DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Kyle Larson around the world in 24 hours, allegations lobbed at sprint car series | Daily 12-30-2024

High Limit's first international races are in the books, and we'll talk about the racing and the winners. Plus changes coming to the Kreitz 69K sprint car, and we'll dive into allegations of officiating improprieties for a big sprint car series. Let's go!

It's Monday, December 30th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.

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We are back to regularly scheduled programming today, and I hope you guys had a good holiday week last week and enjoyed the interview shows we had. If you missed them, the conversations I did with Jeremy Elliott, Jonathan Joiner, Dominic Scelzi, and Steve Arpin are all available in the DIRTRACKR podcast feed and on the YouTube channel and Facebook page. A lot happened over the last seven days, and we will definitely get to all of it at some point this week. There has been racing, series commitments, officiating drama, and even more driver moves. I was actually a bit surprised to see announcements being made on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Those are not typically days where you'll see news released just because so many people are checked out and doing other things.

We'll start first today with High Limit's event at the Perth Motorplex in Australia. This was supposed to be a strong field of Americans versus the locals for $100,000, but we knew going in that Carson Macedo had already bowed out because of injury, and in the days leading up, we lost Rico Abreu as well. Rico posted on Christmas day that he had injured his wrist and needs surgery to repair it, so he was also out of the Australian calendar. It was definitely unexpected as Rico had posted a video of warming up the car, and he and Sprint Car Hub's Toby Bellbowen did a silly Crocodile Hunter spoof video the day before. I'm not sure what's going on down under, but pretty crazy to lose two Americans from these events in just a matter of days. As for the racing, James McFadden swept the prelim nights. He outdueled Cole Macedo in the first feature, and then he took advantage in round two when early leader Kyle Larson was into the fence and subsequently out of contention. In the $100,000 finale that ran just this morning here in the states, McFadden made a serious bid for a complete event sweep, leading a bunch of laps from the front row. But inside ten laps to go, sixth starting Kyle Larson made his move, taking the top spot from McFadden. JMac tried to stay with Larson, but the 1K was able to stretch away over the final few circuits to take the big money. McFadden settled for second, and Callum Williamson joined them on the podium. Fun racing all three nights, and probably the podium you would have expected beforehand. McFadden has been very good in his new ride down under, Callum Williamson is always strong at Perth, and Larson doing Larson things. Looking forward, the Australian sprint car calendar continues, with several of the Americans racing Bunbury and Perth this week. Larson though is immediately heading back to the states, as besides Chili Bowl, he's also running all four divisions at the Tulsa Shootout. Load in continues at the expo today, with the first Shootout prelim night tomorrow. Larson driving for Chad Boat at the Shootout, and he joins fellow NASCAR drivers Christopher Bell and Kyle Busch in competing there.

Staying with High Limit here, some unflattering allegations about series officiating were made on Twitter in recent days, centered around former tech director Kevin Nouse. I wondered how much of a story this really was, but it caught my attention when notable motorsports journalist Matt Weaver wrote about the situation for Sportsnaut. Weaver posted an article late last night with comments from all involved and detailing the allegations. Nouse, who was previously a racer himself and the All Star Circuit of Champions series director, was brought on in 2024 to run tech for High Limit under series director Mike Hess. Hess moved over from the World of Outlaws to take the position, and his officiating staff also included Nouse's son Logan, and several ex-World of Outlaws officials. Nouse and his son though were both released from their positions in June. In a series of tweets from December 27th, Nouse alleges that he caught High Limit competitors with illegal parts on several different occasions during 2024, with each instance supposedly being swept under the rug by Hess. Nouse was replying to tweets from an anonymous account that has been highly critical of Hess and High Limit, that is believed to be run by former World of Outlaws official Justin Reimers. Weaver did get a statement from High Limit about the allegations, which read quote "High Limit Racing believes in a fair and equal playing field for all competitors. Any claims to the contrary are unjustified. We're focused on the success of our inaugural international event and continuing to improve the sport of sprint car racing" unquote. Hess declined to comment and deferred to the statement, said Weaver in the piece. In the tweets, Nouse pointed towards incidents involving illegal wicker bills, crank triggers, and MSD boxes. The crank triggers and MSD box issues are usually tied to illegal traction control. Nouse did not however mention any specific races or teams and drivers involved. Without any real evidence, a situation like this just turns into Nouse's word against that of High Limit and Hess. So who do we believe? He mentioned to Weaver that his comments would be dismissed as coming from a disgruntled former employee. And I think it's easy to see it that way when these things don't come to light until six months later via random social media replies to a burner Twitter account. It's also worth bringing up here, that the one public incident that fans did see of a High Limit officiating snafu during the 2024 season, was when Nouse himself failed to properly scale Brad Sweet's car after a win at Outlaw Speedway in May. The FloRacing drone caught Nouse not looking at the scales after the win, which he called a simple mistake in the aftermath. The conspiracy theorists online were quick to jump on that one as clear evidence of the fix being in for the series owner, and I've been saying all along that this is the slippery slope that High Limit will find itself in. We saw it after the heat race stuff at Tri-City in 2023 as well, which I discussed on this show. High Limit's officiating needs to be bullet proof, because any little mistake or crack will be amplified that much more. Those conspiracy theorists were all over those other incidents, and they are eating up these comments from Nouse because it clearly seems to them to illustrate all that is wrong with High Limit and it's ownership by competitors. From where I sit though, everything Nouse said could absolutely be true, but it all becomes clouded when you take these other things into consideration, like his dismissal, his clearly poor relationship with Hess, and his own mistake at Outlaw. Is this him trying to blow the whistle on real issues, or a disgruntled ex-employee who has a score to settle? I'm not sure how we make that determination with nothing more than tweets. On the flip side though, if what Nouse said is true, then High Limit has some serious problems to address. Especially with sports wagering on the very near horizon.

As a sidebar here, I really dislike the officiating conversations. It's the oldest complaint in sports and it never changes or gets better. I hate it when youth sports competitors complain about the officiating, and I hate it when professionals complain. Just go play. In dirt racing, when drivers get caught with things, the series are wrong and bad. When guys don't get caught with things, the series are wrong and bad. We literally cannot reach consensus on any of it, and it's exhausting. Somehow everyone is innocent, and everyone is guilty at the same time. When a driver gets caught doping tires, it's suddenly the lab's fault and guys wouldn't do that. When a driver misses the scales and is DQ'd, it's because he was bought off so that high profile driver could get the transfer. When a guy wins, it's because he had traction control and the series looked the other way. Obviously everyone is cheating all the time and the series don't care. So we both want rules enforcement and we don't. Got it. The comments on this are going to talk about integrity and fairness and doing the right thing, but when you get those things, you dismiss them as something else. So how do we decide when enforcement is good and when it's bad? Like I said, exhausting.

One final thing for you today, some silly season news. A bunch of changes are coming to the Kreitz Racing 69K sprint car for 2025. Logan Wagner is out for his portion of the schedule, and Ryan Smith is in. According to Jeremy Elliott's reporting, Wagner wanted more races, but Don Kreitz couldn't give that to him because of his commitment to Daryn Pittman. So the two sides parted. Pittman will still run a small schedule, including Outlaw shows at the Grove, and Smith will do most of the rest. Also, with Christopher Bell's dirt racing restrictions at Joe Gibbs Racing eased for 2025, he was on the hunt for sprint car deals, and he's got his first. Bell will drive the 69K at DIRTcar Nationals against the Outlaws, and at Las Vegas with High Limit. At Volusia, they'll run the practice night and the first race night, and then maybe the second. At Las Vegas, Bell will drive on Thursday, while Kreitz will get another driver for Saturday. Bell is scheduled to run Tulsa Shootout this week, then Chili Bowl, and these are his first sprint car commitments. We'll see what else he is able to put together.

Alright, we'll call it good for there today. In the coming days we will dive into a bunch of the other news items that came out in recent days, so if I didn't hit on something today, it's coming, don't worry.

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