DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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High Limit DQ's World of Outlaws points leader David Gravel | Daily 7-17-2025

It was a wild night at Eldora, with some big crashes and some wild racing, but a lot of the talk is centered on the High Limit disqualification of World of Outlaws championship leader David Gravel. We'll get into all of it today and more. Let's go!

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

Today's Daily show is being supported by our friends at ArrowVision. They've got a packed weekend coming up, with three racing events to tune into. It all starts on Friday live from Arrowhead Speedway, with the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series late models joined by Joe Duvall's Funkadelic Dirt Track and Honky Tonk Extravaganza. Both the modified feature and the late model feature pay $5000 to win. There is also b-mods, stock cars, and tuners. Action continues Saturday with the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series shifting over to Batesville Motor Speedway. Billy Moyer continues to lead the championship over Timothy Culp. Also on Saturday, Arrowvision has the Greg Hodnett Memorial live from Riverside International Speedway. $2700 to win for ASCS regional sprint cars, plus 305s, late models, modifieds, and stock cars. All season long, ArrowVision is the streaming home for the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series, the All American Outlaw Modified Series, and Arrowhead Speedway. You can grab an account and tune in over at arrowvision.live.

Well, that was a wild night on Wednesday at Eldora Speedway. Action kicked off for the $100k to win Jokers Jackpot with a split field program last night. Two sets of everything, with points on the line to setup Thursday's action. 62 cars on hand, and plenty of concern over the weather coming into the day. And unfortunately, the rain did show up. They had a brief but very heavy shower that delayed the program, and it also affected track conditions. As we've seen happen at Eldora before when weather gets involved, things got a bit sketchy, and that included a big bump that developed in turn one. That part of the race track was incredibly treacherous, and multiple drivers ended up going for big rides over there, including Gio Scelzi and Justin Peck. Chase Dietz and Darin Naida also with big crashes in features. Running the top on either end was really sketchy, and for several of these guys, hitting that turn one bump wrong caused big crashes. Everyone able to walk away, and super glad that Tyler Courtney was able to get turned down in time with the Peck crash and not make heavier contact than he did. It was a really tough night for quite a few drivers, and several crews will be putting in some long hours to get cars put back together. Your two feature winners on the night were Aaron Reutzel and Corey Day. Day led all 25 laps in the second feature, while Reutzel drove up from fifth, battling James McFadden and Anthony Macri along the way. With all of the points tallied up after night one, the 12 drivers locked into tonight's $100,000 to win feature are Rico Abreu, Kyle Larson, Logan Schuchart, Aaron Reutzel, Corey Day, James McFadden, Tanner Holmes, Carson Macedo, Buddy Kofoid, Tyler Courtney, Anthony Macri, and Bill Balog. Kofoid and Macedo with massive feature runs to from B-Mains to big show lock-ins. Tonight is the big live, Fox Sports 1 night, with the meat of the program set to be shown live on FS1 as a co-broadcast to FloRacing. The broadcast starts at 7PM eastern, and they will absolutely need to run an efficient program tonight to get everything done before the two hour window closes. It's going to be an anxious night for series officials and the FloRacing staffers.

Now, on to what I'm sure a lot of folks will be talking about in the coming days, and that's High Limit officials disqualifying David Gravel and the Big Game 2 team last night after they finished second in feature number two. Officials deemed that the front nose wing on Gravel's car was too far forward in post race checks, and he was subsequently docked from that second place finish. The High Limit rulebook says quote "The maximum distance from the center foil front edge to the front edge of the front axle may not exceed 20 inches." This is word-for-word the same verbiage used in the World of Outlaws rulebook when it comes to nose wings. Afterwards in comments to FloRacing, High Limit's competition director Mike Hess said they use a tool to check those front wings, and it's a regular part of the tech process post race. That tool showed the wing position to be illegal, and Hess said they went further to confirm the measurement using a plumb bob. Both showed the same thing, that the wing was 3/4 of an inch too far forward. Hess said he made sure the wing was secure to the race car, that it wasn't moving around, and that it didn't have any damage. At that point he said quote "that's where my hands are tied." He admitted that he can probably give a little bit of leeway on that measurement, but this one was just too far. As you can imagine, High Limit disqualifying the World of Outlaws points leader is going to cause a stir. The commentary seems to be pretty split, with equal crticism towards High Limit for the call, and also the Gravel haters saying this confirms he's a regular cheater. It's certainly not a good look for Gravel and Jacobs, especially during a time where they've been under the microscope because of their success. And Hess definitely didn't look like he was taking any pleasure in having to make the decision. This move though will continue to fuel the split amongst a lot of the fans and the bad blood. As for what happens next, the DQ puts Gravel 36th in event points, which would put him at the tail of a B-Main. I believe there are two, 12 car Bs, with the top six in each transferring, so it's not going to be an impossible task for Gravel to drive through and get into the feature. This isn't a 24 car B taking the top four kinda situation. It will be a nearly impossible task to win the main event though from the back of a B. After seeing the DQ and where he was in points, my first thought was whether or not they would even roll the car out of the trailer for tonight. I haven't seen any public comment out of Gravel or the team in the hours since the decision came down, so we'll have to wait and see. Knowing the comments we've gotten out of crew chief Cody Jacobs in the past towards High Limit, I wouldn't be shocked if they didn't race. They also may want to try and stick it to everyone and make something happen. Either way, there is going to continue being plenty to talk about here.

In other racing action last night, Matt Sheppard topped Alex Yankowski and Stewart Friesen at Afton Motorsports Park with the Short Track Super Series. The modifieds are back July 21st at Airborne Park. And at Huset's as a prelude to the Silver Dollar Nationals, Tad Pospisil won the $6000 late model feature, topping Blair Nothdurft.

Looking ahead to the dirt racing weekend to come, besides three more sprint car nights at Eldora, Lucas kicks things off today for the Silver Dollar Nationals. $10,000 to win each of the next two nights, with Saturday paying $75,000 to win. This one should draw all the big names from the two late model national tours. You've also got the Southern Nationals continuing, Iron Man, I mentioned Comp Cams earlier, MARS, and more. The sprint car focus will very much be on Eldora, but there is also NARC at Ocean, MSTS and NOSA in action, weekly racing on Central PA, and more there. You shouldn't have any problem finding racing to tune into.

Before we close out, a quick update on Kalib Henry, who was injured the other night at Attica Raceway Park. His dad Mike shared to social media yesterday that Kalib doesn't have any broken bones, but is in a lot of pain. That seems to be centered on his lower back. Doctors are planning additional scans on Kalib to find the source of the back pain and ensure there are no head injuries. He said they have been able to talk with Kalib, and that he's also very sore and bruised. We are definitely hoping for a speedy recovery for Henry, that was a nasty crash.

I'm going to call it good there for the week. Thanks as always for the support, and we did cross over 44,000 subscribers on YouTube. That's very cool.

Hope you guys have a great Thursday out there, enjoy the dirt racing weekend, and we'll see you back here on Sunday!