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Rico's status, Randall's situation, High Limit closes strong | Daily 2-4-2025

High Limit closes out their roster with a 14th driver. We'll talk who it is, and the curious situation of how this all came to be. Plus regional sprint car news, racing tonight, and more. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, February 4th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.

Today's Daily show is being supported by Jeremy Elliott's sprintcarunlimited.com. If you are looking for in-depth sprint car coverage all season long, then look no further. Sprintcarunlimited.com has breaking news, commentary, regular podcast episodes, and a lot more. He covers the World of Outlaws, High Limit, regional action, and all the biggest races. Right now, when you use code "SCU2025" at checkout, you can get a year subscription for just $28. That's code "SCU2025" at checkout. It works out to about $2.30 a month for coverage and reporting you can't get anywhere else. That's 20% off the regular rate, and less than I pay for my subscription. I signed up way back in 2021. Make sure as well to check out the Sprint Car Unlimited YouTube channel. Jeremy has his daily 90 at 9 videos, the regular Deep Dive interviews, and he's launching a new show this week. Tonight at 7:30PM eastern, he's launching SprintCarUnlimited.com Live and will be taking your calls and questions. So make sure to check that out tonight, Tuesday, February 3rd, 7:30PM eastern, Sprint Car Unlimited YouTube channel. Thanks to Jeremy and sprintcarunlimited.com for their support of this show.

Speaking of sprint car news, we had some just this morning, with High Limit officially announcing their 14th full time driver. Fresh off his offseason spent racing in Australia, Chase Randall will indeed join the series for his first ever run at a national tour. As expected, and as we've been talking about, he'll drive a family owned number nine car, with support from Albaugh, Infamous Ink, and his two previous sponsors in EZ Print and Bush's Chicken. Pretty good looking car, green and black from Heater Design Studio. It should break cover soon. Heater also doing recent work for Garet Williamson, Brent Marks, the new look Roth 83, and all those Keith Kunz cars at the Chili Bowl. According to a Kyle McFadden/FloRacing story, Randall's dad Jon will start the season as crew chief, and they have hired Baylen Magennis to car chief and do tires. Baylen was with Rudeen the past two seasons, and Clauson Marshall before that. Randall has been a full time winged 410 driver for the past two seasons, picking up seven wins and making 120 starts. That has included 62 appearances split between the Outlaws and High Limit, with a top five finish on each side, and several top ten runs. He's still in search of that first win. He's had success in weekly action at tracks like Knoxville and Huset's though. Randall has had a curious last six months or so. He left the TKS Motorsports team later in the summer last season, and his name was attached to almost every open sprint car ride. That included the Meyers 14, one of the Roth 83s, and Crouch Motorsports. You'd think a young gun, bringing big backing like the Albaugh money and his other partners would have no problem having someone take a chance on him. But he just couldn't seem to get a deal done. With all the major rides going other directions for 2025, bringing back the family-owned team became their best plan, and maybe only plan. Rumors persisted into November that Randall was still working on potential landing spots, but then as December came around, and then the new year approached, the sentiment changed. With Randall racing in Australia with DKM Motorsport, the chatter shifted towards the family team returning with the support of Albaugh and his other sponsors. Looking ahead now that the news is official, Randall will certainly be up against it joining this High Limit rookie class that already included Daison Pursley, Danny Sams, and Sye Lynch. Of this group, Pursley is the easy favorite given his quick rise and the fact that he's jumping in with an established team. We thought Aaron Reutzel was also part of this rookie class, but the series has ruled him ineligible for that award. From what I know right now, Randall's addition is likely the final one for High Limit. They'll start 2025 at Las Vegas with Brad Sweet, Tyler Courtney, Reutzel, Tanner Thorson, Brent Marks, Sams, Justin Peck, Lynch, Brenham Crouch, Kasey Kahne, Pursley, Spencer Bayston, Randall, and Rico Abreu. And yes, we can count Rico as confirmed. There was never a real announcement, but the series has acknowledged him as a full timer. I think until we find out otherwise, Sweet is still the championship favorite here. There will be question marks given his new crew setup, and it's tough to say right now who can take a step forward behind him. As a whole, I really like this roster High Limit ended up with. A very good mix and some interesting characters.

One regional sprint car silly season item for you before we move on... The highlighter yellow Curt Michael/Heffner 27 sprint car has hired Steven Snyder Jr. for this season. We've seen Snyder have success in micro sprint competition, and his name has bubbled up at the Chili Bowl. He's made just a handful of winged sprint car starts in his very young career. Curt Michael shared to social media yesterday that the 27H will run with the new All Stars, plus Western PA Speedweek, and other Ohio and PA 410 and 360 races. This car ran several races in 2024 with Ryan Timms in the seat, and they ran the 360 Nationals at Knoxville with Justin Peck. There were some interesting rumors all offseason around this car, including the possibility of it being a landing spot for Zeb Wise. But Snyder now the guy.

Tonight at Ocala Speedway, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series begins their final week down south. They'll race each of the next five nights to close out their portion of late model speedweeks. Four races are complete so far, with Tyler Bruening, Ricky Thornton Jr., and Devin Moran all getting victories... RTJ has two. Moran the current Lucas points leader over Daulton Wilson and Tyler Erb. Ocala, formerly known as Bubba Raceway Park, has been a regular stop on the speedweeks calendar, but it's never hosted this many nights in a row before. It will definitely be something to watch over the coming days, how the track handles this much racing. It is by no means easy to keep a track surface and a facility in top shop for this many race days over the course of a week. Going back to 2024, Hudson O'Neal and RTJ your Ocala winners, with guys like Jonathan Davenport, Moran, Tim McCreadie, and Shane Clanton all picking up Lucas wins there going back to 2021. The track was open for practice last night, 40 plus cars on the grounds, and Davenport your fastest runner. JD on the hunt for his first win of the year, and he's been close. In six races he's finished second four times between the Outlaws and Lucas. These first two nights at Ocala are $7000 to win and $600 to start, Thursday is $10k to win and $800 to start, Friday bumps to $12,000 to win and a grand to start, and the finale on Saturday is $25,000 to win and $1500 to start.

At Volusia last night, Gene Nicholas, Dave Wietholder, Trevor Neville, Chase Holland, Bobby Bagley, and Kyle Strickler picked up feature wins and gator trophies. The UMP modifieds are the sole division again tonight at DIRTcar Nationals with six more features coming up. They'll keep this same format the rest of the week, building into the 30 lap finale on Saturday and the gator championship. As is usually the case at DCN, that modified field is stacked. Some names to watch all week include Justin Allgaier, Kenny Schrader, and Kenny Wallace, plus all the big modified guys like Strickler, Zeke McKenzie, Mike McKinney, Dustin Sorensen, David Stremme and others. These will be tough races to win all week. Even though the World of Outlaws season doesn't begin until tomorrow, a bunch of the sprint car teams are already in the area, with some on the property at Volusia yesterday. We'll talk about the Outlaw opener tomorrow.

That's your Daily show for today. If you want even more dirt racing content, make sure to follow DIRTRACKR across social media. Wherever you are, so is DIRTRACKR.

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