DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Sprint car and Kevin Rumley in Ricky Thornton Jr.'s future, Balog's frightening crash | Daily 7-18-2024
A wild night at Eldora, an update on the High Limit officiating situation, some interesting Ricky Thornton Jr. news, and a lot more today. Let's go!
It's Thursday, July 18th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.
The big Joker's Jackpot/Kings Royal weekend is here at Eldora Speedway, and another big Eldora event means another opportunity to visit our friends at The Whistle Stop Bar and Grill located just 7 miles South of the track. If you are already at Eldora, or headed there the next few days, ride down to Ansonia and get something good to eat and say hi to Andrew and his great staff of folks. They are even running specials on food this week. Besides the Whistle Stop, they also have a sister business located in Downtown Greenville, Ohio called Sure Shot Tap House. Sure Shot Tap House is a 46 tap self pour facility featuring domestic and craft beer, ciders, seltzers, bourbons, and wines. They also have a self-serve cocktail machine that compliments their amazing food menu. Venture upstairs to the Bullseye Game Lounge which boasts Duckpin Bowling as well as 24 arcade games, making Sure Shot the ultimate destination to Eat, Drink, and Play all under one roof. New this year, they will be running buses from Eldora to Sure Shot on the Fridays of all major events, and that includes this week. The trip includes a buffet, $15 pour card, swag bag and more! Visit sureshottaphouse.com/events for more information on this great trip. Thanks to the Whistle Stop, Sure Shot, and Andrew for everything they do for dirt racing.
Wild night at Eldora on Wednesday, with the Kubota High Limit sprint cars hitting the track for their prelim night, leading into tonight's big money show. Split field night, with a pair of 25 lap features. And it was two World of Outlaws drivers taking the victories. Logan Schuchart won the first race, which turned into a very fun feature out front with Schuchart, Justin Peck, Brad Sweet, and Donny Schatz all in the mix. Slide jobs everywhere, definitely go check those highlights out today if you didn't watch. Schatz and Sweet were on the podium at the end, with Peck fourth and Anthony Macri fifth. In the second main event, it was all Gio Scelzi out front. He picked up his first career win at Eldora topping Kyle Larson and Tyler Courtney. Last night's action will set heat race lineups for tonight, with Donny Schatz high point man over Kyle Larson, Tyler Courtney, and David Gravel. Tonight's heat winners will redraw for the front three rows in the feature. And the main event pays $100,000 to win.
So, now that you know the big bullet points from last night, let's dive in a bit. I'm sure if you were locked in, you saw Bill Balog's heat race crash. He went into turn one on the first lap of heat four of the second group, and tangled with Jordan Ryan. In a frightening turn of events, as Balog's car tumbled, the entire rear of the chassis sheared off, with the fuel cell and complete rear end then sent tumbling. Balog was okay, but the car looked to be completely junk. He did not compete the rest of the night. I'm not a chassis or metal expert, so I'm not going to speculate on why it broke the way it did, but in my non-expert opinion, I don't think it's supposed to happen like that. My guy Paul Arch pointed out today that Balog's chassis broke in a very similar way to Gage Pulkrabek's at Knoxville last year. If you might remember there, Pulkrabek had the top wing side board come off, and he hit very hard into turn three. And both cars coincidentally were XXX chassis. Hopefully all the important sprint car people are taking a look at the incident. Scary stuff though.
Looking down through the points, there are some drivers with holes to dig out of tonight in heats, including Corey Day, Chris Windom, Brady Bacon, and Zeb Wise. I was surprised to see Day and Carson Macedo struggle a bit, even though Macedo did end up with a top ten finish. Buddy Kofoid and Rico Abreu both had flats, and they will need to pass some cars as well.
As for High Limit officiating, we told you a few weeks ago that the series had parted ways with tech director Kevin Nouse, and Nouse's spot was filled in the aftermath by another official we had talked about on a Daily not long ago. Kenny Kenneda has joined High Limit in that tech director spot after leaving his tech role with the World of Outlaws late model series. I spotted Kenneda in the work area last night, and was told that he's been in that role since the end of June. Coming from the late model side, he'll likely need some time to get up to speed and do some learning about sprint cars, but he's a very capable official and should fit in well over there.
There is also a High Limit press conference scheduled for today at the track, and I think we will likely see some news confirmed that you've heard here from me if you tune in regularly. I believe the conference is scheduled for 4PM.
After tonight, Friday and Saturday will be Outlaw shows for the Kings Royal. I said yesterday that everything was show up points, but series announcer Johnny Gibson corrected me on that one. Friday is full points and a standard Outlaw format. Saturday will be show up points only. Both of the High Limit nights are show up points as well. If last night was any indication, it should be a fun few nights. Remember tonight is on FloRacing again, and then things swap to DIRTVision for the weekend.
Elsewhere tonight, the Silver Dollar Nationals get going for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series at Huset's Speedway. $53,000 to win on Saturday night, and hopefully more entertainment to come like we've seen the last week, especially between Hudson O'Neal and Ricky Thornton Jr. There was a Tri-State late model show at Huset's last night, and RTJ won it driving for Justin Zeitner. O'Neal has won two in a row coming in, and has taken that final chase spot from Tim McCreadie. RTJ, Devin Moran, and Jonathan Davenport have all been very good lately as well. Hopefully the high banks of Huset's make for some good racing, and the fans come out and support the event. I know that area not known as a late model hotbed. All three nights will be live on Flo.
Back to Thornton, we talked earlier this week about potentially seeing him in a sprint car soon, and we got a little hint of that this morning. Bernie at Indy Race Parts posted a photo of a seat very clearly being put into one of his number 71 sprint cars, and the masking tape on it says Ricky Thornton. We'll have to wait and see about the details, but Bernie is the perfect guy I think for RTJ to do this with, and hopefully we'll get to see this go down soon. I know RTJ has driven sprint cars before, specifically non-wing, but this will still be a very fun situation. We saw Brandon Sheppard do it a little while back with the Outlaws at Jacksonville, and I'm all for more crossover. One other note here on RTJ, when the World of Outlaws headed to Fairbury next week for the Prairie Dirt Classic, Thornton will run that event for Kevin Rumley. He revealed that to FloRacing and Dirt on Dirt's Kyle McFadden. Hudson O'Neal was originally scheduled to do that race with Rumley, but his move to SSI opened up that seat, and RTJ will fill it.
If you want other late model racing this weekend, don't forget about the Summer Nationals close out tonight at Sycamore. There is also Southern Nationals stops at Senoia, East Alabama, Screven, and Swainsboro coming up, and more.
Other weekend sprint car action coming up includes the continuation of the Sprint Car Challenge Tour Speedweek, ASCS National Tour, plus IRA and NOSA, and other regional action. The USAC Silver Crown Series is also at Salt City Speedway in Kansas, the Short Track Super Series is at Utica-Rome tonight, and the USMTS modifieds have four races tonight through Sunday. Drop me a comment and let me know what your dirt racing plans are for the coming days.
Depending on how things go, I may do a livestream at some point on Friday. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in. There will likely be no lack of things to chat about. But we'll call it good for today right that on the Daily. Appreciate everyone tuning in all week.
Hope you guys have a great Thursday out there, we'll see you back here on Sunday!