DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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They say the All Star Circuit of Champions is back, but is it? | Daily 11-17-2024
Coming up, late model and sprint car champions crowned, a nearly 200 race winless streak broken, NASCAR drivers running midgets, and why I'm not ready to declare the All Stars quote "back" just yet. Let's go!
It's Sunday, November 17th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.
We'll start today off with race results from the last few days and then move into some news items. There is a lot that's happened, so I may push a few things to tomorrow and later this week just so we can cover everything properly. At Senoia for the FloRacing Night in America finale, Ricky Thornton Jr. entered with a 27 point deficit to Bobby Pierce for the championship, and honestly, I didn't think this was likely even in play. Pierce has been so strong all season, two solid nights and he would clinch. RTJ won Friday night on a tough and technical race track that saw just 11 of 26 starters finish the race. Pierce though went fifth to second and entered Saturday with still a 21 point lead. If he finished sixth or better it was over. But yesterday turned into a mess for the 32 team, and they needed a provisional to start the feature after struggling early in the night, and eventually swapping to a backup car. While Thornton was leading all 75 laps to sweep the weekend, Pierce went 25th to 11th and missed out on the title. So two championships this year for RTJ, with Lucas and the Flo series, and a nice $125,000 weekend. He got $50k for the two feature wins, plus $75 grand for the championship. I thought it was interesting to note that Thornton raced for four different teams en route to the Flo title. He obviously started with SSI and finished with Koehler, but in between also raced a night with the Sheppards, and also a few races with Kevin Rumley. With Senoia done, a bunch of teams will supertruck to Cherokee today for the $20,000 to win Blue Gray 100. Should be a nice day here in the Carolinas for some racing.
A BAPS last night for the final 410 winged sprint car race of 2024, we saw something we hadn't witnessed since July of 2022. And that was a Brock Zearfoss win. With his Outlaw season complete, Zearfoss showed up to BAPS, and led all 30 laps from the pole. His last win of any kind came with the Outlaws at Cedar Lake on July 2nd, 2022. It was a stretch of 197 races between victories. Chase Dietz and Logan Schuchart completed the podium.
With the ASCS, between Tulsa and Creek County, we had three different winners. Seth Bergman won Thursday at Tulsa, and Blake Hahn and Sam Hafertepe split the Creek County wins. The Thursday victory for Bergman, and two more top fives saw him easily clinch the 2024 ASCS National Tour championship over Hafertepe and Matt Covington. This was Bergman's first series title.
In 360 action at Vado Speedway Park, Aaron Reutzel was the Friday winner in POWRi sanctioned action, and we had last lap drama on Saturday. Kaleb Montgomery looked to be on his way to the win, but down the backstretch on the white flag lap his right rear tire gave out, and Caleb Saiz was able to drive by for the $10,000 win. It looked like tires were a problem and we may have had more failures had that race gone another lap or two.
And down under at Adelaide, Kerry Madsen won the sprint car finale on the temporary NAPA Speedway track built on a cricket field. Michael Stewart won the $25,000 two night championship.
Alright, let's dive into some news. Going back a few days, Kyle Larson's upcoming midget schedule has been announced. We talked about this last week, but we didn't know exactly where he'd be showing up. He'll run a Paul Silva owned midget alongside Tyler Courtney at Merced on November 23rd, Bakersfield on the 26th, and Turkey Night November 30th. From there, we know he's going to Australia for the High Limit sprint car races at Perth. Still no clarity on Chili Bowl though. One driver we do know that will be at Chili Bowl, is Kyle Busch. The NASCAR star has run dirt late models, and spent a bunch of time here lately in micro sprints and he's now expanding to midgets. Busch will make his USAC midget debut at Bakersfield, and he'll run Turkey Night as well to get himself ready for Tulsa in January. He recently tested at Rockfish Speedway in North Carolina to get his feet wet. His effort is backed by Lucas Oil and FloRacing, and he's driving a Lynk Chassis with TRD power. The Hangtown 100 at Placerville was rained out this weekend. The USAC midget west coast swing is now just five races, and will start Wednesday at Tulare.
In sprint car news, this has been going on for a while behind the scenes, the return of the All Star Circuit of Champions name became official yesterday. Starting in 2025, Ohio promoter Rich Farmer is partnering up with High Limit, Brad Sweet, and Kyle Larson to get a regional series going again, and it will be called the All Star Circuit of Champions. The series will be streamed on FloRacing, and it will include Ohio Sprint Speedweek. For now, that's really all the details we have, as a schedule isn't expected until sometime in December, and purses, point fund, and a potential driver roster are all still in the air. The All Stars had been the oldest sprint car series, with it being founded in 1970, but it went away after 2023, when Flo and Brad and Kyle acquired it from Tony Stewart to help pave the way for the much larger, national version of High Limit. Tony took control of it in 2015 at a pivotal time where things were starting to splinter heavily in the regional space, and he and his team brought stability. The acquisition of the All Stars by High Limit though was much more about tidying up the streaming deal and gaining the relationships with some of the tracks and events, then it was necessarily about getting the exisiting infrastructure of the All Stars. Outside of some vehicles and equipment, there really wasn't much to gain out of the purchase. Especially since they weren't going to be using the All Star branding. The loss of the All Stars as a middle ground between more local and regional racing and going all out with the World of Outlaws created a void in the sprint car landscape, and several series and groups attempted to fill it for 2024 and beyond. In Ohio specifically, the FAST Series with Aaron Fry expanded a bit for this past season, and Fry ran a bit more of a unified speedweek, with the blessing of High Limit and Flo and the involvement of DIRTVision. Early on though, Rich Farmer and Ross Paulson did attempt to start a regional, Ohio based sprint car series, but the deal fell apart in the final moments before an announcement was expected. The Maverick Winged Sprint Series, which now appears to be dead, popped up in this space as well, and we are seeing Kenny Brown and POWRi attempt to expand their footprint with the POWRi Honest Abe 410 series. The announcement yesterday seemed to draw quite a bit of attention and good will, but from where I sit, until we have significantly more details, I'm hesitant to really say the All Stars are back. Is this new iteration of the series really going to fill that void and be what the All Stars were before, or is this going to be a High Limit and Flo backed version of something like FAST, just with different branding. Because based on what we know from the FAST side, Farmer and High Limit wanted Fry to end FAST and join up with them, which was revealed in a social post from yesterday. It would obviously be much easier to control speedweek, and potentially gain tracks and series if Fry and FAST were no more. But Fry declined, and FAST will move forward as is, with 20 races already scheduled and more to come. And regardless of what the release said yesterday, it sounds like the fate of Ohio Sprint Speedweek might not be settled just yet. So as we pull back a bit, there are a lot of questions to still answer here. What really happens with Speedweek, can Farmer put together a strong enough schedule and package to draw race teams, and will everyone actually play nice? Because I do think sprint car racing needs that middle ground between local action and the national tours. I'm here for that if they can put it together. Or will this just be further splintering in and around Ohio? If that's the case, I don't know that we really need a second or third Ohio series siphoning off a few tracks and cars and diluting everything.
Looking ahead to tomorrow, there are a number of late model news bits to talk about, so for those of you looking for that stuff, stop by on Monday. We'll talk about a few things that became public, and some things that maybe aren't public just yet.
Hope you guys have a great Sunday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!