DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Sammy ready to take it outside, Lucas gets another, Kofoid's illness stops Australia tour | Daily 1-15-2026

Sprint car news to talk about today, including Buddy Kofoid's offseason racing being over, Emerson Axsom's comments, and Trophy Cup changes. Plus we'll talk Sammy Swindell vs. Tanner Thorson at the Chili Bowl, Josh Rice chooses a late model national tour, and more. Let's go!

It's Thursday, January 15th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

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I know we didn't do a fresh show on Wednesday, but I figured I needed to get in here today and clear my topic list out a bit because it seems like there is a lot happening and a lot that has happened here in the last couple of days. We'll kick it off with a few sprint car notes first. Buddy Kofoid's offseason plans, now over. We already knew that he wasn't going to race the Chili Bowl this week. Aiden Price actually ran his car last night at the Chili Bowl, obviously driving for Keith Kunz. And the plan was Kofooid, had been in Australia, he was going to come back to the US race Chili Bowl, then go back to Australia. But since returning home from that first Australia trip, we found out obviously he's suffering from some sort of illness. But the Pigdon team he's been racing for in Australia announced here just this morning that Kofoid won't return for the rest of their planned scheduled together, which was going to run through the Classic at the end of January. The Pigdon team says Kofoid will be back with them next year. I guess maybe there were rumors going around that Kofoid was fired or that things had gone sideways between them, but they wanted to make sure that they confirmed in the release that he's going to be back. But he did win twice with the team while he was down under. Kofoid has three weeks now to get healthy before the World of Outlaws season starts on February 4th at Volusia. We obviously don't know officially, what he's suffering from, what the timeline is, but hopefully he'll be ready to go once that Outlaw season gets started here in not too much longer.

Moving on. Did Emerson Axsom tell everyone last night he's going full-time with the World of Outlaws during Chili Bowl action on FloRacing? He was asked after a race about, some of the Daison Pursley hype about that Wednesday night. He replied "I think it's just the High Limit pre-race show guys showing the High Limit driver some love. Maybe we can get an Outlaw official up there to give me some love." Axsom has been rumored for a long time to be planning a national tour sprint car run, and both sides have been mentioned in some of the rumors that I've heard. You have to think both sides will be gunning for him. He'd be a pretty high profile rookie, but could this mean that he's going Outlaws? Obviously nothing official, but interesting comments nonetheless. Axsom ran 50 outlaw races in 2025 that was split between the KPM team and the KCP team. I know the K thing is confusing. He is still looking for his first national tour win. There were even rumblings last year, through that first part of the season into the spring that he could potentially sign with the Outlaws. We obviously know it never came to fruition, he went over to KCP after Gio Scelzi left. He was supposed to finish out the season with them. That didn't happen. We know Cory Eliason then got in that car for the last couple of rounds and then he ended up back in that KPM 27. You would assume, if he's gonna jump to a national tour, he would do that with that team. But towards the end of last year, they were trying to find some crew guys, so that could be a factor in what they decide to do.

Another thing here on the sprint car side, Trophy Cup officially back to being a 410 sprint car event. This has been rumored since Kevin Rudeen took ownership that this event would flip from 360s to 410s for the future. And now we know this is happening in 2026. The Trophy Cup is now included in what they're calling the Three Cup Challenge. That's Trophy Cup, Super Dirt Cup and Gold Cup, Trophy Cup at the Tulare Thunderbowl. Super Dirt Cup up at Skagit and Gold Cup at the Silver Dollar Speedway. That Three Cup Challenge is offering a $50,000 prize pool for drivers that run all three. I'm curious to see what this does for the car count at the Trophy Cup, which has been, like I said, a 360 event in it's most recent iteration, going back quite a few years. And we know Kevin Rudeen, Brad Sweet that they continue to push to try and raise 410 racing out west. We know they obviously bought the NARC 410 series and this is obviously part of that as well. But does this risk alienating the 360 sprint car crowd out west? This was their one big event for them on the calendar out there. So this event, obviously drawing a lot of 360 sprint cars, are they gonna be able to draw that same number of 410s? I doubt it. It may take some time for this event to build back towards having those kind of bigger car counts that we've come to expect from the Trophy Cup, later in the year.

At the Chili Bowl as I record this, we've got six locked in drivers for Saturday's feature and the Thursday program is ongoing. Kyle Larson, Briggs Danner are locked in from night one. Now remember, since they've expanded to the fifth prelim night, they only take two from these prelim features, so you gotta win or finish second to lock yourself in. Blake Hahn, Hank Davis locked in on Tuesday night. Hahn went eight to the win in that one, very impressive drive for him. And then last night it was Emerson Axsom and Daison Pursley. Those two guys, were really the talk of the event for that Wednesday night prelim. Not shocking to see them be the two that lock in here, but it's been a good week so far here for that Swindell SpeedLab team. Axsom in the past had driven for Keith Kunz, this year he slid over and is driving for this kind of expanded Swindell SpeedLab team. We saw Jety Barnes, 14 years old, go nine to three back on Tuesday night getting a podium finish, nearly locking into his first Saturday main event behind Hank Davis and Blake Hahn. The other thing to mention here too, this whole Tanner Thorson versus Sammy Swindell situation, apparently these two had a run in during the Race of Champions on Monday, I went back and watched the replays, I can't see exactly what transpired. Sammy was getting lapped in the late stages of that event, and Thorson was running towards the front. So something happened in there. Thorson afterwards got approached by the one of the Chili Bowl Nationals media folks to talk about what happened, what he was upset about. He made a comment about how Sammy was too old to be racing. And then Sammy replied, he got approached by FloRacing's, Matt Dillner the next day. And Dillner asked Sammy about the stuff with Thorson. Sammy saying he can be a man and come down and talk to me about it. If he thinks I'm too old, we can walk outside. Would you expect any less from Sammy at this point? Sammy though, then going on to have a big heat race crash on Wednesday night. He was done for the rest of the evening. Really brutal crash. Thorson, though looked pretty angry when he was approached. Obviously he was not happy about how that race went. And I'm wondering if we're approaching these guys too quickly for some of these comments. Maybe we let them cool off for a few minutes before we shove a camera in their face. And I feel like we see a lot of that at this event. I. I get why they do it. And I certainly understand, this isn't the only event it happens at, this type of thing where the infield reporter is immediately out on a track looking for comment. It's something we see all over the place, but I feel like sometimes maybe we just need to let these guys cool off a little bit before we start asking questions. I don't know that Tanner Thorson says that same thing if you wait 10 or 15 minutes and come back to talk about him. I don't know that we get those same comments out of them, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but curious what you guys have to say about that.

On the late model side of things, Josh Rice and JRR have made their series choice for this year. They are going Lucas and not World of Outlaws. Not shocking given where this team has been previously with Daulton Wilson. They were a Lucas team for the last couple of seasons. If this is where they're comfortable, not shocking to see them go this direction. And we've seen Josh Rice run well in the past, in Lucas races, doing that pick and choose schedule, running where they could over the last couple of years. Rice's addition should take Lucas, I believe, up to 14 full-timers. That also includes RTJ, Devin Moran, Hudson O'Neal, Garrett Alberson, Carson Ferguson, Max Blair, Freddie Carpenter, Cory Hedgecock, Daniel Hilsabeck, Dan Ebert, Corey Lawler, Kyle Bronson and Brenden Smith. I think are that list of 14 guys right now. So the one we're still waiting on here, Brandon Overton, not sure if or when we will get an announcement from them.

Wild West Shootout last night. They were off Monday, Tuesday. They were back to racing on Wednesday. There was some drama between Bobby Pierce and Hudson O'Neal. Pierce leading O'Neal gets by him. The two come together there on the front straightaway. O'Neal's left front tire gets cut down. Pierce takes the lead for the next restart, but he gets jumped by Ethan Dotson and then Dotson able to drive away from pretty much the entire field over those last few laps. Big win though for Dotson. He hadn't won anywhere since the Outlaw show at Farmer City last April. The event is off today, no racing on Thursday. They're back racing Friday, and they run each night through Sunday.

That's the show for today. If you've watched all the way to this point and you aren't yet subscribed or don't follow DIRTRACKR, hit that button. That means YouTube, Facebook, and the podcast places.

Hope you guys have a great Thursday out there, we'll see you in the next one!