DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Just your typical Wednesday sprint car STUNNER | Daily 3-12-2025

Kasey Kahne Racing drops a bombshell just hours before the High Limit season starts. Plus we'll update several sprint car stories we've been following, talk Las Vegas entries, and potentially more High Limit breaking news to come. Let's go!

It's Wednesday, March 12th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.

Breaking news today, and this one feels like a bit of a bombshell, especially with the Kubota High Limit racing season set to start tomorrow at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Dirt Track. Here just a little bit ago, Sprint Car Unlimited's Jeremy Elliott reporting that Kasey Kahne Racing has parted ways with long time crew chief Eric Prutzman. As you could have guessed, this was characterized as quote unquote "mutual," although rumblings point to that not being the case. Prutzman had been with KKR since 2017, when he moved over from Tony Stewart Racing to lead Daryn Pittman's team. That partnership lasted just a single year, because for 2018, Prutzman was moved over to Brad Sweet's 49 after Kale Kahne called it a career. This started one of the most successful runs between a driver and crew chief pairing in the history of sprint car racing. Second in the World of Outlaws championship in 2018 with nine wins. And then the break through in 2019. 16 Outlaw victories, and Donny Schatz was toppled by just four points come World Finals. This group obviously went on to win four more World of Outlaws championships through 2023, and they also won the first full season High Limit title in 2024. So six straight national touring championships. Along the way, there were 80 plus wins, lots of crown jewel scores as well, including the Knoxville Nationals and Kings Royal, and Prutzman was twice named World of Outlaws crew chief of the year. For 2025, the initial plan was for Prutzman to scale back his traveling, run the KKR operation as manager, and crew chief for Kasey Kahne in a smaller pick and choose schedule. Tye Wolfgang was bumped up to take over Sweet's team, with that situation creating some buzz after Wolfgang initially committed to crew chiefing over at CJB when he thought he'd be working with Justin Peck. Through the offseason though, things changed for Kahne, and it was decided along the way that a full time return to High Limit was the plan. With the addition of added sponsorship from HendrickCars.com and Karavan Trailers, Kahne was back for year two, not to mention a chance to get back on pavement again with a Rockingham Xfinity start coming up later this year. Through this opening stretch of the season, Kahne has already made six appearances with Prutzman on the wrenches, including all four nights of DIRTcar Nationals, plus the Outlaw races at Talladega and Magnolia. He's made four of six main events, with a best finish of 15th that happened twice. He missed two shows at DCN, and his other finishes were 19th, and 20th. But when the nine car rolls out of the trailer tomorrow night at Las Vegas, I guess it will be on Andrew Bowman to serve as crew chief for the time being. Prutzman told Jeremy he's going to take a few weeks off, and see what happens. But for a guy with that resume, I can't imagine he'll be on the sidelines for very long. There has been talk Prutzman had been the target of other teams, so we'll see if another big time operation can convince him to stay on the road full time. Prutzman is from Pennsylvania, so he could end up working back there again also. Apparently this change came about late on Monday, and things started to get around the community yesterday, which is when I heard about it. I did reach out to KKR through various channels for comment yesterday afternoon, but did not hear anything in response. Stepping back a bit, it's absolutely wild for a team to part ways with a future hall of famer crew chief mere days before the season is set to start. We'll never know the full story here, but man there is never a dull moment in sprint car racing. It's only March, a lot of racing hasn't even gotten started yet, and we are already neck deep in silly season.

Sticking with this breaking news theme, it sounds like there might be more coming around High Limit. The series has called a press conference for 3PM local time in Las Vegas on Thursday. The media alert email reads quote "Join Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet for a major announcement about the High Limit Racing series and what to expect this season including the introduction of sports betting and debut of FloSports DIRT II: A Season with High Limit Presented by NOS Energy Drink." We already knew about the betting and the DIRT premiere, but this quote "major announcement" has me curious. Chase Raudman has teased some things over on his YouTube channel, Chase obviously the High Limit announcer, so we'll see what happens. This isn't something I have any inside details on. If it is indeed big, we could maybe do a live on Thursday, or a bonus Daily show to cover it.

With things like High Limit starting to ramp up, make sure you don't miss out on any of the action. If you need to get a FloRacing subscription for 2025, and you want to help out DIRTRACKR at no additional cost to you, sign up over at dirtrackr.com/floracing. Flo is home to a ton of big dirt racing series and events, and they've also got plenty of paved racing, drag stuff, plus action sports. I've been a paid Flo subscriber since 2020 myself. So dirtrackr.com/floracing, or you can click the link below in the video description, or the FloRacing links at dirtrackr.com.

Updating a few other stories we've been talking about. As expected, the Chad Boat Industries winged sprint car team is official, and they will make their debut with NASCAR Cup Series driver Ty Gibbs in the seat during the High Limit weekend at Las Vegas. The black 84 machine will be adorned by Monster Energy Drink and TRD. Those of course being major partners of Gibbs. Gibbs is also planning more High Limit appearances later this season with Boat. This is a story we've been following here on the Daily show since late in 2024, when Gibbs got into a sprint car for the first time with Bernie Stuebgen in a private test. I don't honestly know how Chad Boat keeps up with everything he's got going on, between running full time midgets with USAC, a non-wing deal this season with Daison Pursley, a ton of micro sprint racing, and now at least a handful of winged starts coming up with Gibbs.

Also, updating the Pastrana, Cleetus, Ridge and Sons deal from yesterday, the team still hasn't revealed any actual details on what's happening, but they did show off the car in full yesterday on social media. Given what we showed on the Daily yesterday, this image shouldn't be a big shock. There is a High Limit entry list floating around, and neither Travis Pastrana nor Cleetus McFarland are on it. There is also no 199 or second Ridge car listed. So that take for what it's worth.

A couple of other things to point out from that entry list, Corey Day is listed in a second Jason Meyers 14, as a teammate to Spencer Bayston. In between pavement starts, we will see Day here and there in a sprint car through this 2025 season. Early on, he's already made a Trans Am appearance at Sebring, and a two ARCA starts between Daytona and Phoenix. He will race the Spire Motorsports truck on Friday at Las Vegas.

Also, it appears confirmed that Daryn Pittman will drive Don Kreitz's 69K on Saturday during the High Limit opener. Christopher Bell will race it Thursday, and we were told early on that he would not drive it during the Saturday portion. Clearly he and JGR wanting Bell to focus on NASCAR. But if Kreitz is going to tow all the way to Las Vegas, he might as well run both nights, so Pittman tabbed to make his first sprint car start of the year. Pittman will make scattered starts in that car through the rest of the season, with Ryan Smith also driving it.

We will shut things down right there for today. Thanks as always for tuning in.

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