DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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The never ending search for speed | Daily 6-5-2024
Coming up, Chris Madden's shocking announcement, racing on tap for tonight, and a discussion about all of the testing that these late model teams do. Let's go!
It's Wednesday, June 5th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.
I spent the morning watching through the DirtonDirt videocast previewing this week's Dirt Late Model Dream at Eldora as I was putting notes together for today's show. I usually try and catch those because there are often lots of good little information nuggets in there, especially when you've got Kevin Kovac, Dustin Jarrett, Kyle McFadden, Ben Shelton, Todd Turner, etc. all on through the course of a show. Later in the video, they did an interview with Jonathan Davenport, which makes sense, he's the defending Dream winner, and he's been insanely dominant at Eldora in recent seasons. It will be hard to bet against JD this week even. Davenport was sitting in the lounge of his toter home, wearing his driver suit during the interview, and you could hear cars in the background. JD said they completely rebuilt their Eldora car after the Dirt Track World Championship last season, and they wanted to shake it down before they went to Eldora. It got me thinking again about the pervasive culture of testing that exists in dirt late model racing. The 49 car hasn't raced since Davenport won the Show-Me 100 at Wheatland on May 25th, but just because they weren't racing doesn't mean that team wasn't at a race track and Davenport wasn't driving. And we've seen this elsewhere on the leadup to Eldora. Mississippi Thunder this past weekend was hosting a big money modified race, but after the programs, Scott Bloomquist and Bobby Pierce had their late models on track. Both Bloomer and Pierce towed their late models to Wisconsin just to get in some extra laps to be ready for the Dream. This stuff happens all the time. It seems like there is pretty regularly video of some of these big teams pounding around a dirt track somewhere, or an unstickered car making laps with folks wondering who it was. But on the flip side, you never hear about that happening with sprint cars. Every once in a while, you might get a photo or video from Knoxville, of some cars making some laps doing Nationals prep. And it hasn't been uncommon in the past for me to sit out back of my own house, and hear the unmistakable sound of a sprint car going arond the Charlotte Motor Speedway dirt track that's just four miles away, but's pretty rare. I had a phone conversation a little over a week ago with a sprint car driver who's a current national series full timer, and asked him directly how much they test, and he said hardly ever. It makes me wonder why that is. I know that engineering is a key part of dirt late model racing, and my hunch is that's why there is so much testing. Those engineers are scientists. They want data, they want correlation, they want proof and evidence. They want repeatability. They don't want voodoo, and feelings, and magic. If something is fast or slow, they want to know why. And I'm not saying that sprint car teams don't, but there is clearly a difference. Some of these top teams rely heavily on data acquisition systems, but they are rare on the sprint car side. Donny Schatz ran one during practice at Volusia, and my video talking about it blew up. It's one of my best viewed videos this year. If I did the same thing about a dirt late model team doing it, nobody would care. We are at a time where innovation seems to get pretty quickly snuffed out of dirt racing, and we've seen evidence of that recently with banned shock setups, attempts to straighten bodies, and teams with trick pieces like special birdcages told not to bring them back. But those attempts haven't stopped the top late model teams from investing significant resources in the constant search for speed. I'll leave it up to this audience to decide what's good and bad here, because there are clearly cases to be made for both sides. Policing testing though, would basically be impossible.
Some surprising news yesterday with the announcement that late model driver Chris Madden will step away from full time competition after the 2024 season. At the moment, Madden is fourth in the World of Outlaws standings, with two wins already and just 60 points back of Nick Hoffman. The announcement from Madden says the South Carolina driver will run a condensed schedule in 2025, and when they said condensed, they mean really condensed. Potentially just six to ten races. That's a huge pull back from the 60 to 70 races Madden has been competing in in recent seasons. He's already raced 22 times this season. You would have to assume those six to ten races next season will include crown jewels and just those races special to Madden. In his dirt late model career spanning something like 30 years, Madden has won championships with the Xtreme DIRTcar Series, Southern Nationals, and Southern All Stars. He was second in Outlaw points in 2017, 2021, and again last season. And his list of high profile wins includes the USA Nationals, the Topless 100, the National 100, and the Blue-Gray 100 an incredible nine times. Wildly enough, as we enter Dream week, Madden is still in search of his first crown jewel score at Eldora. At 49 years old, and still performing at a high level, Madden could go on racing for a long time, which is the surprising part. Dale McDowell is still going and he's nearly ten years older than Madden. But kudos to Smoky for picking his moment and going out how he wants. Having finished second in last year's Dirt Late Model Dream, maybe this will be the year he appears on the stage.
In racing action from last night, we lost High Limit at Davenport to rain and Indiana Midget Week at Circle City to rain. High Limit really tried to make it happen, even calling cars out to wheelpack at one point, but they were eventually defeated. Racing shifts to I-70 Friday and Saturday for the Rayce Rudeen Foundation event, with Saturday paying $26,000 to win.
And the midgets will shift over to Lawrenceburg tonight after the Circle City cancellation. We'll see if they have better luck with the weather tonight. I still can't believe we are into June with just three series races completed.
At Big Diamond Speedway, Stewart Friesen became the first driver to lock themself into the Super DIRT Week main event later this year. Friesen won the Super DIRTcar Series 75 lapper last night, getting past Anthony Perrego before half way, and leading from there to the checkered. $10 grand and that guranteed spot in the 200 in October. Perrego ended up second, with Matt Sheppard third. Peter Britten came into the night leading the standings, and had a solid run in eighth. But Perrego is back on top thanks to that podium result. The Super DIRTcar Series was supposed to be at Selinsgrove tonight for another guaranteed Super DIRT Week spot, but that event has been cancelled because of weather. We won't see the SDS competitors again until June 25th at Albany Saratoga.
The other racing scheduled for tonight is the FloRacing Night in America Series at Eldora. This event will officially kick off this crown jewel week at Eldora. Weather could be a problem though here as well, so make sure to stay tuned to Eldora's website and social media channels for updates this evening. Ricky Thornton Jr. the championship leader with the Flo series with just one race complete, that wild one last week at Macon. After tonight, the Dream starts Thursday with the first of two split field prelim nights. The weather does look good through Saturday night.
If you want some more dirt racing content this week, be sure to check out the podcasts page at dirtrackr.com. You can find it by visiting dirtrackr.com/podcasts, or by clicking podcasts under the More tab in the website nav bar. There you will see that Winged Nation has Paul McMahan, Daryn Pittman, and Daison Pursley. Quicktime has Brenham Crouch, Hoogie's Garage has recent Huset's winners, Dunewich on Dirt has Mattison Hoots, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, Dirt Track Confessions, the Dirt Nerds, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks, Turn 2 Terribles, Racing Roundup, Getting up to Speed, and the Driver's Project.
Finally today, so long to Parnelli Jones. The icon of American motorsports died yesterday at the age of 90. Jones was the 1963 winner of the Indy 500, he raced in NASCAR, won the Baja 1000, was a Trans-Am champion, and a two time winner of the Indy 500 as a car owner. He was also a multi-time USAC sprint car champion, won Turkey Night at Ascot twice, and won Silver Crown titles as an owner fielding cars for Al Unser and Mario Andretti.
That's it for the show today. If you like what we do here, give the show a like and subscribe wherever you tune in, and follow DIRTRACKR across the various social media platforms. Wherever you are, we are too.
Hope you guys have a great Wednesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!