading social coverage that you get from the Outlaws was made possible by Eloy. And that is just one example. There have been a lot of nice messages about Eloy shared in the last 24 hours, and they are all 1000% deserved. Besides his massive contributions to the sport of dirt racing, Eloy is also one of the nicest people you will meet. I have spent plenty of evenings on his motorhome couch shooting the breeze, and he was always quick to offer a beer and a Klondike bar. In Eloy's message shared through the Outlaws, he wasn't asking for anything, but instead just sharing his situation and he wanted to let everyone know he's fighting. I do though have a request to make of the industry. I know that Bob Baker with the Sprint Car Hall of Fame tunes in to this show, as do plenty of other influential folks, and I think it's time to get Eloy into the Hall of Fame for his incredible contributions to the sport. Modern sprint car racing wouldn't look like it does today without Eloy, and I can't think of anyone more deserving of the honor. So let's get Eloy in. If folks with the hall of fame have questions, my email is open, reach out. Let's talk about it. If you want to know more about Eloy and his sprint car journey, the Open Red podcast is a great place for that. Me and Ross interviewed Eloy back in 2016 for episode 20. Really good stuff in there.
Before we close out today, so long to dirt late model hall of famer Barefoot Bob McCreadie. He died Wednesday after a long illness. McCreadie was a decorated racer, competing at dirt tracks all over the northeast from the 1970s into the 2000s. Speed Sport listed him having in excess of 500 wins, which included victories at Syracuse in the big block and 358, plus Super DIRTcar Series championships, and many track championships. Bob McCreadie the father of current dirt late model racer Tim McCreadie, who himself is also insanely accomplished. Barefoot Bob was 74 years old.
That's it for the daily show this week. Keep an eye on dirtrackr.com/watchtonight for your weekend streaming options. As always, you guys tuning in and supporting DIRTRACKR is very much appreciated.
Hope you guys have a great Thursday out there, we'll see you back here on Sunday!