DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Maybe we don't use our sprint car as a weapon | Daily 9-18-2024
More sprint car silly season moves as teams and series try to figure out 2025 plans, plus drivers line up Eldora 4-Crown rides, and one driver learns that using your sprint car as a weapon is bad. Let's go!
It's Wednesday, September 18th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.
It's been an interesting last 24 hours or so in sprint car racing, and we'll start first with the year-long suspension that was handed down yesterday. Back on Saturday night, the ASCS National Tour was at Arrowhead Speedway in Oklahoma. Arrowhead is the very nice facility we spotlighted earlier this year on a daily show. During the main event that 2023 champion Jason Martin went on to win, we had some shenanigans unfold. The entire incident can't be seen via the DIRTVision broadcast, so here's how this thing played out. Inside ten to go, Brandon Anderson gets into the turn one wall by himself. While he's trying to gather the 55B, Alex Sewell in the eight, who was running behind him, can't avoid Anderson and slides into him. You can imagine a slowing car on the high side, and another comes behind and just can't take avoiding action quick enough. Normally that's the end of things, but not on this occasion. Anderson took offense for some reason, and decided he needed revenge on Sewell. So as the race continued under green, Anderson squared up Sewell's car and hit him at speed in the left side door. The contact mangles the pitman arm on Sewell's car, and now he doesn't have any control. If you don't know, the pitman arm is what connects the steering box to the front end allowing the driver to steer. With no control over the car, Sewell ends up sliding into the infield and hitting a series side-by-side with a safety worker inside. This is about the time the DIRTVision camera picks up the action. In tow behind Sewell is Anderson who's now decided the contact with the eight wasn't enough, and he wants even more. Both drivers bail from their race cars and the fight is on. Track and series officials eventually separate the two, but there was a bit more of a scuffle later just outside turn four. According to the penalty announcement, this all happened while Anderson was being told on the radio by series officials to take his car to the pit area, which he ignored. So in light of using his car as a weapon, ignoring official instructions, and putting a photographer and infield safety workers in danger, Anderson now finds himself suspended for a year from ASCS and all WRG sanctioned events to go along with a $5000 fine. Not long after the suspension was announced, Anderson posted a statement to his Facebook page in which he apologized for his actions, but did say quote "There were several factors that contributed to the events that transpired on Saturday night. While I do not condone all of my actions, I acknowledge that things got out of hand" unquote. To be fair here, I'm not really interested in any of the factors that led to the events and why things got out of hand. We are in the midst of a season where someone was killed in a dirt track infield, and that happened by terrible accident. These events are dangerous enough when drivers are doing things the right way, let alone when they decide to use their cars as a weapon and ignore instructions. If you can't control your emotions inside a race car, maybe you shouldn't be in one. We got lucky this time, hopefully this is a wakeup call for this team and driver to do better in the future.
As for sprint car silly season, Jeremy Elliott and Sprint Car Unlimited picking up the breaking news two-for. Last night Jeremy was out with the news that Cory Eliason and the Ridge team will split after this 2024 season. Ridge had hoped to keep two cars going for 2025, but sponsorship deals fell through, and Ridge is pulling back to a single car next season. Eliason is currently 10th in the Kubota High Limit standings, but it's been a struggle this season. They started with Tyler Swank as crew chief, but parted ways with him in March, then hiring Jim Shuttlesworth to that role. And I don't know that it's gone much better since. Eliason's average feature finish in High Limit shows is about 12.2, and they've got just six top fives in 45 races. They had a decent stretch from Portsmouth in July through the west coast trip, where they had five of those top fives, plus ten top tens in 13 races. But both Port Royal during the Tusky and Lernerville were back to struggling again. And those are both tracks that you'd hope Shuttlesworth would have good setups for. Along the way they've also made chassis changes and worked on the engines. But they have yet to lead a single lap this season, or find a podium finish with High Limit. They did win a weekly show at BAPS back in March which was the real lone bright spot. So Eliason on the driver market, but I don't know what his options are going to look like. Remaining on a national tour doesn't seem likely at this point, although Brian Ridge did tell Jeremy that if they can find funding into the future, they could maybe get started again. The very small handful of top rides that are going to change drivers this season all seem to have their next guy lined up, save for maybe one or two.
And then on flip side of the Ridge operation, it sounds like Aaron Reutzel and the 87 car could be taking Eliason's place on the road with High Limit in 2025. Jeremy had that story this morning. The plan is to run High Limit, and then race Knoxville in between, with Reutzel getting to go home during the week to be able to spend time with his family. It was just last week that I talked on this show about Reutzel's pullback from the national spotlight, but he could be back in 2025. We've seen that when things are right, Reutzel has the speed and potential to be a top 10 guy in the country, it's just been a few years since that was the case.
Looking at the larger picture, the battle is back on again between the Outlaws and High Limit for full time teams to join next season. In the Ridge case, it sucks to lose a net car, but good for High Limit that they will likely keep one on tour. With options now, teams have some measure of leverage when it comes to trying to better their situations between the two sides. I have heard rumblings of conversations where that leverage is being attempted. The line being if we don't get X or Y, we'll go to the other side. It's like college recruiting, with both sides offering up their best pitches. We won't quite have the intrigue of 2023, but there is still plenty to figure out in the coming weeks and months.
Real quick, we are super close to 35,000 YouTube subscribers, so if you haven't done that yet, maybe consider hitting that subscribe button, and that notification bell aslo. It's free to do so, and it's a good way to make sure you keep up with everything going on in dirt racing. I'm still hopefull we can get to 40,000 by year's end.
Coming up this weekend at Eldora during the 4-Crown, Ryan Timms will be back behind the wheel of the Curt Michael Heffner 27. Timms was in the highlighter green car a few weeks ago at Port Royal with High Limit, but unfortunately didn't make any of the three features. He'll be running double duty between the sprint car and the Keith Kunz midget though at Eldora. This is a different direction in recent weeks for Timms, as his sprint car starts previously came mainly in his family owned 5T. But that car has been on the shelf since right after the Jackson Nationals. Timms ran the Knoxville weely finale, MSTS at Huset's, and two Outlaw shows at Huset's with Guy Forbrook. And now these starts with Michael and Heffner. Port Royal was a struggle, but the races with Forbrook were solid, including that Bull Haulers Brawl victory. Other notes for Eldora include Stevie Sussex racing the Baldwin Fox 5 car for the USAC sprint car portion. Chris Windom will run a Chad Boat midget alongside his Vermeer NOS 55. And Logan Seavey will attempt the 4-Crown triumph, running all three USAC divisions with his Abacus team, and the winged High Limit portion with what I'm guessing is the Landon Simon 24 team.
Around the other dirt racing podcasts this week, Winged Nation has Buddy Kofoid and Corey Day, Dirt Track Confessions has Ralph Sheheen, Quicktime has Kerry Madsen and Stu Snyder, Hoogie's Garage has Danny Dietrich and Landon Brooks, Turn 2 Terribles has Dominic Melair, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, the Dirt Nerds, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks, Racing Roundup, and the Hammer Lane. To see a full list of the shows and their newest episodes, visit dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
That's it for the show today, there are a few options on the streaming schedule, including the USRA Nationals at Wheatland, so stop by dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Hope you guys have a great Wednesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!