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Cheating and the one driver BARRED from the Chili Bowl this year | Daily 1-6-2026

The World of Outlaws driver announcements keep coming, what happened to the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series, and I've got a bunch of thoughts on cheating and one driver who isn't allowed to race at the Chili Bowl this year. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, January 6th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

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This morning on the DIRTRACKR Facebook page, I made a post about cheating in the sport. We're coming off of a weekend at the Tulsa Shootout where we saw a team DQ'd for doped tires, and another losing a win because of illegal engine and transmission parts. We hear all the time about cheating being rampant in the sport, whether it's traction control, or illegal engines, doped tires, wings that flex too much, and communication devices. But whenever we have someone actually busted for running afoul of the rules, there is always subsequently some measure of folks who will go to their death defending that competitor. This past weekend with the Jett Yantis stuff, I had people in my comments trying to convince me of crooked inspectors, and parts available from manufacturers, and engine repairs. When tires come up dirty, it's always an attack on the lab, or there were chemicals in the track, or a manufacturer problem. When it was droop it was officials who don't know how to measure and uneven surfaces. And in Australia it's a traction control detection device that supposedly blows up engines. Somehow everyone is always guilty and yet everyone is always innocent at the same time. If you haven't seen the videos floating around, I'd suggest the Sprint Car Hub one, there is a new tire testing machine that's been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks. Dennis Fogle has invented a machine that can supposedly shoot a laser at a tire and detect whether it's been chemically altered or not. He's calling it the Rope-A-Doper. He spent the summer testing it at Knoxville on both sprint cars and late models, and it was at the Tulsa Shootout this past weekend. Whether this thing works or not, I have no idea, but there is at least some positive results from it. I did hear rumblings of false positives at the Shootout, and I don't know if it will return for the Chili Bowl or not for additional testing. But if he's able to have success with it, get it dialed, and start getting good results, I can already hear the excuses for why this doesn't work, or it's wrong, or he doesn't know anything about racing, or suddenly everyone is a laser expert. Given what we've seen in recent years inside the expo, teching and cheating will likely again be front and center at the Chili Bowl next week. Two years ago it was illegal comms devices. Last year it was a heightened tire testing process, and deep dives into cars and wiring looking for traction control. And we ended up seeing two drivers DQ'd during the event last year for tire tests, and a third post event. You probably don't remember, but that post event failure was for Sam Johnson's car, and he is not on the Chili Bowl entry list this year. As that penalty announcement said last year, any results received post event would result in drivers not being allowed to race in the 2026 edition, and here we are. It went on to say quote "Sam was made aware of the results, acknowledged and did not dispute the findings of the test" unquote. Johnson had previously ran every Chili Bowl since 2019, bar 2023. We aren't even a week into 2026 and rules and cheating are already at the forefront, and when action starts next week, we've got a driver who isn't allowed to run the event. And my guess is, by the the time things end a week from Saturday, we'll have seen others busted for various infractions.

It's another day, and we've got another full timer announcement from the World of Outlaws late model series. Add Florida driver Eli Johnson to the rookie class, with Trey Mills and Logan Zarin already declared there. According to MyRacePass, Johnson appeared 55 times in 2025, which was really his first ever making any serious super late model starts. He appeared at the Dream and World at Eldora, raced the Dirt Track World Championship, and ran all three nights of World Finals. In between, he also raced with the Summer Nationals, where he had top fives at Shadyhill and Oakshade. He also had a late season top five with the Southern All Stars at Wartburg. This will be a big leap for a driver with so few races at this level, but he told the Outlaws in the announcement that Boom Briggs has been helping him, and that he feels pretty prepared. The first several weeks of the season will be in his home state of Florida, so he'll be on tracks he knows early on. Johnson makes it eight for the Outlaws, joining Cody Overton, Ryan Gustin, Nick Hoffman, Trey Mills, Drake Troutman, Logan Zarin and Tristan Chamberlain.

One series I've had questions on here pretty regularly over the last several weeks since the PRI show, is the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series. Xtreme is owned by World Racing Group, and was first announced back late in 2021. Initially, Xtreme was both the midgets and a sprint car series, but the sprint car series was dropped after just one season. Going back to 2021 when this was all announced, we talked here on the show about this really being a move to fill a void in WRG's offerings, and with DIRTVision. WRG at the time was not in the non-wing game, and this was viewed as a move to fill that gap. But as we saw with the sprint car series, it didn't end up turning into something valuable for the company. What at first looked to be a shot across the bow of USAC, later turned into more cooperation between WRG, USAC, and POWRi, with the sprint car series ending and midget events all being scheduled around each other. The midget series has gone on to run four seasons, with Zach Daum, Jade Avedisian, Cannon McIntosh, and Jacob Denney the four series champions. But around the PRI show, we never got an Xtreme Outlaw Midget schedule. For 2025, it was 29 races, with many scheduled alongside World of Outlaws sprint car and late model events. Some people though have realized that several previous Xtreme events had shown up for 2026 as USAC midget shows, including races at Coles County and Jacksonville. So what's up? Well, I'm told WRG is reevaluating the series and it's future, and is pulling back for this year. The midget tour isn't dead, but instead of a robust schedule across the year, it will be something like six to ten special events scheduled around bigger races. Think about those Pevely races, including the Ironman, and the season ending races at Millbridge that were run in conjunction with World Finals. WRG looking to maximize the events where they get good crowds and good car counts. And we've seen car counts be a problem for Xtreme at various points over it's short life. And what's interesting, is we've never seen some of those stalwart non-wing guys like Justin Grant, Kyle Cummins, Brady Bacon, CJ Leary, Logan Seavey, Emerson Axsom, or Buddy Kofoid make an Xtreme Outlaw start. Obviously there are some conflicts through the year with other USAC shows, but this surprised me a bit. So for those of you who have been wondering, here you go. A smaller schedule, and a potentially uncertain future beyond 2026.

Alright, that's all for today. Thanks for tuning in.

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