DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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The Sprint Car Council is back, and they immediately say no; Lucas scraps Chase; Lynch picks tour | Daily 12-14-2025

Lucas axes their championship playoff format, and everyone rejoices. Sye Lynch picks his sprint car series. And a sprint car council is created, well for the second time anyway, and they immediately rule on a key safety situation. All that and more. Let's go!

It's Sunday, December 14th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily presented by Kubota Genuine Parts.

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The PRI show for 2025 is done and dusted, and even though most of the big news landed on Thursday, and we did a bonus Daily show Friday to cover even more, there were still things that happened between then and today. After business hours on Friday night, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series had their season-ending banquet where they crowned Devin Moran series champion. In remarks at that banquet, Lucas series director Rick Schwallie revealed the chase for the championship is no more. For 2026, Lucas will return to a traditional season-long points format to crown their next champ. This ends a three-year run for the playoff format that initially got announced at the PRI show back in 2022. The first year, in 2023, Hudson O'Neal was crowned in a winner take all scenario at the final race at Eldora. And then for 2024 and 2025, the playoffs were expanded to include multiple races to decide the championship between the final four drivers. It created very compelling racing down the stretch, pitting some of the sport's best against each other, but it likely resulted in Ricky Thornton Jr. not winning two titles he would have had in hand. And I think that's where all of this goes sideways for a lot of fans. One driver dominates a season, but doesn't win the title because they had one bad race, or a couple of bad races at the wrong time. It's an odd thing to think about, given the same possibilities would be true for stick and ball sports, but it's just accepted there that sometimes the best season-long team doesn't win. For motorsports though, that's unacceptable. It sounds like the change was a welcome one among teams and drivers given some of the reporting by FloRacing's Kyle McFadden, and I don't think I saw a single negative comment on social media. It seemed like the fans overwhelmingly approved of them reverting back. Given what we've seen the past few years, and recent comments by World Racing Group CEO Brian Carter, I'd put some money down that we don't ever see a playoff format in dirt racing again. I thought it created some really fun drama and storylines, but apparently folks didn't appreciate it. RIP dirt racing playoffs.

The other news that came out Friday was sprint car driver Sye Lynch confirming he'd be back on tour with High Limit in 2026. Lynch was a rookie on tour in 2025, and recently picked up veteran wrench Heath Moyle to join his team. Lynch was ninth in driver points and 11th in owner points, with three top fives and 10 top tens in 49 races. He is still searching for his first ever national tour win, but did have a couple of podium finishes this year. With this new look crew and already having that first year done, I'd expect Lynch to take a reasonable step forward in 2026. To secure a High Limit franchise for 2028, he needs to finish in the top eight each of the next two years. I think it's going to be tough, but I don't believe his odds are zero. I would not be surprised to see him break through though for that first win. We know there are a few tracks he goes really well at, and a win or two is not out of the question. Lynch's confirmation brings High Limit to 13 full timers. He joins Tanner Thorson, Aaron Reutzel, Justin Peck, Gio Scelzi, Tanner Holmes, Brent Marks, Daison Pursley, Brenham Crouch, Tyler Courtney, Kerry Madsen, Danny Sams, and series champ Rico Abreu. Depending on what Chase Randall ends up doing, the other one who I think could be in play here is Emerson Axsom. We also don't yet have confirmation for Garet Williamson and the Fischer team. I'd expect resolution on some of this fairly soon. Although the High Limit calendar doesn't start until March next year.

An announcement that caught me off guard this weekend was the Sprint Car Council one that came out yesterday. An @sprintcouncil handle on X slash Twitter posted a release with the headline quote "Officials Across Sprint Car Racing Form The National Sprint Car Council" unquote. It reminded me very much of a headline that came out in November of 2018 that read quote "Constituents Announce Formation of Sprint Car Council" unquote. I'm not sure how you form something that was supposedly already formed, but I'm told this time around things are being taken a bit more serious. The council will be made up of Tom Devitt from the World of Outlaws and WRG plus Cody Cordell, High Limit's Mike Hess, Pennsylvania promoter Scott Gobrecht, USAC's Tyler Ransbottom, Knoxville's John McCoy, Eldora's Levi Jones, and NARC's Scott Woodhouse. The release says quote "The intent and purpose of the council is to improve communication among all constituents in the sprint car industry. The council will work together, focusing on car and track safety initiatives, improving consistency in rules, maintaining costs, enforcing suspensions across all tracks and series, and advancing the holistic improvement of sprint car racing for drivers, team owners, series, tracks and fans." Oh wait, sorry, that was from the 2018 release. This one says "The purpose of the NSCC is to evaluate and responsibly address the needs of sprint car teams, sanctioning bodies, tracks, and manufacturers, guiding sprint car racing toward enhanced standards and sound regulations that protect and strengthen the sport as a whole" unquote. I guess the one big difference with this new Sprint Car Council versus the old Sprint Car Council, is that before it said they would meet four times a year, and this one says they're meeting once a month. I'm being a bit snarky here because of the way this is being presented as something new. It's not like we can't just Google the last time we read this announcement. I'd also like to see more folks involved beyond just what's listed here. The 2018 iteration included a couple of drivers, some crew guys, and additional tracks and sanctions. I know things get murkier with additional people and cooks in the kitchen, but I'd like there to be more imput, not less. Hopefully this version can actually enact meaningful change, and not be something that gets announced and then never heard of again... Or at least heard of until seven years down the road. Reactions seem to be a bit mixed, with some hesitantly hoping good things come out of this. We need real change and improvement across the sport, and we can't afford for this iteration of the Sprint Car Council to do what the last one did, or didn't do.

And on that note, not long after the council was announced, about three hours to be exact, they posted their first notice. Given some of the injuries we've seen, belts and seats have been under scrutiny, and some have advocated for a different belt mounting philosophy. Currently, all the major rulebooks require belts to be mounted to the chassis itself, and in the Outlaw rulebook, under section 11 for Personal Safety Equipment, subsection B for seat belts and restraint systems, item B, it says clearly quote "The seat belts must be mounted to the chassis per the manufacturer's instructions. No belts to seat installation will be allowed" unquote. Back at World Finals though, seat manufacturer ButlerBuilt had a display for one of these seat mounted belt setups. Their "All-Belts to Seat Sprint ER1" was featured prominently in their midway setup, and a post to their Facebook page said quote "pending World of Outlaw approval." In a notice posted by the council yesterday at 2PM eastern, it was reiterated that these belt mounting systems are still not approved. The council said no notice or submission for approval prior to ButlerBuilt displaying it was provided. And after discussing it with council members and safety engineers from other forms of motorsport, the quote "unanimous conclusion, at this time, is there is not enough data to safely allow ABTS in open wheel front engine race cars" unquote. The notice goes on to talk about the impact data recording devices that started to pop up around World of Outlaws events, we did a Daily episode on those a while back. And the notice ends with the following, quote "After gathering IDR data during the 2026 racing season, on or about October 1, 2026, we will analyze the data we have collected as it relates to the ABTS systems. We will evaluate and decide on a path forward" unquote.

In some non-wing ride news, Louisiana driver Chelby Hinton will be full time with the USAC National Sprint Cars in 2026. He's joining Scott Benic's 2B team to chase rookie of the year. Hinton maid his first 10 appearances with USAC in 2025, scattering starts across the year. He made eight of 10 features, with a best finish of 14th, which came at Kokomo in August. The Benic 2B was driven for most of 2025 by Kale Drake, but he announced his departure back in September. Over the final few races, the 2B was driven by Mario Clouser, Ricky Lewis, Keith Sheffer, and Wesley Smith. The USAC season starts February 9th next year at Volusia.

That's all for today. I was a bit worried there might not be much to talk about this coming week as we get closer to the Christmas holiday, but there is a lot going on and plenty more to react to for things that came out of PRI and the last few days. So don't go anywhere, we'll have full shows all week. If you're a Patreon or YouTube channel member, I posted yesterday looking for your thoughts, possible topics, and questions, so drop by and leave a comment.

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