DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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World of Outlaws, USAC, All Star win predictions and previews | DIRTRACKR Daily 4/2/21
It is Friday, April 2nd, two thousand and twenty one and you are tuned into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today on the show we've got previews and win predictions for a lot of the weekend's upcoming open wheel action, including the Outlaws at Pevely, All Stars at Attica, and USAC at Riverside and Lawrenceburg. There is also driver news, today's streaming schedule, and an update on something we're trying later tonight. Let's jump in.
The World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series is in action this weekend for two nights at one of the best tracks on the entire schedule, the Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely, Missouri. The 1/3 mile track that sits just south of St. Louis, down I-55, is a high banked facility that always produces great racing and fast speeds. Kyle Larson won two of the four stops at Pevely in 2020, including setting a new track record during qualifying in May, lapping the track in a time of 9.995 seconds. Sheldon Haudenschild and Brad Sweet won the other races at Pevely last season, and those two drivers are always good when the series comes to town. Those two are also currently the two hottest drivers with the series, winning four of the last five races between the two of them. Sweet's average finish over the last five races is second, and Sheldon's is 2.8. Sweet's fantastic start to 2021, which includes three wins and eight top fives in nine starts is why he currently sits atop the series standings by 32 over Logan Schuchart. David Gravel, Haudenschild, and Donny Schatz round out the top five. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula favors Sweet for the next two nights, and it's not hard to see why. His recent run, along with past wins at Pevely make him an easy pick. Schatz and Sheldon trail him in win chances. Another driver to keep an eye on this weekend is Rico Abreu. He's a past winner at Pevely, and finished top four both nights during the most recent weekend, back in August of 2020. The makeup of the field the next two nights will look a little different with the All Stars kicking of their season in Ohio. That means no Cory Eliason and no Brent Marks for the first time in 2021, and with those drivers currently sitting eighth and ninth in the standings, we will see some movement towards the bottom half of the top ten. Drivers like Kraig Kinser, Gio Scelzi, and Brock Zearfoss will be on the move for sure. If you can't be at Pevely this weekend, DIRTVision will have live streaming coverage with your fast pass.
After nearly two months off since the season opening weekends in Florida, USAC is back in action this weekend with the sprint cars and midgets. The National Midgets are headed to Riverside International Speedway in Arkansas for two nights, tonight and tomorrow, with no points and only cash and bragging rights on the line. The races won't pay points because of the special event status given to the weekend as it's scheduled against the USAC sprint cars at Lawrenceburg. The appearance at Riverside will be the first for the midgets since 2016, and the field will include NASCAR driver Ricky Stenhouse Jr. in a Chad Boat entry. Also expected to compete are Cannon McIntosh, Tyler Thomas, Daison Pursley, Bryant Wiedeman, Brenham Crouch, and Ethan Mitchell. Both nights will pay $3000 to win.
One driver who we won't see at Riverside in a midget, but will contest the remainder of the USAC midget season with a new team is Tanner Thorson. Along with the full USAC sprint car season, Thorson will now pilot a midget for Reinbold Underwood Motorsports as well. Thorson ran the Chili Bowl and the opening midget weekend at Bubba Raceway Park with Dave Mac Motorsports, with plans to run a sizeable midget schedule through 2021, but apparently plans have changed. Thorson will be at Lawrenceburg tomorrow in the sprint car and then will make his season debut in the Reinbold Underwood midget at Port City on April 9th and 10th. Thorson opened the midget season with second and eighth place finishes and currently sits third in the standings.
As for the USAC sprint cars, tomorrow's show at Lawrenceburg is a normal full points race, and it will be the series first spring time trip to the Indiana race track since 2017. The event was lost to mother nature in 2018 and 2019, and a global pandemic in 2020. Chris Windom is the defending spring Lawrenceburg winner. The USAC sprint cars did race at the Burg twice last season, in July and in October. Those races were won by CJ Leary and Brady Bacon. Justin Grant enters the weekend as the series points leader following a win and a second at Bubba Raceway Park back in February. He's trailed by Brady Bacon, Kevin Thomas Jr., Tanner Thorson, and CJ Leary. KTJ was the other winner during the opening Bubba weekend. I'm not going to do win predictions from the formula for the sprint cars, as we don't have a ton of data and races to work with, but I will point to Bacon as a Saturday favorite. Besides being the most recent winner, he has a series best average finish of 3.1 on 3/8 mile tracks lately along with 3 wins on tracks this size. If you can't be at the Burg on Saturday, FloRacing will have live streaming coverage.
We talked back on Wednesday about the 11 full time drivers that are going to contest the full All Star Circuit of Champions season, and that group grew by one yesterday. In a tweet from the series it was announced that Ohio's Cap Henry and his Lane Racing team will join the All Stars as series regulars starting with this weekend's opener at Attica Raceway Park. Henry is no stranger to All Star victory lane, picking up four wins in his last 22 series starts back through 2019. He's also got nine top five and 12 top ten finishes over that span. His wins have come on the traditional Ohio tracks, including Fremont, Attica, and Wayne County. Not normally known to travel outside Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, it will be interesting to see what Henry and that Lane team can do at the other tracks on the schedule this season. We know they can run well in Ohio, but with such a talented group of regulars, they will need to get up to speed quickly at a lot of tracks they wouldn't normally travel to, including in Central Pennsylvania, Indiana, and more.
Looking towards tomorrow at Attica with the All Stars, just like the championship, I think tomorrow's racing is completely up for grabs. This will be the first time we are seeing all the series regulars racing together without the Outlaws mixed in, so it's incredibly difficult to predict who will be fast. Tyler Courtney didn't race at Attica last season and neither did Brent Marks, and Cory Eliason's best finish in the past two years is sixth. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula actually likes Cap Henry tomorrow. In his previous seven All Star starts at Attica, he has a win and four top fives. I think he's as good a pick as anyone else on the roster right now. And don't forget the All Stars will be up against the full contingent of Ohio regulars as well. Atomic and Wayne County are racing, but I'm sure we'll see a lot of Ohio 410s at Attica. If you aren't headed out to Attica tomorrow, don't forget you can watch live on FloRacing.
Looking at the weekend in Pennsylvania, Williams Grove is cancelled for tonight because of cold temperatures and both Port and Lincoln have moved up their programs on Saturday to try and race during warmer parts of the afternoon. Make sure to check with tracks and series before you head out this weekend to be sure of start times.
As I was putting my notes together we got a little breaking news this morning. This week's conversations guest Chance Crum has a new midget ride for 2021. He's joining Rudeen Racing to compete in select USAC and POWRi midget events this year to go along with his sprint car schedule and work commitments. During our chat he hinted at some possible future plans in the works, so it's neat to see that announced today. If you missed that conversation, it's in the podcast feed, and on the website and YouTube channel.
There are ten shows on the streaming schedule today. DIRTVision has the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars from Pevely and the World of Outlaws Late Models from Farmer City. FloRacing has weekly action from Ocean Speedway including 360 sprint cars and IMCA action from Marshalltown Speedway. MAVTV Plus has the POWRi WAR Sprint Cars from Lake Ozark, RacinBoys has ASCS regional and non wing action from Lake Ozark and RPM Speedway, RacinDirt has the USMTS modifieds from Hamilton County, and Speed Sport TV has TOMS modifieds from Heart O' Texas Speedway. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
As you are tuning into broadcasts tonight keep an eye out on the DIRTRACKR social channels and YouTube channel. I'm going to try a little something new and go live on YouTube, maybe around 8PM ET for a little watch party action. I'll have the chat going and we'll be talking about both World of Outlaws races and maybe check out some stuff happening over at Flo. Stop by and check it out if you'd like some additional coverage of the night's events. The whole thing will be a big experiment, so at the very least, you could drop by and see me fall on my face. If it's something people enjoy, maybe we'll do it again in the future, but I want to mess around with it a bit and see what we can do. You can find the YouTube channel by searching DIRTRACKR on YouTube, or visiting youtube.com/dirtrackr.
That's it for the show today, hope everyone has a good Friday and a good weekend. If you have thoughts about the topics on today's show, leave them in the comments below or tweet at me.
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