DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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So... What happens with those Ford 410 sprint car engines? | Daily 9-9-2024

Kerry Madsen gets his first win of 2024, what's up with Chase Randall, plus with Stewart Haas Racing ending and their relationship with Ford dissolving, what does that mean for Tony Stewart's sprint car team and Chase Briscoe? We'll discuss that today and more. Let's go!

It's Monday, September 9th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.

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There wasn't any big series action from Sunday across the country, but there were a few dirt races with notable winners. At Eagle Raceway, they had 53 360 sprint cars for the MSTS Stewart Alley Memorial. Kerry Madsen led 33 of 40 laps after starting second, and picked up his first sprint car win of any kind in 2024. It was good for $10,000. He topped Chase Randall and Sam Hafertepe. Madsen has run more than 50 races this season driving a second car for Tony Vermeer, and has had some solid runs, including some top tens against the Outlaws, and two High Limit top fives. He led laps at RPM Speedway against High Limit back in April before finishing second. He was also second over the weekend against the IRA at Cedar Lake. Chase Randall was in the Beaver 12X, and there are still questions about what his future could look like. Remember he departed the TKS Motorsports ride a few weeks ago, and has bounced around in a few different cars since. Rumors about one full time ride he was linked to have cooled, but his name is still being mentioned for a few other vacancies. Two of which could be national tour rides. The MSTS has just one race remaining in their 2024 season, it's a 410 show coming up this Saturday at Shelby County. Other Sunday winners included Stewart Friesen at Weedsport for their season finale. He beat Alex Payne and Jimmy Phelps. Jordan Thomas won with the Empire Super Sprints, and Kenny Miller III was a USAC East Coast sprint car winner at Action Track USA. It is pretty quiet today around the country, but we do have the ASCS National Tour at the Clay County Fair Speedway tomorrow, and then another busy weekend starts Thursday.

Yesterday at Atlanta Motor Speedway, the NASCAR playoffs got started, and even though a bunch of you like to claim you don't watch, my Sunday episode analytics say different. There is always a significant dip, once the race starts, and then a viewership spike once the race is over. So in saying that, most of you know that in this final season of Stewart Haas Racing, Chase Briscoe is the only SHR driver to have made the playoffs, thanks to a walkoff win the week before at Darlington. I bring NASCAR up here, because of the tie-ins with sprint car racing, both with Tony Stewart and Briscoe. SHR was heavily aligned with Ford, and that relationship spilled over into other areas, including TSR with the Ford 410 sprint car engine. Ford also a partner at Eldora Speedway. We've certainly talked plenty on this show about the development of the Ford engine through the last several years, and it's been a topic of conversation around Donny Schatz, and several down seasons we've seen from him. Watching Schatz go from being one of the most dominant drivers in sprint car and World of Outlaws history, to well outside the top contending group has left many wondering about and pointing towards the Ford engine as the reason why. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but the 2024 season has seen a resurgence for Schatz and the TSR 15 team. Five wins so far, their best average finish since 2019, and currently third in the standings. A place they haven't been since 2020. The absence of Brad Sweet from the Outlaw tour is helping those numbers at least a bit, but the team is also better. The question I've seen though from several of you and in other places, is what happens with this team going forward, and what engine will they choose. With SHR gone and that relationship with Ford over, will this team stick with this Ford 410, or go back to a setup they had used previously. A common thought I've seen is that if this team just returned to a Chevy based 410, Schatz wouldr return to prominence. But I don't think I'd hold my breath on that one. From what I know and have heard, I would expect the relationship between Ford and TSR to continue. Remember that Tony Stewart Racing is a separate entity from Stewart Haas, and his it's own deal with Ford. And it's my understanding that Stewart himself invested significant resources into the development of the engine. The Ford 410s are built by Shaver Engines in California, and it's clear from past comments from Ron Shaver himself, that those engines are basically bespoke pieces built to unique TSR and Schatz specifications. The 410s available as Ford customer pieces are similar, but not exactly the same. Towards the end of 2023, Schatz himself and TSR were being mentioned a lot in the sprint car rumor mill, but this year it's dead silent around them. That makes me think that changes to the team are unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. I mentioned Briscoe earlier as well, as he's been running the customer version of the Ford 410 in his sprint car, which we've seen both him and Karter Sarff race. This engine question has also been posed about Briscoe's team, and on the flip side, I could see this relationship ending. Briscoe has been a part of the Ford driver development pipeline for a long time, but for 2025 he's going to Joe Gibbs Racing and Toyota. I have a hard time believing that Ford will continue to offer support for his extracurriculars when he's going to be wearing TRD red on Sundays. Does that mean he'll have Toyota 410s, that I don't know. We haven't really seen those engines outside of the Roth cars up to this point. I think Briscoe's sprint car and midget stuff will be wait and see anyway, and that will include the engine choice. So, if I was a betting man, right now I'd put cash on status quo for TSR and Schatz for 2025, no changes there. And I'd go the other way on Briscoe, I do think changes are possible with his sprint car deal. Drop me a comment and let me know what you think about these two situations.

Before we close out today, I was rummaging through the analytics section over at dirtrackr.com and I've got a few stats for you to ponder on this Monday. First, I've got Eldora late model special events in the database going back to 2021. In 26 appearances, Jonathan Davenport has won nine times, has 22 top fives, and 24 top tens. He's been about as automatic at Eldora as it gets. Also, of the nine dirt racing series that I track, the longest active top ten streak in the country right now belongs to Cannon McIntosh with the Xtreme Outlaw Midgets. He leads that championship right now, and this streak is a big reason why. There have been 20 Xtreme races in 2024, and Cannon Mac has been top ten in all of them. To go further, he's been top five in all but one. His lone non-top five finish was a sixth at Pevely in August. We'll see if he can keep that going this week at Southern Illinois and Highland.

That's it for the Daily show today. Make sure to stop by dirtrackr.com to see all the latest news from around the sport, which updates automatically throughout the day.

Hope you guys have a great Monday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!