DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Tim McCreadie leads Lucas to Iowa, Strickler teams with Bloomquist | DIRTRACKR Daily 5/21/21
It is Friday, May 21st, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today we've got driver news, rainouts, race results, weekend previews, the streaming schedule, website notes, and a bunch more. It's a busy Friday, so let's get going.
The All Stars were in action last night for the first ever race at the new Circle City Raceway near Indianapolis, and I'd say the night was a smashing success. There were some concerns about how the track would race early in the day, but come feature time it had widened out nicely, with guys running right along the bottom, and some right on the fence. In the end, Tyler Courtney fought off late challenges and slider attempts from Carson Short to bag his second win in his past three starts. Coming to the white flag, Short threw a slider at Sunshine into turn three, and somehow off turn four Courtney was able to thread the needle between Short and the wall to keep the lead. It ended up being the race winning move. Short finished second, pole sitter Hunter Schuerenberg was third, Zeb Wise drove up from 13th to finish fourth, and Bill Balog was fifth. It was Courtney's fourth straight top two finish. A 10th for Ian Madsen kept his top ten streak alive at now eight straight races, and he maintains the points lead by 14 over Courtney. Schuerenberg also seems to have found his groove lately, as he's now finished in the top eight in five straight races. Also, a hat tip to Clinton Boyles for this 23rd to 11th run in his first ever All Star feature appearance. The series returns to Circle City tonight, before heading to Gas City I-69 on Saturday and Kokomo on Sunday. With his win last night boosting him, Courtney is favored by the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula for tonight. His recent run of strong finishes and no previous races at either track in the database keep him as the favorite through the weekend as well. If you aren't nearby to come out to the track, watch the All Stars live on FloRacing.
It's been a three week gap, but we finally get to see the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series in action this weekend. They take on 300 Raceway tonight, and 34 Raceway tomorrow, both in Iowa. Josh Rice is the most recent series winner, back on May 1st at Florence, and Tim McCreadie enters the weekend with the orange spoiler as the series points leader. He's trailed by Hudson O'Neal and Jonathan Davenport. Both McCreadie and Davenport have been hot lately, with Davenport racking up six straight top six finishes, including two wins, and McCreadie on a streak of ten straight top ten results, including a win at Hagerstown. Davenport's recent average finish is 2.4, while McCreadie's is 3.8. If Davenport stays in it, this could turn into a really fun battle between those two for the championship. O'Neal actually leads the full timers in average finish for the year, but the big question for him will be if he can keep it up all season. He's tied for the series lead in wins and top tens, but I want to see how he does into the summer before we really start talking about him as a championship threat. He's definitely taken big steps forward in 2021, but he doesn't have the experience of the other two. Josh Richards is the most recent series winner at 300, back in July of 2020, while O'Neal took the last Lucas win at 34 Raceway, back on May 16th, 2019. You can be sure the fields will be strong both nights, with the midwest late model contigent always showing out, plus there is nice money up for grabs. Tonight pays $12,000 to win, and tomorrow is $15,000 to win. Both races will be streamed live on MAVTV Plus.
A busy stretch of racing for the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series continues tonight and tomorrow in Ohio. When they leave Sharon on Saturday, they will have raced eight times in 15 days. Tonight the series takes on Attica Raceway Park for $10,000 to win, with another $10k on the line Saturday at Sharon Speedway. The points battle has tightened in recent races, with both David Gravel and Carson Macedo in striking range of leader Brad Sweet. We've had different winners in each of the last six races, with Logan Schuchart, Aaron Reutzel, Carson Macedo, Brad Sweet, and Sheldon Haudenschild all bagging victories. The last two appearances for the Outlaws at Attica were won by Kyle Larson and Donny Schatz, while the series hasn't been to Sharon since 2007. The race that night was won by Steve Kinser. Schatz is favored by the prediction formula for the next two nights, but Brent Marks actually enters the weekend as the hottest driver with the series. His average finish over the past five races is 4.6, and he's got the recent win at Eldora and the near win at Lincoln boosting his confidence. We should see strong challengers for the Outlaws all weekend as the Ohio contingent doesn't mess around, and besides Marks, we know Anthony Macri is leaving Pennsylvania to join the Outlaws. Your surprising stat of the day, is that Donny Schatz is second in laps led this season with the series at 89, but has yet to win. He's the only driver in the top eight in laps led that hasn't won. If you can't be at Attica and Ohio, watch live on DIRTVision.
After recently parting ways with PCC Motorsports, Kyle Strickler's late model season looks to be back on track. It came out yesterday that he will be at Port Royal this weekend for the two Outlaw shows driving Scott Bloomquist's car. Strickler is running the weekend for the Team Zero camp, with Bloomquist coming along to crew chief and help get the High Side Tickler up to speed quickly in a new chassis. According to Dirt on Dirt, Strickler is utilizing all of SBR's equipment, including their truck and trailer, but does have his own engine under the hood. Going forward, Strickler will operate his own team, but switch from Longhorn Chassis to Team Zero chassis for the remainder of the 2021 season. I'm not sure I would have predicted this move, but it's great to see that Strickler's season will continue thanks to help from his sponsors and Bloomquist. Bloomer hasn't raced since dropping off the Outlaw tour back in April, but does still have plenty of races on his schedule for the year. Strickler still sits third in the Outlaw points behind Brandon Sheppard and Chris Madden and is the leading rookie. He picked up a fourth and a seventh last time out at Mississippi Thunder Speedway, and if he can somehow continue that momentum with SBR he could stay in this championship fight.
As for the Outlaws as a whole, the two days at Port Royal are their first races in a few weeks. Tonight's Huey Wilcoxon Memorial pays $10,000 to win, while tomorrow's Billy Vacek Memorial pays $15,000 to win. Limited late models and wingless sportsman are on the card for tonight, while 410 sprint cars join the series tomorrow. As I just mentioned, BShepp continues to lead the standings over Chris Madden, and Kyle Strickler, with Tyler Bruening and Ricky Weiss completing the top five. Sheppard and Madden split the most recent weekend at Mississippi Thunder and so far it's looked like these two might be the ones to watch all season for the title. The win on May 7th for Sheppard was his first official victory of the season, and his competition might be in trouble going forward. He went to Farmer City last weekend in his own B5 and dominated the 74 lap main event for another $10,000 score, and it looks like he might be shaking off that early season sluggishness. The Outlaws only have one appearance at Port Royal in recent seasons, back in 2019, which was won by Mason Zeigler. But the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula favors Sheppard for the two nights. 12 of his 34 wins over the last 98 races have come on 1/2 mile race tracks, and his average finish is about fourth. On the flip side, while he does have a 1/2 mile win, Chris Madden's 1/2 mile average finish is one of his lowest, at just a tick under 9.5. He'll need to rectify that to keep pace with Sheppy. Back in 2019, Port Royal attracted 41 cars, and with nice money up for grabs both nights, I wouldn't expect anything different this weekend. If you can't be at Port, watch live all weekend on DIRTVision.
We were supposed to get two USAC sprint car races this weekend at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas, but rain all week and more forecasted has forced track and series officials to sack the weekend. It was going to be the series first trip to Lakeside since 2017. Up next for the national sprint cars is Wednesday night at Terre Haute for the 51st running of the Tony Hulman Classic.
The neat thing about the USAC cancellation for the weekend was all the non-wing guys that then turned around and got winged rides together for the weekend. Brady Bacon posted a couple of tweets, including a video of the process his team went through to turn their stuff around to get ready to head to Circle City last night for the All Star event. It sounds like their plan is to run through the weekend with the All Stars, since they are in Indiana through Sunday. They way his one tweets was worded, it sounded like they were already in the truck headed to Kansas, then turned around and came back to the shop. They unloaded their non wing stuff, swapped the 410 into their winged car, stocked the trailer with winged parts, and took off. That's pretty cool and something you don't normally see teams do. Tanner Thorson was another one that raced last night with the All Stars, pulling out the Reinbold Underwood winged car, which is the same one that Buddy Kofoid raced to a couple of wins in Arizona back in January. TMez also run up front for a while last night before fading to 13th at the end.
We talked on the show yesterday about a trio of Silver Crown ride announcements, and we got another later in the day yesterday. Kevin Thomas Jr. will pilot the Sam Pierce number 26 in the upcoming season opener at Terre Haute on May 27th. KTJ is taking over the ride for the event from Aaron Pierce. Thomas is seeking his first ever career Silver Crown win, and made three starts with the series in 2020, with a best finish of 11th at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. He is currently third in the USAC national sprint car standings with two wins in the 11 contested races so far. KTJ's crew chief Davey Jones will join the team for the event as well. You can watch the Silver Crown opener next Thursday night live on FloRacing.
There are 28 shows on the streaming schedule for today. That includes the Outlaws, All Stars, Lucas, POWRi, and a ton of weekly and regional action from all the different providers. To see the full daily streaming schedule, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
A couple of quick website notes. The Speed Sport news sections on the front pages are working properly again. They were not updating after Speed Sport redesigned their site, but that has been resolved. Also, I've added FloRacing's written content links to the front page, and their YouTube channel to the Videos section. If you notice errors, or think there is something I'm missing, please let me know.
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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