DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Tony Stewart Racing makes BIG changes | Daily 1-5-2025
Bobby Pierce opens 2025 doing Bobby Pierce things, plus the Tulsa Shootout gets wild, and one of sprint car's best has a crew shakeup in advance of the season starting. We'll talk about all of that and more. Let's go!
It's Sunday, January 5th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.
Well, we've had one big paying dirt late model show in 2025, and no surprise, Bobby Pierce standing in victory lane. The opening night of the Wild West Shootout saw Pierce get by early leader Garrett Alberson with 20 to go, and drive on to the $25,000 win. Alberson had to settle for second, and Brandon Sheppard went eighth to third. Pierce won four of six main events at Vado in 2024, and is clearly not slowing down. I saw on Dirt on Dirt that Pierce has won seven times in his last ten starts at the New Mexico race track. 47 cars signed in for night one, and definitely some quality in the field. Cade Dillard topped Dustin Sorensen for the modified win, and Rob Moseley was the Xmod winner. They'll do it all over again today, with $10,000 to win for the late models.
Across the country at Talladega, Sam Seawright dominated the 50 lap Ice Bowl from the pole to score the $7500 win. Josh Putnam and Todd Morrow joined him on the podium. Up next for dirt late models in the south is a $5000 to win show at I-75 on January 11th.
At the Tulsa Shootout, we had some bangers last night for golden drillers. Brent Crews started off the night scoring the win in stock non-wing battling with Cannon McIntosh. The younger division drillers went to Brexton Busch in junior sprint, and Haidyn Hansen in restricted A-class. Hansen is the fourth female driver to score a restricted win with the last being Jade Avedisian in 2020. In winged outlaw, Kyle Larson started on the pole, and held off a trio of challengers late in TJ Smth, Daison Pursley, and Emerson Axsom to score his first driller of the night. Yung Money bagged a second driller in winged A class thanks to drama out front. Clinton Boyles, Daison Pursley, Emerson Axsom, and Parker Perry waged war out front, but Boyles and Pursley tangled battling for the lead putting both drivers out. We even had a little ramp dustup between Chad Boat crew members and Bernie Stuebgen of Indy Race Parts. Pursley himself got involved as well before Matt Ward intervened and cooler heads prevailed. Boyles did later apologize for the incident. Axsom ended up out as well when his powerplant went sideways, and that cleared the way for Larson to easily drive away to the win. In the 55 lap finale for outlaw non wing, Blake Hahn was out front early, but plenty of guys were lurking. Christopher Bell took the lead past half way and looked to be on his way to the win when Steven Snyder Jr. came charging to the front. Snyder's time as the leader though was short lived as he screwed up on the cushion in turn one and hurt the right rear tire. He later ended up out, and that allowed Bell to get back to the lead. Over the final few laps, Larson made a bid for a third driller, but came up less than two tenths of a second short at the line. CBell was pumped up in victory lane to get the win, and he shouted a thank you to Joe Gibbs for allowing him to race. It's hard to see the racing we just had for the Shootout and not get excited for the Chili Bowl when all these same guys will be at each other again. The expo is quiet this week, with practice for the Chili Bowl taking place seven days from today.
Going back to some of the rules and cheating discussion here lately, those things were front and center at the Tulsa Shootout. Yesterday we had six different drivers DQ'd over failed tire tests. That include three junior sprint drivers, plus Daniel Shaffer, Jett Nunley, and Shawn Whitney in the big classes. And we also saw footage of engines being torn down post race right in front of the entire building and the FloRacing cameras. If you want rules enforcement and transparency, let me introduce you to the Tulsa Shootout. Matt Ward and Cody Cordell not screwing around here. Remember too, this was the same group of officials that cracked down on electronic communication at the Chili Bowl in 2024. I would expect similar next week.
Moving on, last week when I appeared on The Driver's Project podcast, and then also on the Thursday Daily show, I talked about their being a top level sprint car driver that was going to have a new crew chief for 2025. And that news officially broke yesterday with Tyler Altmeyer releasing the details of the crew shakeup for Donny Schatz at Tony Stewart Racing. Car chief Todd Devnich is being bumped up to crew chief, with Woodman (Gary Patellaro) coming over from Roth Motorsports, and the team adding newcomer Ian Lyon as tire specialist. Devnich had previously worked with Schatz before on the family team in the late 90's, and spent nearly 20 years working in the NASCAR garage. In my own time in NASCAR, I didn't know Devnich but knew of him, especially when he was a car chief at Hendrick Motorsports. Devnich returned to TSR in 2020, and had been on Schatz's crew in recent seasons. Woodman moves over from Roth following the departure of James McFadden with that teams' plans unknown still, and Lyon comes in from working on Don Droud Jr.'s cars in the midwest. These changes obviously mean the departure of previous crew chief Steve Swenson, who most know as Scuba, plus tire specialist Dauson Heitritter. We've talked plenty here on the show in the past about Schatz's decline, and the thoughts behind it, including the departure of Ricky Warner after 2018, and the Ford engine program. Schatz last won a World of Outlaws championship in 2018, and the closest he came with Swenson as crew chief was the 2019 season when he won 11 races and finished second to Brad Sweet. Since then, it's been a steady decline, with 2023 seeming to be the worst of it. An average finish worse than ninth, and his lowest Outlaw championship result since 2002. There were bright spots along the way though, including the Knoxville Nationals score in 2022, and the Kings Royal win in 2023. But no real championship contending seasons since 2019, and no double digit win years. If we are just looking at performance, this does seem to be a bit of a surprising change now, because the TSR 15 was better in 2024. Way more top fives and top tens, a third place points finish, and a nearly three position gain in average finish. If you might remember back to early in 2024, we did a Daily spotlighting Schatz's team using a data acquisition system during practice at DIRTcar Nationals, so effort was being made in a significant way to find speed. And whatever they were doing, it did seem to work. But going beyond the press release and the stats though, there were rumblings towards the end of the season that TSR had made a run at at least one high level crew chief at another sprint car team to pair with Schatz. That offer was supposedly turned down though, leaving TSR to look elsewhere. In recent weeks, I've had multiple sources tell me that TSR wanted to bump Scuba down to car chief and promote Devnich, but Scuba declined, instead choosing to leave completely. I don't believe Todd has ever been a crew chief, but he's not lacking experience, that's for sure. And he knows Schatz having been around him for so long. We'll see if this reworked crew can help Schatz bring the fight back to guys like David Gravel and Carson Macedo in that Outlaw battle. As for Scuba, no word on if he'll end up somewhere else in the sport. You'd have to think he'd be a good pickup for somebody. He's got wins as a crew chief at the Knoxville Nationals, Kings Royal, National Open, and Jackson Nationals on his resume. Not too many guys have those wins in their career. Schatz joins Brad Sweet now as having major crew shakeups headed into the season.
That's your Daily show for this Sunday. Plenty to come this week, including things from the Wild West Shootout, we've got more crew changes to talk about, some more sprint car news and rumors, and more. So don't go anywhere.
Hope you enjoy the rest of your day out there. We'll see you back here tomorrow.