DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Davenport's out, so how bad is this for the Lucas series and FloRacing? | Daily 1-11-2026

Jonathan Davenport decides his 2026 schedule. So just how bad is this for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt series? We'll discuss, plus heavy hitters struggle at the Wild West Shootout, the Chili Bowl starts and more. Let's go.

It's Sunday, January 11th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

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Getting rolling on this Sunday. I thought maybe Jonathan Davenport would let everyone sweat it out for a few days or a few weeks, but the announcement came on Friday that he and the Lance Landers' owned 49 team will indeed not be running a national tour this year and instead going pick and choose. No Lucas, no World of Outlaws, which the last time they did something like this was 2022. If you're curious, JD said many times in recent years, even while being on a tour that he doesn't like being required to show up places. I specifically remember a Michael Rigsby interview from a year or two ago, literally at the Wild West Shootout where he said this, but I think a lot of his sponsor stuff has kept him tied to the series here in the last couple of years. And in that release, JD saying, quote "not saying I won't ever run for points again in my career, but it's just not in the cards for this year." He said he wants to be around for some of his son's events specifically mentioned fishing tournaments and obviously this gives them the flexibility to do what they want, go when they want, if they wanna take a weekend off, which if you wanna look at some of the eldora stuff, some of the crown jewels, it's not been uncommon in the past when JD's done a pick and choose for him to take some of those weekends ahead of time off, give his guys time to really polish on those cars before they go. And the release does mention that promoters can reach out to schedule Davenport. So that full schedule for 2026 is not decided. And it's interesting that this is actually in there. This is something I feel like we don't see publicly, but it feels like JD maybe looking for some of that appearance money. He can make up some of that lost guaranteed money that he's gonna get for running with a series. But it says very clearly in there that if tracks would like JD to show up at their track this season, that they can reach out to him and ask. His website schedule currently only has the Wild West Shootout on it. So beyond that, we have no idea where Davenport's gonna go. I would assume some measure of speedweeks races between the Lucas stuff and the Outlaw stuff. But we'll just kinda have to wait and see. And looking ahead to the season, I would still expect 80 plus races for JD. The last time that he did this in 2022, they were right around that 80, 81 82 races. And you're gonna see him at all the big crown jewel stuff, all the big money races for sure. And then beyond that, just wherever, they feel like they're good. Maybe he wants to check some new races out. And there's even mention in there about that he would quote might be even open to trying a different genre of racing. So what does that mean for Davenport? We've seen him run NASCAR before. But does that mean sprint cars, does that mean modifieds? Does that mean more pavement stuff? I think we'll just have to wait and see what exactly that means or how that works. We know in the past when he's run the NASCAR stuff, he did that with Kaulig. Kaulig has this truck series program now tied to ram. They're gonna have an all-star truck. Could JD maybe be pulled back to run a pavement truck race? I think we'll just kinda have to wait and see. But there's definitely some interesting stuff in there.

Then moving on, what does this mean for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt series? I've seen a lot of commentary and social media posts about, what the future, kind of prospects are for Lucas when you lose one of your big guys. But I definitely think it's a loss, but I don't think it's indicative of some larger trend against Lucas. Davenport doing this is something we've seen him do before. So I don't think this is some sort of trend where all of a sudden we're gonna see a bunch of big name guys drop off the Lucas tour. The YouTuber, John Trent, he sent me his list of Lucas full-timers. I haven't done a great job of keeping up. There's been so many different social posts and videos and things around about, where guys have mentioned where, where they're gonna race for next year. But he's done a really nice job of kind of keeping track of all of that. He's got 13 guys right now, so you're still looking at RTJ and Hudson O'Neal and Devin Moran and Brandon Sheppard, Garrett Albertson. That's a really nice field of guys. The only really remaining big question mark is Brandon Overton. He's not the Wild West Shootout this week. He mentioned that to Dirt On Dirt. They put out a Facebook post about it, and then there was here just a Facebook video within the last 24 hours of Overton testing at Volusia. They got a couple of cars down there, what looks to be a couple of new Longhorn chassis. So wouldn't be shocked, obviously, to see him down at the World of Outlaws opener, here in what is, 10 days to couple of weeks here. But like I said, we've seen JD do this before. Not super surprising. He's still gonna be at a lot of the Lucas races, so I don't necessarily think that this is some crazy trend that we're gonna start seeing guys, either going more pick and choose or, flipping to the outlaws. I just think this is Jonathan Davenport specific.

Talking about the Wild West shootout, it opened last night at the Central Arizona Raceway. Obviously this is a venue change for that event. 46 late models on hand. Very nice field. The season kind of is officially starting now. We can really say that, with the Chili Bowl, with the Wild West shootout happening. The win last night went to Ricky Thornton Jr. He led early, got passed in the middle of the race by Hudson O'Neal, and then came back to win it. The question now will be what Ricky Thornton Jr. does the rest of the week. The initial announcement was that he was only going to run this first night and then focus on Chili Bowl for the rest of the week. But now with this win, he was talking about it, the Flo broadcast was talking about it, we had car owner Joe Adam talking about it, that maybe RTJ could come back next week, maybe run the finale on Sunday. But I really feel like this was a very interesting look at RTJ's talent to get in a car that's not his normal team, that he doesn't have all of his normal crew guys and he still goes out and wins. And I know it was a Longhorn and a lot of things are familiar there, but really really strong performance there from RTJ. And the Adam family team, they said they're gonna work on bringing him back. I don't know if that means commercial flights or private flights to get him back from the Chili Bowl on Saturday night. O'Neal ended up running second after leading those laps. He's driving the Kevin Rumley car. Cade Dillard was third, Gustin fourth after charging up from 18th. Watching Gustin, I feel was really interesting. We had a lot of tire issues last night, but towards the end of that you could see Gustin really driving as straight as he could through the corners to try to save that right rear tire over the final few laps, but still able to get a fourth place finish. The other thing that kind of stuck out to me last night was some of the heavy hitters that didn't run so well. Bobby Pierce started 13th, finished 13th. He actually pulled in late. He's dominated this event here in the past, but obviously at a completely different racetrack. We saw the same thing from Jonathan Davenport. He was 25th, pulled in early. Brandon Sheppard, also a non-factor out early. Sheppard's in the family car, not the Rocket house car this week. We won't see the house car until Volusia. At the Wild West shootout they race again today, then they take a couple of days off, they race again, they take a couple more days off. So just keep an eye on that schedule. It's gonna be weird here for the next kind of week or so. Cade Dillard the night's a mod winner. Blake Adams won the limited mod feature on the night.

Flipping over to Chili Bowl. Practice ongoing here all day today. FloRacing's got the stream up. There's gonna, I think, be some commentary throughout the day. When I've had it up here this morning it's just the cars going around on track with a natural sound. But over 400 entries for the first time ever at the Chili Bowl. They're at 404 at last check. What they're gonna do today, they run everybody this morning, they're gonna rework the track around lunchtime and then they flip the order and they do it all over again in the afternoon. So everybody basically gets two short practice sessions. You can watch it live on Flo all day. If you need a Flo subscription, head over to dirtrackr.com/floracing. Get the Chili Bowl, the Wild West shootout and be ready to go for for the season. Racing at the Chili Bowl starts on Monday night, that's gonna be the first prelim night and the Race of Champions night, and then it's prelim nights all through the rest of the week. So a lot of stuff here to come still from Tulsa.

Finally today, this is the last Daily show, like you've known that we've been doing for the last, several years. And even today's show is a bit of a departure in the way I prepared for it and recorded. So if it sounds different, that's why. We're not going anywhere, the show's not dead, everything is going to continue. After six years we've done 1,509 daily shows. There's been a ton of interviews posted in there as well. Right now there's 2300 plus videos posted to YouTube from this channel, but I wanna try to experiment some more. I wanna try some more things. I wanna challenge myself a bit. So going forward shows might look or sound different, but just understand I'm pushing to be better. I'd like to have a little bit more fun, not that I'm not having fun, but, just the ability to be more creative, try some more stuff. Some videos may suck if I try something that doesn't work, I'm fully prepared for that. And I think, obviously we know some of the sponsorship stuff that's happened here with the show in the last couple of weeks. This is gonna allow me to maybe go off the rails a little bit and be okay with it. So understand things may be a bit more fluid as well with the schedule. There's gonna be some typical videos, but maybe we throw in some more live streams. There may be some days off, maybe we don't do five days a week every week. Maybe we pick and choose and throw some live streams in, in between. There might be some more interviews. I haven't figured all of that stuff out just yet, but just we're still going to keep going. Just understand and honestly, I could have continued doing it the way I've been doing it. We've got a format here that works. I think you guys like it, but, I just want to keep pushing, keep trying to be better and, maybe evolve things a little bit and make it a little bit more sustainable as well. I just wanted to say something today in case you notice things look different. Nothing bad has happened. Everything is good. I wanna change it up a little bit, so I appreciate the support. I appreciate you guys tuning in. Everything you guys continue to do to support the show, whether that's just tuning in every day, leaving comments, the shares, some of you actually, give me money, which is great as well.That's obviously much appreciated. But. Just wanna keep you up to date on what's going on and why things may be a little bit different.

So hope you guys have a great rest of your Sunday out there. We will see you in the next one.