DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Still no repeat winners with the World of Outlaws, Bristol racing tonight | DIRTRACKR Daily 3/15/21
It is Monday, March 15th, two thousand and twenty one and you are tuned into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today we dive into the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series weekend, update you on the other racing that happened, including an awkward moment between father and son at Port Royal, we've got details on tonight's Bristol opener, and more, so let's jump in.
The World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series season continued over the weekend with races five and six. Friday night the series took on Magnolia Motor Speedway in Mississippi for 30 laps and $10,000 to win. We talked back on Friday about Sheldon Haudenschild needing to step up his game if he wanted to stay in the hunt for the championship, and he did so this weekend in a big way. He had yet to finish top five through the first four nights, but he and his NOS team showed up at Magnolia ready to race. They went second quick in qualifying, finished second in their heat race and the dash, and then bagged the feature win. Haudenschild ran Logan Schuchart down in lap traffic late in the going, taking the lead with six laps left. It was Sheldon's first win of the year, and he became the fifth different winner in five races. Schuchart finished second, Brad Sweet third, Donny Schatz fourth, and Kasey Kahne hard charged from 23rd to finish fifth. Kahne's 18 spot charge was the third highest gain we've seen over the past 207 races. We've seen +21 once, +20 five times, and +18 four times, including Kahne's move on Friday. It was a rough night for two of our other contenders, with points leader Carson Macedo breaking a rear end and finishing 21st, and Aaron Reutzel crashing and finishing 20th. Both drivers tumbled in the standings following the night.
On Saturday night at the Rev in Louisiana, we get an absolute barn burner of a race. Kasey Kahne started on the pole, and we ended up getting five lead changes among three different drivers through the 30 lap feature that went caution free. David Gravel ended up leading the bulk of the laps and getting the win, but he had to fight off Brad Sweet and make some wild moves through lap traffic to do it. Sweet ran Gravel down twice and actually took the lead, but both times Gravel was able to fight back by and stretch away. I do think Gravel was better, but Sweet was very good manuevering through traffic. Gravel had to take a few big chances through the closing laps to get and stay out front. At the end, it was Gravel becoming the sixth different winner through six races, with Sweet second, Donny Schatz third, Logan Schuchart fourth, and Sheldon Haudenschild fifth.
Leaving the weekend, Logan Schuchart is back atop the standings, with Sweet two points back in second. David Gravel is third, Donny Schatz fourth, and Carson Macedo tumbled from the lead back to fifth, 40 points behind. Cory Eliason, Sheldon Haudenschild, Aaron Reutzel, Kasey Kahne, and Jacob Allen round out the top ten. We will have to wait another week to see if Schatz can get career win number 300. He did have another strong weekend though, with runs of fourth and third. Outside of that 15th place finish at Volusia, the night he lost the ignition with the lead, his results this season are 3rd, 4th, 4th, 4th, and 3rd. Schatz, Sweet, and Schuchart all have five top fives in six races. Schuchart is the only driver to finish top ten all six nights so far. We have had three feature wins from second, two from fourth, and one from 10th. 11 heats have been won from the pole, eight from second, and one from third. Both tracks this weekend provided some really fun racing, even if Magnolia needed quite a bit of track work back on Friday night. It's nice to see the Outlaws hit up some new facilities, and the fans came out in support.
The rough Friday nights for both Reutzel and Macedo got me wondering about how often through the season a team can stumble and still be there at the end for the championship, and the answer is not many. Brad Sweet had some uncharacteristic nights in 2020, and yet still finished in the top ten 46 of 54 nights. In 2019 though, he was in the top ten over 90% of races, and Schatz was in the top ten 93% of races in 2018. So that means over the course of a 70 or 75 race season, you can finish outside the top ten maybe five or eight times and still have a shot. The Outlaws are back this Friday and Saturday night for a double header at Cotton Bowl Speedway in Texas.
When I had Logan Wagner on DIRTRACKR Conversations back in December last year, we talked about him racing his dad, Mike, weekly at Port Royal and how it's played out in the past. He mentioned they hadn't had any real disasters. But over the weekend in Port's opener, we saw what can happen, even when you're racing your dad. Just past half way, the Wagners made contact out of turn four, which resulted in father Mike spinning down towards the inside wall and bringing out the caution. Paul McMahan tweeted about how holidays might be awkward going forward for the father and son. Logan ended up 5th, while Mike recovered with his undamaged car to finish 14th. Lance Dewease took the Port Royal win. In other open wheel racing this weekend, Danny Dietrich went 15th to the win at Lincoln Speedway, Freddie Rahmer recovered from a flip at Port Royal to win on Sunday at Williams Grove, JJ Hickle and Dominic Scelzi picked up 360 wins at Keller Auto Speedway, Greg Wilson was a winner with USCS, and Ryan Timmons and Max Adams won USAC CRA features at Kern County. To see more, visit tjslideways.com.
In weekend late model action, Brandon Overton swept both nights at Cochran Motor Speedway, Logan Martin and Cade Dillard grabbed Comp Cams wins at Boothill Speedway, Ricky Thornton Jr. won the Spring 50 at Florence, Tanner English won Clarksville's Toilet Bowl, and GR Smith and Rusty Schlenk won the Southern All Stars features at Southern Raceway. For more on the late model weekend, visit dirtondirt.com.
In weekend modified racing, Stewart Friesen won the small block feature on Friday night at Georgetown, while Matt Sheppard drove from 19th to take the $10,000 win on Saturday in Short Track Super Series action.
Tonight is the opening night of the Bristol Dirt Nationals at Bristol Motor Speedway, with eight divisions rotating through the week. There was open practice over the weekend but racing starts today with registration happening at 10AM and the drivers meeting at 1PM. 602 late models, modifieds, and sportmods are on the card for tonight, with each division running three features, with 30 cars per feature. Action starts on track at 4PM. This will be our first opportunity to actually see racing on the track, as we've only really gotten a bunch of single car runs up to this point. I know a bunch of folks think the racing won't be great, but lets see how this plays out and how they can change and adapt the track conditions through the next month or so. There will be lots of opportunities for improvements. We will also get a chance to see how things go with swapping out divisions through that turn three gate and how quickly they can move the program along. If you can't be at Bristol tonight, and would like to watch, you can stream the action at XR+.
And speaking of tonight's streaming...
There are two items on the streaming schedule today. Besides FloRacing 24/7, the first night of the Bristol Dirt Nationals is live on XR+ featuring 602 late models, modifieds, and sportmods. If you are unfamiliar, a subscription to XR+ costs $34.99 a month. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
If you're looking for some longer form podcasts, check out the two Conversations episodes I did last week with sprint car driver Tony Rost, and World of Outlaws crew chief Mikey Kuemper. I've got another new one to put out later today, this one featuring sprint car and Outlaw kart racer Tanner Holmes. The 17 year old driver from Oregon made his 410 sprint car debut at the Wild Wing Shootout back in January, where he made improvements each night, and finished 13th in the weekend finale. Holmes might be most known though for his sizeable YouTube channel, which features his vlog style videos and new podcast with nearly 43,000 subscribers following along. We talked about his career, including getting started in Outlaw karts, becoming the winningest driver in the history of Red Bluff Outlaws, transitioning to sprint cars, how his YouTube channel has affected his racing, and a lot more. Find that episode later today in this podcast feed and the DIRTRACKR YouTube channel.
That's it for the show today, hope everyone has a good Monday.
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