DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Is the competition gap really getting worse? | Daily 2-17-2025

We know that a handful of drivers dominate the top of dirt late model racing. But is it true that the gap is widening between the top teams and the local and regional level? We'll discuss today and dive into some numbers. Let's go!

It's Monday, February 17th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.

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If you've spent any amount of time in the last year or couple of years consuming content around dirt late model racing, whether that's regular coverage or social media chatter, you've probably run into this idea of the widening competition gap. There seem to be a lot of people who believe that as rules continue to evolve and things get ever more expensive, that the difference between a top national touring team, and the regional and local teams, is getting worse. I heard FloRacing's Ben Shelton talking about it as recently as a few days ago on one of the Dirt on Dirt Drive Home shows. The thought is if you race regionally or locally, that your chances of running well when Lucas or the Outlaws come to town are getting ever more difficult as the big teams continue to spend big money on development and testing, especially when it comes to aero stuff. Photos of Ethan Dotson's late model from above made the rounds in the last few days online as folks again made the comparison to NASCAR's twisted sister cars. We were literally having this exact same conversation one year ago after wild photos of Devin Moran's car did the same thing. Work is ongoing on the series and rules side to try and curb some of the aero stuff, and we've talked several times over the past 12 months about that template system. We are coming off of a speedweeks where a handful of teams were fast every night, and it's not hard to see why this feeling is starting to become more pervasive. I wanted to see if some of the stats told the same story, so I dug into the analytics section over at dirtrackr.com to see what I could find out. Between the Outlaws and Lucas I looked at the total number of winners for each season going back to 2019 and 2020 respectively, plus the number of drivers with top five finishes each season, and some win percentage stuff. The most damning metric I have for both series is that number of winners stat. For both the Outlaws and Lucas, 2024 saw the fewest number of winners for each series. Lucas had 14, and the Outlaws 12. And again, I have results for Lucas going back to 2020, and for the Outlaws 2019. The previous low over this span for Lucas was 15 in 2021, and the Outlaws had 14 in 2019. Lucas peaked in 2022 with 21, and the Outlaws' highest was 22 in 2021. And even among those 14 for Lucas, none were really regional or local guys. Tyler Erb and Brandon Overton had series wins as non-full timers, but nobody is characterizing those guys as regional. With the Outlaws, we did have Ross Bailes and Dylan Knowles score wins, but those were both split field prelim shows. The last real regional winner we had with Lucas was Dale McDowell's Topless 100 win in 2023. Before that, we had a few guys, like Josh Rice and Chris Ferguson win in 2022. The Outlaws saw Cory Hedgecock win in 2023, plus guys like Michael Brown and Jason Feger in 2022. Expanding out a bit, looking at drivers with top five finishes, this stat a bit better and not quite as strong a piece of evidence for this widening gap. Neither the Outlaws or Lucas had lows in 2024. Lucas with 38, the Outlaws with 41. The least for Lucas was 32 in 2021, and the Outlaws 38 in 2023. So clearly still plenty of chances to grab some top fives with each series. Looking at some of the names that have had success on both sides, it would definitely appear like this problem might be a touch worse with Lucas. There are more names that have won with the Outlaws than Lucas. And when we look at overall win counts, the same guys with Lucas win more often than with the Outlaws. The top 10 on the Lucas win list have taken 81% of race wins, while the top ten on the Outlaw win list have only won 67% of races. The perception has been for some time that Lucas is tougher, and this would seem to point to that. Also, as I said a second ago, Lucas has fewer winners overall. In the past 275 races, Lucas has had 36 different winners. With the Outlaws, over the past 266 races, its 48 winners. So in line with that perception, is does seems as though the World of Outlaws is maybe a tad more gettable for those local and regional guys. We could look at the results through speedweeks for 2025 and see not a ton of success for local and regional guys, but the sample sizes are really small, and at least for the Outlaws, they've only been to one track. So maybe not a fair comparison just yet. Mark Whitener was really the lone regional guy with any success. He has two Lucas top tens. There are some others, like Spencer Hughes, Wil Herrington, and Dillon McCowan, but the lines start to get blurred for drivers like this. Nobody on the Outlaw side with top ten runs at Volusia, all those guys are tied to a national tour, or are that caliber. So overall, what do we see? Probably at least some evidence this is trending in a not great direction. I wouldn't look at all of these numbers and say there is overwhelming data to convince me of a widening gap, but there are some concerning things here. It is possible that 2024 was just a down year, and that things could be better in 2025, but speedweeks wasn't a great start, again pointing out the small sample size. We did see a lot of solid car counts though, if you want a counterpoint. I'll leave the conversation about what the fixes could be for this situation to others, because if you walked around the pit area at a big show, you'd get a lot of different answers. The regional stuff as a whole on the late model side is at a weird point too I think. In the midwest, we are coming out of an offseason where we lost the MLRA, and a bunch of those guys are trying to figure out where to race. But in the southeast, the Hunt the Front tour has been strong, we've added the Southern Thunder series, and there is no lack of options and solid payouts for those teams. Anyways... I've gone on long enough about this, feel free to throw in your two cents on this topic.

One more thing to share for today. During yesterday's rain delay for the Daytona 500, NASCAR Cup Series driver Carson Hocevar went live on his Twitch channel, and was racing dirt late models on iRacing. So how in the world was he doing this from Daytona? Well, he somehow got a simrig into the team's hauler. If you aren't aware, race cars are put upstairs in big time racing trailers. That upstairs is usually two cars, and then storage all the way to the front. In this photo, you can see the location of the rig itself. This space is often used for storage, maybe a stack of bins for extra parts, or whatever. That rollup door you see to the right, if you go down the little ladder there, you are on the stairs into the lounge at the front of the trailer. Hocevar has the rig, an extra monitor for chat, his webcam, and this is all possible because the team haulers are plugged into a fiber optic network for internet. This setup though was a first. In my NASCAR days, I certainly spent time upstairs in the trailers. It's a good place to go hide, maybe watch a movie, or take a nap while waiting for the race to get started. Hocevar took things a step further though. Loved it.

That's your Daily show for this Monday. Hope you guys have a great day out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!