DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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A dirt late model story you won't believe | Daily 2-11-2026

You couldn't have made this story up if you tried. Just when you think you've seen just about everything in dirt racing, something new pops up. A few weeks ago, dirt late model racer Michael Page took part in the Sunshine Nationals at Volusia. On the final night of that event, he started 20th in the 604 late model feature, and promptly drove his way to the $10,000 victory. Certainly an entertaining way to bring home some cash and a race win. For some extra context, Page was a crate late model winner at Volusia back in 2021, but in post race inspection, his engine was found to have quote "a valve spring installation height infraction." So instead of taking home $10,000 that day, the winner's check went to Kyle Bronson. My first step of research was Googling Michael Page DQ Volusia, and up popped the Dirt on Dirt page from that event. If you know anything about late models in the southeast, Page is no stranger to penalties and disqualifications. Which made it even more interesting when after the race he won a few weeks ago, his quote in victory lane was "they're not going to take it away this time." And as I was just reading that quote, I'm sure you can start to put the pieces together here, but they indeed did take it away this time. Page has been disqualified from that win, and in typical fashion, we have no idea why. I've sent probably a dozen messages in the last little bit trying to find information, including a message to Crate Racin USA, who sanctioned the event, and have not heard back. None of my other sources had any good intel, but given the timeline, I'm going to float that it was a possible failed tire test. Again, that's just me speculating. Now, this is the part where you get in the comments and say wow Justin, that was a crazy story. But let me stop you right there, because we aren't done yet. Six days later, Page went to Needmore Speedway and was hard charger that night in crate action, going 21st to fifth. But at some point, that result was also vacated, with Page showing as DQ'd. Also, no explanation here either. So two weeks, a win, a fifth, two big charges, but absolutely nothing to show for it with two disqualifications. And a driver getting DQ'd from features two weeks in a row hasn't warranted a press release, a social media post, nothing. Just crickets from both the series and the team. You literally can't make this stuff up. If I hear back on any details, I'll keep you posted.

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News item number one for the day: High Limit has its next title sponsor. Just a few short weeks since Kubota departed at the end of 2025, Interstate Batteries is now on the top of the logo. As we normally hear with these announcements, this is a multi-year partnership — whether that’s two years, three years, five years, who knows. I’m guessing probably two years. Interstate Batteries is now the title sponsor for High Limit. The official series name is Interstate Batteries High Limit Racing. Again, no "sprint cars" in the company name. Interstate Batteries has a long history in motorsports and has dabbled more recently in sprint cars. We’ve seen them on cars for McKenna Haase, Christopher Bell, and Daryn Pittman. I had heard that FloRacing and High Limit were down the road with three or four different companies for this title sponsor slot. There have been quite a few rumors the last couple of weeks about who it was going to be. It’s interesting to see that the final winner wasn’t a brand already in the Kyle Larson, FloRacing, Brad Sweet orbit — kind of what we would have expected. You think about Roto-Rooter or NAPA or one of these companies we see regularly associated with those guys, but this is a new one for them. I think that’s great. The season opener for High Limit is about a month out at this point. I believe we’re looking at March 12th at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Dirt Track, so coming up very quickly.

Next, Jeremy Elliott broke the news today that Brad Sweet is planning a 30- to 40-race sprint car schedule in 2026. We’ve talked about this on the show — we knew this was coming. He’s going to run some races in the No. 49 car owned by Kevin Kozlowski and some races in the No. 94 out of the Silva Motorsports shop. This goes very much in line with what we’d heard before — that Sweet would maybe run some races with Paul Silva. Paul will crew chief both cars. If you don’t know about the 49, it’s owned by Kevin Kozlowski but run by Paul Silva. Brad Sweet will run the King’s Royal and the Knoxville Nationals in Silva cars specifically, and I think that’s important to note here because Kyle Larson is not running the Knoxville Nationals this year due to a NASCAR schedule conflict. The Saturday night finale of the Knoxville Nationals is directly up against the Saturday night Cup Series race at Richmond. Supposedly, Sweet will debut with Silva and the 49 at Merced on February 29th in NARC action. I don’t believe a full schedule is floating around anywhere, but I would imagine you’re going to see Brad run a lot of the NARC shows, a lot of West Coast stuff, and then scatter into national shows like we talked about — the King’s Royal, Knoxville Nationals — when that makes sense for Silva.

Sticking with sprint cars, I’ve had a bunch of people ask me about the Team DGRD, Dennis Gainey situation. If you’re not aware of what I’m talking about, Gainey appears to be at the center of a lawsuit involving his former employer, and the sprint car team Gainey owns is also named as a defendant. I don’t know any more than what’s floating around online, but the gist of it is that Gainey’s former employer believes funds were being diverted from them to the defendants, and that some of that money was used to fund the sprint car team. This is obviously newsworthy because we found out not long ago that Dennis Gainey’s driver, Kaleb Johnson, had departed the team very suddenly before the season started. Gainey then announced he was going to run a much more reduced schedule than what they had initially announced. We assumed that was why Caleb Johnson was leaving — that he wanted to run more races — but this certainly adds a new wrinkle to the story. If you want to dive deeper, I’m sure the state of Alabama would love to sell you access to the court records. You can obtain them at alacourt.com. It’s $9.99 just to get in the door and do a search. It sounds like a bad situation and the type of thing you hope isn’t true. Unfortunately, it’s not the first time something like this has happened in motorsports. Of note as well, the Team DGRD and Dennis Gainey social media accounts have all disappeared. The Team DGRD website appears to still be up, but everything else at this point is gone.

If you want racing this week, make sure to be locked into Dirt Car Nationals in Ocala. Logan Seavey and Jake Swanson picked up the two USAC sprint car victories Monday and Tuesday at Volusia, and they’re now at Ocala through Saturday night. Brandon Overton and Hudson O’Neal were DIRTcar late model winners at Volusia. Tonight is the final DIRTcar-sanctioned late model night, and they’re joined by the Super DIRTcar Series. Thursday things flip over to World of Outlaws sanctioning for the late models, with racing continuing there through Saturday.

We'll shut it down there for today. Quick sidenote, apologies for the lack of content over the last several days. I had plans for multiple daily shows, but ended up sick over the weekend, and have been battling that since. I'm sure you can hear it a bit in my voice still today. I think we're on the other side of it though, so we should hopefully be back to regular uploads and posts.

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