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Tyler Courtney shows out at Eldora, Outlaw points battle tightens | DIRTRACKR Daily 5/10/21
It is Monday, May 10th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
There is a lot to talk about today, including a wild Eldora weekend, World of Outlaws late models in Wisconsin, and more, so let's jump right in.
We had a wild sprint car weekend at Eldora that turned into a four pack of features on Saturday due to weather on Friday night, more on that in a bit. The World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series and USAC National Sprint Cars were in action for the Let's Race Two Weekend with $10,000 going to the winner of each of the four races. For the Outlaws, we got some unexpected results and the points battle is suddenly much tighter at the top. In the Friday feature, which happened on Saturday afternoon, there were issues for several of our top points runners, including leader Brad Sweet. Logan Schuchart suffered a flat near half way after contact with Aaron Reutzel and the wall, and was nearly trapped in the work area. But a quick caution on the restart got him back into the race, and he recovered to finish 9th. That caution that saved Schuchart was a big crash involving Brock Zearfoss, Justin Peck, Jac Haudenschild, and Sweet. Zearfoss and Haud were done for the race, while Peck and Sweet made it back out. Sweet only managed a 14th place finish after the incident and that helped open the door in the standings. Out front, Sheldon Haudenschild led the early going, but on the restart after the big crash, Brent Marks slipped past Sheldon and took over the lead at lap 18. The NOS 17 never got close enough again to challenge Marks, and at the end it was Marks taking the win back behind the wheel of his own number 19. Marks hadn't won an Outlaw show since his National Open win at Williams Grove back in 2019. As for Sheldon, he crossed the line second behind Marks, but was six pounds light at the scales following the race and was DQd. That dropped him from second to 24th in the results, which was a 44 point difference. That could end up being big later in the year. So behind Marks, the rest of the top five was Aaron Reutzel in second, Donny Schatz third, David Gravel fourth, and Carson Macedo in fifth.
In the Saturday night feature, Ian Madsen and Sheldon Haudenschild led early, but Donny Schatz took over at lap eight and looked like he was possibly on his way to win number 300. Inside ten to go, Schatz had a multi-second lead over Haudenschild, but Sheldon got the top side rolling and he slowly reeled the TSR 15 back in. Coming to two to go, Sheldon got by Donny for the lead, and he drove away over the final two laps for his third win of 2021. Logan Schuchart nipped Schatz right at the line for second, with Schatz finishing third, Ian Madsen fourth, and Jacob Allen fifth. Two finishes outside the top ten for Brad Sweet, along with a 4th and a 7th for David Gravel saw the points lead chopped from 90 down to 62 with Eldora now in the books. Carson Macedo, Sheldon Haudeschild, and Aaron Reutzel round out the top five. Even though he didn't get the win, Schatz and his 15 team are rolling right now. Except for a 12th at I-70, Schatz has recent finishes of fifth, second, second, fifth, third and third. He keeps inching closer and closer to that 300th win. As for Sweet, consecutive finishes outside the top ten hasn't happened to him since he went three in a row back in July of 2020 between Wilmot, Terre Haute, and Attica. It shows just how quickly swings can happen in the standings, and that with only 20 races complete, a lot can and will happen still. The Outlaws are back this week for three shows in Pennsylvania, starting Wednesday night at Lincoln.
For the USAC sprint car portion of the Let's Race Two weekend, we saw one dominating performance, and one near photo finish. In the Friday feature early in the day on Saturday, Tyler Courtney was a man on a mission. He started on the pole of the feature, led all 30 laps of a caution free affair, and lapped up to seventh place to take his fifth consecutive win at Eldora Speedway, going back to 2018. Nobody in the race had anything for Sunshine and his 7BC machine. It was one of the more dominating performances we've seen recently in a dirt race. Robert Ballou finished second, Jadon Rogers third, Justin Grant fourth, and Chris Windom was fifth. In the day's second feature, we saw a similar situation play out, with the pole sitter leading all 30 laps en route to the win, but it was a different driver and a different run to the finish. Robert Ballou raced his way out to a multiple second lead, but Courtney, who started seventh, found his way to the runner up spot and reeled Ballou in from multiple seconds back. In the closing laps, Courtney attempted multiple sliders but just couldn't make one stick. The two leaders even made contact at one point as Ballou tried to clear a lap car. At the end of the caution free feature though, Ballou was able to hold Sunshine off right at the line for his first win of 2021, and his first USAC win since 2018. Courtney was second, Windom third, Brady Bacon fourth, and Paul Nienhiser finished fifth to grab his first ever top five with the series. I told you guys back on Friday that Ballou would be one to watch, and he did not let me down, finishing second in the first feature and winning the second. He now has ten straight top ten finishes with USAC and is tied with Justin Grant with an average finish over the previous five races of 4.6. Leaving the Eldora weekend, Brady Bacon now leads Justin Grant by 29 points, with KTJ third, Ballou up to fourth, and Chris Windom fifth.
Before we end the Eldora discussion, I did want to jump back to Tyler Courtney. Even though he's going full time winged racing this year, he didn't miss a bit jumping back into USAC competition this weekend. A win and a second, to go along with two top tens in the wing car with the Outlaws showed his talent and versatility. And don't forget he did all that in a single day, with the weather issues on Friday. That's an incredible feat of race car driving badassery.
As for the weather issues on Friday night, which pushed hot laps and qualifying well into the early morning on Saturday before things were shut down, I know there were a lot of complaints. You had drivers calling out other drivers, people complaining about the track and series decisions and folks upset that racing was pushed back. But in a case like we saw on Friday night, nobody wins, regardless of the decisions made. The track and series are screwed either way. If they run, and the racing sucks and equipment gets tore up, that's bad. If they don't run, people complain that they could have raced. It's a complete no-win. I'd say they did the best they could with what they were faced with. We got some pretty solid racing on Saturday, and that's the best you can ask for.
We got two great nights of racing with the World of Outlaws Late Model Series over the weekend at Mississippi Thunder Speedway in Wisconsin. On Friday night, Brandon Sheppard started on the front row, but was beat out early by pole sitter Tyler Bruening and seventh starting Brent Larson. Bruening led the first six laps, before Larson took over on lap 7. Sheppy stayed close though, and as the leaders worked lap traffic, he slid by Larson to take the lead on lap 23. He held on over the final 18 laps for his first official World of Outlaws win of the season. Larson ended up second for his career best finish. Behind the top two, late cautions for Bruening with eight to go and Ryan Gustin with five to go really shuffled the top five and top ten. Chris Madden and Jimmy Mars were towards the lower end of the top ten, but those two took advantage of the late cautions with Mars finishing third, Cade Dillard fourth, and Madden rounding out the top five. Nights like that where a driver turns a top ten into a top five could pay big dividends later in the season with points. Kyle Strickler earned his first top ten finish since February 12th at Volusia, breaking a streak of 10 straight races outside the top ten. On Saturday night, we had an early battle between our top two in points with Madden and BShepp swapping the lead three times in the first 17 laps, but Madden took over for good on lap 17 and he led the final 43 laps en route to his second win of 2021. Ryan Gustin tried to track him down late, but settled for second, with Sheppard ending up third, Kyle Strickler fourth, and Tim McCreadie in fifth. Cade Dillard definitely seems to be headed back in the right direction with four top tens in his last five races. Out front though, the battle remains tight between Madden and Sheppy. The win and a third for Sheppard saw him push the lead out four more points to 60 now over Smoky. Strickler is back to third, but he's now 120 points back with Bruening and Weiss rounding out the top five. This is definitely turning into a two horse race with 17 races now in the books. The Outlaws are now off until May 21st and 22nd at Port Royal Speedway.
In other weekend late model action, Jonathan Davenport kept his season rolling, sweeping the two nights at Batesville Motor Speedway with the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series. Ryan Unzicker grabbed the MARS win at LaSalle Friday, while Garret Alberson won Saturday. Devin Moran was the Iron Man winner at Atomic Speedway, Jimmy Owens won the Spring Nationals show at Smoky Mountain, and Wil Herrington was the $10,000 crate winner at Needmore. For more on the late model weekend, visit dirtondirt.com.
In weekend open wheel action, Thomas Meseraull swept the midgets and non-wing cars at Gas City, Justin Sanders was yet again a winner in 360 action at Ocean, Tanner Carrick won at Chico, Brooke Tatnell won the IRA show at Cedar Lake, Matt Covington won the ASCS show at I-96, Shane Golobic won at Placerville, and Austin McCarl won the season opener at Huset's on Sunday. For more on the open wheel weekend, visit tjslideways.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.
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