DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

Dirt racing news, results, discussion, analytics. Sprint cars, late models, modifieds, you name it. From national series, to top local shows. Brought to you five days a week. Email the show at info@dirtrackr.com.

Dale McDowell's interesting role, plus why this team won't be back like you think | Daily 1-30-2025

Sprint car and late model racing coming up this weekend, plus Dale McDowell coaching, World of Outlaws betting officially going live, and we'll talk complicated team setups and why the Hoffman 69 sprint car won't return like we've known it. Let's go!

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

This 2025 dirt racing season continues to ramp up, with even more racing on track this weekend. At All-Tech in Florida, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series is back to action for their portion of speedweeks. Just one race complete so far, a Tyler Bruening victory at Golden Isles, and now they'll race the next three nights at All-Tech. $10k, $12k, and $15k to win each night through Saturday. All signs are pointing towards a very nice couple of days there in Florida, so it will be a good weekend to hit the track. Teams did get open practice last night, and I saw on MyRacePass they were above 40 entries for the evening. The fastest lap I saw was set by Jonathan Davenport. There was a bit of damage done last night, with FloRacing's Kyle McFadden sharing that Davenport, Dale McDowell, Shane Clanton, and Hudson O'Neal all had run-ins with the All-Tech wall. Interesting to note too about McDowell, he was actually turning some laps in the Riggs Motorsports 81, which is a team car to Brandon Overton's 76. Both Jack and Jason Riggs have made appearances through speedweeks so far, and apparently McDowell is doing some driver coaching for the team. It's hard to imagine as well that McDowell wasn't giving some feedback to0 about the car and setup with his vast experience. Being a Team Zero and Fox Shocks guy, he'd certainly have a different perspective on the Bilstein/Longhorn combo. McDowell did appear with the Outlaws during the Sunshine Nationals, but his website doesn't have another scheduled race until the Hunt the Front series opener on March 8th at I-75. The two All-Tech nights with Lucas a year ago went to Tim McCreadie and Ricky Thornton Jr. A lot has changed since then though, as TMac was still in the Paylor Motorsports ride, and RTJ with SSI. Going back to 2020, other winners have included Jimmy Owens, Brandon Sheppard, Kyle Larson, and Davenport. Looking ahead for Lucas, teams will have Sunday off, and then things get right back going again on Monday with open practice at Ocala. Racing there then runs from Tuesday through next Saturday. If you want to watch any of the Lucas action coming up, it's all live on Flo.

At Volusia, we'll have our first sprint car shows of 2025 starting tonight and running through Saturday. This event was previously the Sprint Car Shootout and USCS sanctioned. Now though, since WRG owns the ASCS, these are under that banner, and they are calling this the opening of DIRTcar Nationals. The 360 sprint cars will be joined all three nights by UMP modifieds. Prelim nights are $3000 to win, and the finale on Saturday is $12,000 to win. This does officially kick off the ASCS national tour season, but it's likely we won't see the complete roster of full time drivers in attendance. After this weekend, the series doesn't race again until April and officials have made a change that will allow teams to miss Volusia. The full Volusia weekend will be counted as a single points race for the championship, and for events between January 30th and July 30th, full time ASCS teams can drop their worst finish. So for teams not ready yet to race, nothing will be hurt by not coming to DIRTcar Nationals. There should though be a very stacked field of cars coming to Florida. Some names to watch for include Austin McCarl, Matt Covington, Blake Hahn, Jason Martin, Sam Hafertepe, Emerson Axsom, Scotty Thiel, Brian Brown, Danny Dietrich, Jacob Allen, Brady Bacon, Daison Pursley, and maybe Justin Peck in the Rudeen car. All three nights will be live over on DIRTVision if you aren't headed for Volusia. After Saturday, Volusia will sit quiet on Sunday, then the modifieds are back Monday and Tuesday. And then the World of Outlaws sprint car season starts next Wednesday.

Jumping over to the betting situation, that Wednesday Outlaw opener will be the official start to wagering being available for WRG-owned series. We talked about this earlier this week, but the announcement did finally come yesterday. The release does have quotes from both the WRG side and Alt Sports Data. It's available to see over at worldofoutlaws.com. Nothing in there we haven't really already talked about. Betting though, at least to start, is extremely limited, so depending on where you live, don't expect to be able to participate right away. In North America, the only legal betting states right now are Connecticut and Oregon, plus Ontario, Canada. There are 32 states where you can play daily fantasy sports related games tied to the World of Outlaws, but we'll have to wait and see how that manifests. More states will be added, but it sounds like they are still awaiting regulatory approval for many locations. You can find more info at nxtbets.com.

Last week on the show I did a bit of a deep dive on dirt racing sponsorships, as I had a bunch of questions about how they work in the aftermath of the Hoker Trucking, Bobby Pierce situation. If you missed it, it was the January 21st daily show. I ran through a lot of the scenarios, as deals are incredibly varied. In a similar vein, I wanted to talk today about team setups themselves. The motivation behind this topic is really centered about Brady Bacon's situation, and the questions and comments I've seen around the Hoffman team. I did touch on this back on November as well, which I'll get to here shortly. Bacon is transitioning this season to full time winged sprint car racing, and will not be full time with the USAC sprint car series. He's still going to run some non-wing events, but most of his time will be split between the Chris Dyson owned 20 car, and the TKH 21 ride. He'll be at Volusia this weekend with Dyson, then run the World of Outlaws opening week with Kevin Newton, before getting back together with Dyson for the USAC shows at Volusia and Ocala. Since his announcement, the Hoffman question has come up multiple times, with people wondering who will get into that ride now that Bacon is gone. The answer though, is not that simple. The Hoffman 69 you've been watching travel USAC the last several seasons was actually just Bacon's team with Hoffman support. It had the 69 on it, their colors, and the name, but that was all Bacon's equipment. And this is where, just like sponsorships, team situations get murky. Hoffman isn't going away completely, as I've been told they'll still likely have a car for the Little 500, and there could be some scattered non-wing appearances in 2025. But a Hoffman 69 full time with USAC is not happening. Bacon shifting his focus means the end of the Hoffman 69 as we've known it. At least for the foreseeable future. We saw a similar situation in 2024 with the Scotty Thiel/Ozzie Motorsports deal falling apart. I hit on this on a show back in November. Ozzie and Gibbsville cheese announced they had hired Logan Julien, but again, not a simple deal. That wasn't the team taking out Thiel's seat and putting in Julien's. Outside of the engines and the toter, everything you saw for the Ozzie Motorsports 73 was actually Thiel's equipment. Ozzie took the engines and the cheese sponsorship to Julien's existing operation, which was then effectively rebranded. To put a bow on this, at least for Thiel, he just announced a new sprint car deal two days ago. He's going to run 40 shows this season with what was the Home Pro Racing 50YR team. The team is now Ragged Edge Racing and they will run the 51 with Thiel starting this week at Volusia. They'll pick and choose 360 and 410 shows all season. Back to the larger point here though, just like sponsorships, team deals aren't always neat and clean. There are plenty of hired drivers, like David Gravel or Sheldon Haudenschild or Justin Peck. But a lot of teams are mishmashed operations with one party maybe owning the truck and trailer and some cars, and another owning the engines, and maybe even another owning the shop. So when the USAC season starts at Volusia in 10 days, don't expect a Hoffman trailer to come rolling in with fresh 69s and a new driver ready to tackle the championship.

That's the daily show for this final week of January. Hope you guys enjoy the racing coming up and your weekend. We'll see you back here on Sunday!