DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
Dirt racing news, results, discussion, analytics. Sprint cars, late models, modifieds, you name it. From national series, to top local shows. Brought to you five days a week. Email the show at info@dirtrackr.com.
Devin Moran takes $25k Bristol win, big Outlaw weekend for James McFadden | DIRTRACKR Daily 4/12/21
It is Monday, April 12th, two thousand and twenty one and you are tuned into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today we are talking Outlaws in Indiana, late models at Bristol, midgets at Port City and more. Let's jump in.
We got both Indiana shows in over the weekend for the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series after it looked like we might only get one. The weather played nice on Saturday at Haubstadt, and we were treated to a thriller. More on that in a minute. Looking back on the weekend though, there are a couple of big takeaways, and the biggest might be the shakeup in the points. A dismal weekend for Logan Schuchart has shuffled the top five, with Sheldon Haudenschild now second in the standings 92 points behind Brad Sweet, with David Gravel third, Carson Macedo up to fourth, and Logan all the way back to fifth from second. Logan had gone 14 straight races with a top ten finish with the Outlaws, but over the weekend had finishes of 22nd and 19th. On Friday night at Kokomo he was forced to the work area with an issue in the feature and didn't recover, and Saturday night he just didn't have the pace. He was 13th in his qualifying group, finished seventh in the first heat, and was forced to run the night's B-Main. But instead of transferring in through the B, Schuchart pulled off late in that race and needed a provisional to start the night's feature. He then went 25th to 19th in the race. Kokomo was a bit surprising, as Schuchart finished third there in 2020, but Haubstadt hasn't been a great track for the 1S. In his last five starts there, Schuchart has only two top ten finishes. The other driver whose struggles continued was Donny Schatz. Schatz only made it two laps on Friday night at Kokomo before he was out of the race with a trail of fluid from the car, and Saturday night at Haubstadt he had to come from the B main and finished 16th. He now has five straight finishes outside the top ten and is still seeking career win 300. He's now gone 20 races without an Outlaw in.
As for the good stuff, it was a fantastic weekend for James McFadden. On Friday night he took advantage of lap traffic to grab the lead from David Gravel on lap 11 and drove away to the Kokomo win. It was his first win of 2021, and it only took him six starts to find victory lane. Sweet, Justin Peck, Ian Madsen, and Sheldon Haudenschild rounded out the top five. It was a nice recovery for Sheldon, he won the night's B main, and then was hard charger going from 21st to fifth. On Saturday night at Tri-State in Haubstadt, we saw an absolute barn burner of a feature. We had five lead changes among five drivers with the win coming on a last lap pass. Aaron Reutzel, Tyler Courtney, Sheldon Haudenschild, Carson Macedo, and James McFadden all led laps. Sheldon looked to be the class of the field, taking the lead from Courtney on lap 24, but under a yellow on lap 34 for a tipped over Robert Ballou, he took the 17 to the work area with a flat tire. He later ended up 14th. That gave the lead to Carson Macedo, and the battle for the win was on between he and Friday's winner James McFadden. McFadden attempted several sliders in the closing laps, finally taking the lead coming to the white, but Macedo immediately crossed him back over into turn one with the two even making contact on corner entry. The contact broke McFadden's momentum, and Macedo was able to drive away to his second win of 2021. McFadden, Courtney, Hunter Schuerenberg, and Aaron Reutzel rounded out the top five. With the win and the second, McFadden now has four top fives and six top tens in seven starts. He's up to 16th in the standings, and trails Reutzel by 324 points. Performances like this weekend show that he can compete with the Outlaws, and if he'd have been in the states to start, he could have been a serious threat in 2021. With the aforementioned issues for Schuchart, Brad Sweet has extended his points lead to 92 with 13 races complete. A second and seventh on the weekend were very steady for him and the KKR 49. As I've said before, Sweet's competition might be in serious trouble. The Outlaws are back Friday and Saturday night at Lawton in Oklahoma and Devil's Bowl in Texas.
The World of Outlaws Late Model Series was in Bristol this weekend for their turn on the dirt. We've talked a bunch about the struggles for the full time Outlaw guys this season, and that continued on Friday and Sunday, with non-Outlaw regulars winning the two races. On Friday night, Jimmy Owens led the first 16 laps from the pole, but lost a tire under green, which ended his night, and unfortunately took out series points leader Kyle Strickler as well. Owens finished 23rd and Strickler 24th. The issues for Owens handed the lead to Josh Richards in the Bowyer 14, and he led the rest of the way for the $10,000 win. Chris Madden, Brandon Sheppard, Rick Eckert, and Brandon Overton rounded out the top five. Cade Dillard had another rough night, hitting the wall and finishing 22nd, and Ricky Weiss had multiple issues and finished 16th. The late models looked so fast around Bristol, and the speeds definitely contributed to some mechanical problems. Saturday's program at Bristol was lost to rain, so the weekend's finale was run yesterday afternoon. After a heat race win, Ricky Weiss drew the pole for the feature, but his team did need to change a rear end before the 40 lapper got underway. Once green, Weiss was quickly to the lead. He controlled much of the race, but as the laps wound down his car started to go away and Devin Moran was on the move behind him. Coming to 10 laps to go, Moran was able to slip past Weiss for the lead in lap traffic right at the flag stand, and he drove away to the $25,000 win. Weiss held off Ross Bailes for second, with Ricky Thornton Jr. fourth, and Brandon Overton fifth. It was Moran's second Outlaw win of 2021, which ties him for the most this season. We might be seeing Moran rising here, with these Outlaw wins, to go along with his current second place standing with Lucas. Leaving the weekend, a third and a 13th from Brandon Sheppard was good enough to see him take control of the points, with Strickler now second, 20 points back. The driver to pay attention to right now might just be Chris Madden though. He's got three straight top six finishes and his suddenly third in the points, 60 back of Sheppard. He looked strong at Bristol and already has a win this season, which Sheppard can't say. The Outlaws are off now until April 23rd when they take on Richmond Raceway in Kentucky.
The DIRTcar UMP Modifieds joined the Outlaws at Bristol for two of their own races. On Friday night it was David Stremme who led all 20 laps en route to the $5000 win over Kyle Hammer, Ryan Ayers, Nick Hoffman, and Dylan Woodling. And Saturday, Kyle Strickler jumped out of his late model and into his modified and promptly led all 20 laps to take the $10,000 weekend finale. Kyle Hammer, Chris Arnold, Ryan Ayers, and David Reutimann completed the top five. Friday's winner David Stremme was caught up in a crash and finished 24th.
In Oklahoma over the weekend, the USAC Midgets had their weekend affected by weather, but they still got both nights in of the T-Town Midget Showdown at Port City. On Saturday night, points leader Buddy Kofoid started way back in 16th, but that didn't matter. He drove through the field and seized the lead on lap 29, leading the rest of the way for the win over Brian Carber, Thomas Meseraull, Jason McDougal, and Justin Grant. Logan Seavey led the first 27 laps but he had mechanical issues and surrendered the lead to head to the work area. He finished 21st. The other story people were talking about from Saturday was the bad slider from TMez that wiped out Ryan Timms. 12 laps in, with Timms running second, TMez threw a slider into turn three that never had a chance of clearing Timms' 84. The two made big contact with Timms ending up turned over and out of the race. It was a tough way to exit for the youngster racing for Chad Boat. In his post race interview, TMez was not apologetic for the incident, telling Kristy Bemmes "that's midget racing" and that "you just throw sliders, slide or die." The move and the interview certainly generated a wide variety of social media reactions, with folks on both sides. TMez did later apologize on Twitter for the incident. I don't have a problem with the initial contact. TMez races hard, which is why people like him. In this case, he just messed up. But the interview post race was sucky. TMez is also liked because of his honesty in interviews, which I also appreciate, but at least own up to the bad move you made. You threw a wreckless slider at a young driver, trying to take advantage of his inexperience and it ended badly. Just say that and move on. It would have been a non-issue.
Over to Sunday, Tanner Thorson took his new Reinbold-Underwood Motorsports ride to victory, grabbing the lead from Sam Johnson on lap 13 and leading the rest of the way. Justin Grant, Ethan Mitchell, Chris Windom, and Logan Seavey rounded out the top five. Leaving the weekend, Buddy Kofoid is now in sole possession of the points lead, with TMez, Tanner Thorson, Justin Grant, and Chris Windom the rest of the top five. The USAC Midgets are back in a few weeks at Kokomo.
Looking at other weekend winners, Stewart Friesen won the Super DIRTcar Series opener at Can-Am Speedway over Tim Fuller and Larry Wight. Brandon Spithaler won the 410 show at Attica, Matt Westfall was the non-wing winner at Kokomo, Bud Kaeding grabbed a 360 win at Ocean, Ryan Bernal and Mitchell Moles grabbed USAC west coast sprint car and midget wins at Keller Auto Speedway, DJ Netto won the 410 show at Keller, Tim Shaffer won at Lincoln, Justin Sanders at Placerville, and Anthony Macri at Port Royal. Kudos to Danny Dietrich for pulling the double at Lincoln at Port. He finished 4th at Port, packed the trailer and got to Lincoln 10 minutes before his heat. He finished 11th in the feature.
In weekend late model action, Brian Shirley won at Lincoln in the Fall Nationals makeup, Gregg Satterlee won at Selingsrove, and Dustin Mitchell won at Lake View. To see more from the weekend, visit tjslideways.com and dirtondirt.com.
The only thing on the streaming schedule today is FloRacing 24/7. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
That's it for the show today, hope everyone has a good Monday. If you have thoughts about the topics on today's show, leave them in the comments below or tweet at me.
You can find DIRTRACKR Daily where you get podcasts, plus YouTube and Facebook. If you like what I'm doing, please subscribe and leave a review.
You can email the show at info@dirtrackr.com. I do check those every day.
You can follow dirtrackr on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and tiktok. at D I R T R A C K R
And you can checkout the website for all kinds of cool dirt racing stuff by visiting dirtrackr.com.
Thanks for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!