DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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World of Outlaws dominate Central PA; Sheppard, English, Overton win | DIRTRACKR Daily 5/17/21
It is Monday, May 17th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
It was another tough weekend for the Posse against the Outlaws, we saw some first time All Star winners, and we've got more from a busy dirt racing weekend. Let's jump in.
Coming into the Williams Grove weekend with the World of Outlaws, the Pennsylvania Posse hadn't beat the Outlaws since Lance Dewease won at the Grove back on May 18th, 2019. And following two nights for the Morgan Cup weekend, that is still the last win. With an Outlaw sweep of Williams Grove, the Posse winless streak now sits at 15 Central Pennsylvania races without a win between Williams Grove, Lincoln, and Port Royal. Friday night it was all Carson Macedo in a green to checkered feature. He led from the pole and held off a last corner charge from Lance Dewease to take his first ever Pennsylvania win and third win of 2021. Lance Dewease, Brent Marks, James McFadden, and Aaron Reutzel rounded out the top five. Dewease and Marks were the only Posse drivers to finish in the top ten with Danny Dietrich 12th, Anthony Macri 15th and Freddie Rahmer needing a provisional on the night. On Saturday night, it was a similar story, just with different drivers. Aaron Reutzel started on the pole and led every lap en route to a green to checkered win over Gio Scelzi, Dewease, Macri, and Kerry Madsen. Dewease, Macri, and TJ Stutts were all top ten runners for the PA contingent. Dewease was the only Pennsylvania regular to finish top ten both nights. Clean air and starting up front was the name of the game this weekend, with both pole sitters leading every lap. And that's been kind of what we've come to expect from Williams Grove, especially lately. Five of the past six races at the Grove have seen no lead changes in the feature, with the winner leading every lap. Even on Friday night when Macedo would get held up by lap traffic, Dewease would run him down but couldn't find a way past. The configuration of the track just doesn't allow for a ton of passing, and that's reflected in the stats. Saturday's race featured 35 position changes from start to finish, and Friday had 31. For some comparison, last Wednesday at Lincoln featured 70, and the two races at Eldora featured 81 and 77 respectively. That puts a lot of pressure on a team's performance early in the night with qualifying and heat races setting up chances at dash appearances and good starting positions. Macedo was fifth quick in his group Friday night, and finished second in his heat to earn a dash appearance. Reutzel was 7th in his qualifying group, but went fourth to the win in his heat, which set him up for the dash.
Leaving the weekend, Brad Sweet's points lead is 60 over David Gravel, as Sweet finished outside the top ten both nights, while Gravel was 7th on Friday and 14th on Saturday. Carson Macedo is third, 102 points back, with Aaron Reutzel up to fourth following his win and Sheldon Haudenschild back to fifth. Reutzel is currently the hottest driver with the series, bagging top tens in each of his past five races, and an average finish of fifth. We talked last week about Jason Sides and Mason Daniel missing races because of their issues, but it looks like we might have our first dropoff of the year. Parker Price Miller finished 15th in the B last Wednesday night at Lincoln, but was not at the Grove on Friday and Saturday. Instead he was at Knoxville Saturday night driving Guy Forbrook's number five. PPM was attempting to run the full season with his own team, but it had been a struggle through the first 21 races. After getting a win, five top fives, and 23 top tens in 2020, PPM only had three top tens so far this season with an average finish worse than 16th. He's way down in the standings, and you can only be mired that far back for so long before it wears on both your mind and your finances. We'll see where PPM goes from here. Another driver who's struggles continued this weeked was early season contender Logan Schuchart. He had a parts failure on Friday night in hot laps that led to a big crash and a destroyed race car, and he only managed a 17th place finish in the night's feature. A 13th to 9th run on Saturday was a better result, but he has six finishes of 15th or worse in his last 12 starts and is back to 7th in the standings. The Outlaws had Sunday and today off, but are back in action tomorrow night at Bridgeport Motorsports Park in New Jersey. We'll have more on that on tomorrow's show.
In other national sprint car action this weekend, we had two first time winners with the All Star Circuit of Champions. On Friday night at I-96, Tyler Courtney took over the lead from Ian Madsen on lap 14 and led the final 17 circuits en route to his first ever series win in his rookie season. Madsen finished second, Justin Peck was third, Paul McMahan fourth, and Rico Abreu rounded out the top five. With the way Courtney has been improving with the wing on, it was only a matter of time until he grabbed his first win. He's accomplished a lot in USAC competition, both with the sprint car and midget, and it isn't surprising to see him having success in the winged world. The other standout moment from Friday night was Paul McMahan's wild ride and recovery. Scotty Thiel had an issue into turn one late in the going, hit an infield tire, and went spinning up the track. McMahan had no where to go, got tagged, and twirled off the top off the banking. Somehow, he kept the car running and got it pointed back in the right direction. The recovery saved his night, keeping him in the mix, and he bagged that top five result. Saturday at the Dirt Oval at Route 66, Kyle Reinhardt started on the pole and led every lap to take his first ever All Star win. It's been an up and down season for Reinhardt, with some solid nights and some tough finishes, but Saturday's win was a strong showing for he and the RQM enterprises number 91 team. He had to hold off charges from Cory Eliason and Tyler Courtney, but it got it done in the end. Courtney finished second, Eliason third, Cap Henry fourth, and Bill Balog was fifth. With four races on tap this week, Ian Madsen continues to lead the series points. He has seven straight top eight finishes, and leads all drivers in average finish lately. Tyler Courtney is up to second with three straight top two finishes, while Justin Peck is back to third after an early crash on Saturday left him 24th on the results sheet. Zeb Wise and Hunter Schuerenberg round out the top five. The All Stars race Thursday at Friday at the new Circle Cit Raceway, Saturday at Gas City, and Sunday at Kokomo.
With the World of Outlaws Late Models off and the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series cancelled, dirt late model racing was super fragmented over the weekend. Between local and regional racing though, there was plenty of money to be won. Brandon Sheppard picked up a dominating win in MARS action at Farmer City on Friday, leading all 74 laps to win $10,000 over Bobby Pierce and Tanner English. Over to Fairbury on Saturday with MARS, Tanner English's recent strong run continued. He battled Brian Shirley and Dennis Erb Jr. and held on late for the $15,000 score. It was the second time this month that English has bagged a win paying $10,000 or more. Tyler Erb picked up two wins, taking down a $5000 victory Friday at Moler Raceway Park, and winning $7500 on Saturday in Southern All Star action at Richmond Raceway. And it was a weekend sweep for Brandon Overton with the Ultimate Southeast late models. He won Friday at National Bridge in Virginia, and took home $20,000 on Saturday at Virginia Motor Speedway. Other weekend late model winners included Ricky Thornton Jr. in MLRA action at Davenport, Matt Cosner at Selinsgrove, Hudson O'Neal at Eldora, Josh Rice at Atomic, and Taylor Scheffler at Wilmot. To see more from the late model weekend, check out dirtondirt.com. We do have a busy late model week upcoming. Lucas is in Iowa over the weekend, the Outlaws are headed to Port Royal, and there is a bunch of local and regional action as well. We haven't had a Lucas race in three weeks, back to Josh Rice's win at Florence.
Other weekend open wheel winners from the weekend include Stuart Brubaker at Attica in 410 competition, Briggs Danner swept the USAC east coast weekend, Jadon Rogers was a non-wing winner at Bloomington, Brady Bacon won the BOSS race at Gas City, Brian Brown was a NOSA winner at Jackson, Cole Duncan won at Atomic, Cole Macedo and DJ Foos won at Fremont, Justin Grant took the BOSS show at Lawrenceburg, Maria Cofer was a USAC west coast midget winner at Petaluma, Blake Hahn won the ASCS show at Volunteer, and Justin Henderson took the Sunday show at Huset's. For more on the open wheel weekend, visit tjslideways.com.
And before we close out today, big time shout out to Dominic Scelzi on his performances this weekend in California. He won both the Kings of Thunder 410 show and the Sprint Car Challenge Tour race on Friday night at Keller Auto Speedway, and followed that up with a Kings of Thunder 360 win and the NARC King of the West 410 win on Saturday night at Thunderbowl. It was a complete sweep of the Peter Murphy Classic weekend. It's not often you see a driver dominate a weekend like that between different divisions. He now leads the King of West points standings over Shane Golobic and DJ Netto.
The only thing on the streaming schedule for 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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