DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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It might sound crazy, but this dirt late model driver move was explored | Daily 9-1-2024
A big show today, we'll talk Rico's six figure score, where did Jock Goodyer go, Outlaws at Husets, weekend winners, and we'll wrap up with an interesting peak behind the curtain and a potential alternate universe type situation in dirt late model racing. Let's go!
It's Sunday, September 1st, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.
It's another crown jewel week at Eldora, which actually starts today with the Baltes Classic. Coming up we've got the Flo series on Wednesday, then the World 100 gets going on Thursday. While you're in town for the races, make sure to stop by The Whistle Stop Bar and Grill to get some good food and good drink. It's located just 7 miles south of the track in Ansonia, Ohio. And 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. Head upstairs to the Bullseye Game Lounge for some Duckpin Bowling or play one of the other 24 arcade games. Sure Shot is 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.
We've got a lot to get into today, and I'll start first with the big money sprint car show out west with the Kubota High Limit teams at Skagit. What a weekend it was for Rico Abreu. Sixth on Thursday, won Friday, and then picked up the $102,000 last night for the richest win of his career. James McFadden was out front early on Saturday, but Rico got the lead before half way, and held him and Brad Sweet off down the stretch. It was his sixth High Limit win of the season, and ninth overall to go with two Outlaw scores and the Capitani Classic. It's been a bit of a strange year for Rico and Ricky Warner, with it taking some time for them to win with High Limit, and there have been some fits and starts along the way. After winning at I-70 in June, they went three straight with finishes of 15th or worse, but in the 13 races since have only been outside the top ten twice, and have won four times. They have definitely found some consistency as of late, and they could be in a good position to take down even more big money before the season is over. The Tuscacora 50 at Port Royal is next, a place where Rico has been fast before, and then it's back to Lernerville, where Rico won in July. Trey Starks backed up his Grays Harbor win last week with the Thursday prelim win as well, but had issues on Friday, before finishing seventh last night. And Justin Sanders was sixth or better all three nights. In the High Limit championship, it's all Brad Sweet now out front. Two podiums Friday and Saturday along with a miserable weekend for Tyler Courtney, sees the advantage now over 200 points. If this continues, we could see Rico rise to second. And with James McFadden's hot streak, the Roth 83 is now up to fourth in the owner standings, pushing Brent Marks team down to fifth. We are down to the 83, the 19, and the 14 battling for those final two charter spots. With the west coast swing in the books, it's highway time, as the Tusky 50 begins Thursday.
For my friends down under, if you are keeping up with Jock Goodyer, he was involved in a Thursday heat race crash at Skagit, and the Works Limited 57 team decided to head back to California. They went to Placerville last night to run the 360 race, where he went 20th to seventh. In eight High Limit starts, Jock's best finish was 13th at Roseburg, and he was in features in half those races. Jock will have more opportunities coming up.
Across the country at Huset's, the Friday and Saturday World of Outlaws wins went Sheldon Haudenschild and Carson Macedo. No surprise from either driver, as both have been very good as of late. Chase Randall led a bunch of laps last night, and was impressive finishing second, and Emerson Axsom ended up on the podium Friday after leading the most laps. The sprint car rise of Axsom this season has been one of my favorite storylines. We did have a viscious crash on Friday at the start of the B-Main when Brock Zearfoss careened off the berm out of four right into Donny Schatz. Max Guilford and Brant O'Banion were also collected. Schatz was done for the night, and Guilford is sitting out the rest of the weekend to recover. It was Schatz's first B Main exit in an Outlaw show since June of 2023, also at Huset's. It was strange watching the TSR 15 hauler driving out before the program was complete. Today at Huset's they will race for $100,000 to win, with points from last night setting the heat race lineups for today. Hot laps are slated for 7PM central.
Before we move on, I am running a Labor Day sale on DIRTRACKR merch. Through Monday night, if you use code "LABORDAY24" at checkout at shop.dirtrackr.com, you can get 25% off your entire order of shirts and stickers. That includes the sprint car shirts, which I still have most sizes in stock of, plus daily show and the circle logo stickers. That's "LABORDAY24" at checkout for 25% off. I'll put a link below in the video description.
Across the country, quite a bit of weekend dirt racing has been affected by rain. That included cancellations in Central Pennsylvania, the loss of the Super DIRTcar Series at Lebanon Valley, and the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series at Portsmouth. It looked like maybe the Hillbilly Hundred would be good to go today, but it's been lost as well. I would expect at least some of those teams to head to Eldora early and maybe try and race today for the Baltes Classic. Lincoln Speedway has sprint cars this afternoon as well in PA.
At 300 Raceway, Ricky Thornton Jr. was undeterred by a 25th place start in the big Friday night stock car show. He drove straight through the field to score the $100,000 XR win. He topped Dallon Murty and Cayden Carter in that one. No shock to see RTJ picking up big cash, it's something we've grown quite familiar with recently. In weekend XR Super Series late model action, Bobby Pierce was the winner Friday night, outdueling Ryan Gustin and Brandon Sheppard for $15k. But Gustin got his revenge last night, topping Pierce and Ethan Dotson for a $50,000 payday, and his first career late model win in his home state of Iowa.
Other weekend late model winners included Mason Zeigler Friday at Bedford with the ULMS, Daulton Wilson won with the Iron-Man series at Portsmouth, Chris Simpson and Tony Jackson Jr. were MLRA winners, and Shannon Babb won with MARS at Fairbury.
Weekend open wheel winners included Justin Grant in a rain shortened Silver Crown show at Du Quoin, Hank Davis swept ASCS shows in Montana, Nick Omdahl was a NOSA winner, Cap Henry won with FAST at Attica, Willie Croft won the 360 show at Placerville, Sammy Swindell was a USCS winner, and Joel Myers Jr won with the IRA.
Elsewhere today, the USAC midgets are racing, as is the Short Track Super Series, POWRi sprint cars, the Racesaver Nationals are at Eagle, and MARS late models at Spoon River. To see a full rundown on the Sunday streaming schedule, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Before we close out today, some more dirt late model stuff to talk about and think about. When we talk silly season and ride changing, and rumors, I don't know about you guys, but I love this stuff. It's like free agency in other sports, or the trade deadline. The drama and intrigue behind the on track or on field action I find fun and interesting. It's something I wish we got more of in dirt racing, was coverage of these moves and the conversations that happen. Now obviously we would need people to be more forthcoming, or there to be more media allowed to use sources for that to happen, and I'm certainly trying to do some of that here. But it's not easy, and some stuff we will just never be privvy too. But for one story that's played out this season, we did in recent days get just a bit of a peak behind the curtain of at least a small part of the process in a driver search. We all know that back in March, in a sudden and unexpected move, Hudson O'Neal decided to leave the Rocket house car, really just a few months after taking down the 2023 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship. In the aftermath, Tim McCreadie was named the house car driver, and the chatter continues about possible changes there again for 2025. We don't know publicly what sort of process Mark Richards went through to replace O'Neal, who he spoke with, and how long it took him to decide on McCreadie. There have been rumors about other drivers he reached out to though, which included some of the biggest names in the sport. Back last Thursday, I did a Daily show where we talked about the Category 5 late model chassis, and some of the rumors around the Landers team and Jonathan Davenport in connection to that chassis. I have been paying attention to some of the Landers stuff because of it, and came across some interesting tweets from Gavin Landers. First, in one tweet he says that the Landers team, that Davenport drives for, is not switching to the Category 5s, and is quote "100% with Longhorn." That's certainly newsworthy in and of itself. Gavin also addressed recent rumblings about a potential Davenport departure, saying the rumors are false. Also noteworthy. What I found most interesting though, was in that thread, a user asked if the rumor of a potential move of Davenport to Rocket back in March was true. Landers responded that Rocket had reached out, but quote "that's all." So confirmation that Davenport was one of the drivers considered to replace O'Neal, and even if it wasn't realistic, Richards still worked through the due diligence. Obviously a move didn't happen, but Joanthan Davenport replacing Hudson O'Neal in the Rocket house car would have made that sequence of events even crazier than it turned out to be. There is an alternate universe here where JD is the Rocket house car driver right now, instead of McCreadie. That's wild to think about. There are going to be people watching this episode today who will accuse me of clickbait and talking about drama that doesn't matter, but I think it would be a good thing if the curtain got pulled back a little more often when it comes to moves like this. Too many are trying to control the narrative in dirt racing, and in turn it just kills whatever narrative there actually is, or creates one that is shallow and uninteresting. You want more fans at the track, more fans on streaming, more fans buying merch, then give us some compelling storylines to invest in. Some leaks about the process of hiring a driver for a high profile ride like the Rocket house car would have kept us engaged, no doubt. Message boards, and Facebook groups, and social media rumors all get looked down upon publicly, but guess what fam, everyone is lurking in there trying to get a sense of what's really happening.
We'll call it good there today. Hope you guys have a great Sunday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!