DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Davenport fuels the flame, Outlaws get more, Central PA official says it wasn't him | Daily 1-8-2026
A busy show coming up, where we are talking Jonathan Davenport's troll job, a Central PA race director calls me out, and a bunch of series full timer announcements to pick through. Let's go!
It's Thursday, January 8th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Today's Daily show is being supported by our friends at the Wild West Shootout. The six race mini-series takes place January 10th and 11th, 14th, and 16th through 18th. Teams are en route as we speak, and racing starts on Saturday. New this year is the host track, with Central Arizona Raceway near Phoenix ready to welcome the best late model racers in the world, along with a great field of modifieds. If you can't get there over the next week, you can tune in over on FloRacing. Just head to dirtrackr.com/wildwestshootout to watch. The list of confirmed drivers is already about as stacked as you'll find anywhere, with Bobby Pierce, Jonathan Davenport, Hudson O'Neal, Ricky Thornton Jr., Brandon Sheppard, and Brandon Overton just a few of the many expected. There is still time to get tickets though if you want to attend. You can grab those over at wildwestshootout.net. But if you'll be at home, or watching on your phone on the go, the easiest thing to do is hit up dirtrackr.com/wildwestshootout. I'll have links below in the video description as well.
Some excellent trolling today from dirt late model racer Jonathan Davenport as he heads west to race at the Wild West Shootout. He shared to social media earlier in part, quote "First flight of the year. Headed to hopefully the first of many new tracks for 2026. Excited for the new look new sponsor but the same speed we had @ the end of the year" unquote. We talked earlier this week about rumblings that Davenport wasn't returning full time to the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series for 2026, and this felt like maybe some confirmation of that with the mention of quote "many new tracks for 2026." If you are curious, Lucas only added two new tracks to their schedule for this season, so does "many" mean two, I kind of doubt it. FloRacing's Michael Rigsby, who's employer now owns the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, replied to Davenport with a GIF about his post being bait, so take that for what it's worth. JD had 21 wins this past year, including the Dirt Late Model Dream at Eldora, the Firecracker 100, and the Topless 100. His outdoor season ended with four straight wins between World Finals and the Flo series finale at Senoia. He was then sixth and 18th at the Dome. He finished the Lucas season third in the standings. Davenport on a pick and choose schedule again, like he was in 2022, could be big. That season was his magical $2 million year, and as we've talked about on the sprint car side, if you aren't going to join a series, a team needs to win a lot to make up the difference they lose in the guaranteed money. That's certainly a problem that Davenport and the 49 don't have. His other option would be a flip to the World of Outlaws full time, but I think the freedom of pick and choose is more likely. We'll see what ends up happening, but I do like that JD is buying into the speculation.
One driver who is making the opposite decision for 2026 is Tyler Erb. He's a driver that's been pick and choose the last few years, but now he's signed on to chase the World of Outlaws late model series championship this season. If my math is correct, Erb brings the Outlaws to eleven, including the two we talked about yesterday in Tim McCreadie and Bobby Pierce. Erb was full time with Lucas from 2019 to 2023, and before that, ran with the Outlaws in 2017 and 2018. He's got four career Outlaw wins, including one at Mississippi Thunder this past year. It's 21 on the Lucas side. I think making a serious run at the Outlaw title is going to be tough up against Pierce and Hoffman, but Erb could be around that top five in the final standings. That's often where he was in his previous tour seasons. As quickly as these announcements are coming for the Outlaws, I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility they could have close to 20 by Volusia.
With Lucas, it's floating around today in various places that Ricky Thornton Jr. will indeed return to the series this year full time. The 2024 series champ's Facebook page responded to a comment asking if they were staying with Lucas, to which they responded "yes." So RTJ back brings the confirmed Lucas list to six with Devin Moran, Garrett Alberson, Cory Hedgecock, Dan Ebert, and Max Blair all in. I think we can safely add in Brandon Sheppard and Hudson O'Neal as well, and probably Carson Ferguson. Davenport and Brandon Overton remain the two biggest questions. Back to Thornton, in the upcoming schedule that was posted for him yesterday, it only shows one night at the Wild West Shootout. Remember he's driving a car for the Adam family team. But with only Saturday on the schedule, that will mean no back and forth for him with Chili Bowl also next week. He'll run Wild West Shootout Saturday, then fully focus on the Chili Bowl.
Updating the story we talked about yesterday around the shock adjuster rule being added at Williams Grove. New race director Kevin Nouse, who was hired by the track back in early December, tweeted today that he had no involvement in the shock rule being added, and that quote "All of the Central PA tracks decided on that together before I was hired" unquote. He went on to say quote "I certainly don't want anyone to think that I deserve any recognition for a mutual decision that they all made before I got here" unquote. So according to Nouse's comments, we can expect this shock adjuster rule to be added to all area track rules for 410 sprint cars. This news makes it even more interesting to me, given that Lincoln, Williams Grove, and BAPS are all on the World of Outlaws schedule. Even though the adjuster is a small difference, we've now got an entire area's worth of tracks diverging from where they've been previously, which is more aligned with the Outlaws and Knoxville Raceway rules. As for Nouse's tweet, and his mention of this show and contacting him in the future, my mistake for assuming the new race director had something to do with the new rules. Those two things just seemed to line up very well, but I'll take the blame for that. I will certainly make sure to tweet at him in the future when I need clarification about situations at the Grove around rules and officiating.
Make it 14 full timers for the World of Outlaws sprint cars, with Garet Williamson and Fischer Motorsports confirmed back in 2026. That news came today. The 2025 rookie of the year was eighth in the final standings, with seven top fives and 26 top tens in 68 races. His best run of the season was probably his third place finish at Huset's back in June. He started on the pole and led the opening lap before finishing on the podium. Ending up on top of a tough rookie class was a big win though, and he showed improvement from 2024 when they ran more than 60% of the schedule. I'd look for these guys to take a step forward again in year two. With Williamson confirmed, that leaves just Conner Morrell and Chase Randall left as drivers who were on a tour last year with unknown plans. I'm told the Bill Rose six will be full time World of Outlaws again, but the driver situation is still undetermined. And there are a handful of drivers who could still make the jump.
If you want to check out racing this week, don't forget about the Wild West Shootout. Action gets started on Saturday, remember dirtrackr.com/wildwestshootout. There is also racing down under on Clay Per View, plus a number of other early season races. Stop by the streaming schedule at dirtrackr.com/watchtonight for a full daily picture.
That's it for the Daily this week. Thanks as always for tuning in and supporting what we do here.
Hope you guys have a great Thursday out there, we'll see you back here on Sunday!