DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Kyle Larson wins at Wayne County, Summer Nationals/Eastern Storm tonight | DIRTRACKR Daily 6-15-2021
It is Tuesday, June 15th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today we are talking about yet another Kyle Larson sprint car win, and we look ahead to the Summer Nationals and Eastern Storm openers tonight. Let's jump in.
Stop me if you've heard this before, but Kyle Larson won a dirt race last night. Fresh off his million dollar victory at the NASCAR All Star race, Larson jumped on a commercial flight yesterday and headed to Ohio for speedweek with the All Stars. He will compete in three races this week, and he kicked it off last night with a win from the 10th starting position at Wayne County Speedway. Paul McMahan and Zeb Wise led the bulk of the laps, but Larson took over the top spot on lap 30 and drove away to his second All Star win of 2021 and 25th of his career. Wise, McMahan, Buddy Kofoid, and Cale Thomas were the rest of the top five. The win from 10th was the furthest back Larson has started for one of his All Star wins back through 2019. It also matches his lowest starting spot with a win for the Outlaws, when he started 10th at Knoxville on August 13th last year and bagged the win. And don't expect him to slow down tonight at Sharon. Larson's speedweek win at Sharon in 2020 kicked off that incredible stretch of seven straight wins through Knoxville in August. He will be the guy to beat tonight. And the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula agrees. Larson is the favorite by a wide margin tonight. With three nights complete, Cory Eliason holds a very slight two point advantage over Danny Dietrich in the speedweek standings, with the top five separated by only 10 points total. In the season long championship battle, Tyler Courtney's 21st to 7th hard charge along with a crash for Ian Madsen extended Sunshine's points lead last night to 120. For some reference, Aaron Reutzel led Cory Eliason by 134 points after 20 races last season. Courtney has 14 top ten finishes in his last 15 starts, including five wins. As is always the case, the All Stars will be streaming live on FloRacing tonight.
The summer is here and that means it's time for one of the toughest schedules in dirt racing to get going. Starting tonight at Brownstown Speedway, the Summer Nationals Hell Tour and Modified Nationals kick off their 2021 campaigns. This is year 11 for the modifieds and things on that side remain relatively unchanged, with the champion taking home $5000 and competitors' 12 best finishes counting towards the standings. The series did bump the nightly winner's share to at least $1500 to win through the summer. On the late model side, the season long format is quite a bit different then we've seen from the Hell Tour in the past. In 2021 there are breaks now in the 36 race schedule, and only a competitor's best 31 finishes will count in the standings. This will allow drivers to run some of the other events happening in the coming weeks and still run for the title. There is also the potential for a higher championship payout, with as much as $36 grand going to the champion if every night is completed. Brian Shirley is the defending Summer Nationals champion, and he'll be looking to extend his streak of three in a row. But names like Bobby Pierce, Tanner English, Devin Moran and others will be looking to take him down. On the modified side, Nick Hoffman has been the guy to beat in recent seasons, and he's back looking to defend his crown. You'll see a lot of different modified drivers through the season though, and expect names like past champion Mike Harrison, Will Krup, Hunt Gossum, Tyler Nicely, and Mike McKinney to contend for wins. Looking at tonight, Tyler Erb and Mike McKinney were the winners at Brownstown in 2020, but don't expect to see Erb as he's still working through is DIRTcar suspension. The late model winner will bag $5000 and the modified winner $1500. DIRTVision will have live streaming coverage if you can't attend.
With Indiana Midget Week now in the books, the focus for USAC shifts to Eastern Storm in Pennsylvania starting tonight. Over the next six nights the USAC National Sprint Cars will make stops at Grandview, Bridgeport, Selinsgrove, Williams Grove, Port Royal, and the new Bloomsburg Fair Raceway. Because of the pandemic there was no Eastern Storm in 2020, so the defending champion is CJ Leary from the 2019 season. This week of sprint car action in the northeast has been a part of the USAC schedule since 2007, and three drivers lead the way with the most wins during the week. They are Bryan Clauson, Levi Jones, and Chris Windom each with six victories. Brady Bacon and Robert Ballou trail with four apiece. Bacon leads the full timers into Eastern Storm as the points leader by 35 over Justin Grant, with Kevin Thomas Jr. third, Ballou fourth, and Windom in fifth. They will be up against a talented group of non-wing locals over the next several nights including names like Briggs Danner, Timmy Buckwalter, Steven Drevicki, Alex Bright, and others. Bright and Danner are currently atop the east coast sprint car standings, and both have not only appeared with USAC this season, they both have grabbed top ten finishes. It would not surprise me to see those guys battling for top fives through the week. Looking at the season to date for the full time competitors, KTJ, Bacon, and Tanner Thorson all lead the way with two wins each in 2021. Justin Grant has been the hottest driver over the past five races with an average finish of 3.8. And it's no shock that Bacon is the points leader, as he's at or near the top of every major stat category, including wins, top fives, top tens, and average finish. Bacon will also probably be the guy to beat tonight. He won at Grandview back in April, leading the final 19 laps en route to the victory over KTJ and Ballou. And speaking of Ballou, he'll be another to keep an eye on. That third place finish at Grandview was part of his current 11 race top ten streak and he'll be hungry for another win after bagging one at Eldora back on May 8th. If you can't be at Grandview tonight, catch all the racing live on Flo.
Before we close out, I have a quick stat for you. World of Outlaws regular Carson Macedo is from California and came up running the bullrings out there. His first ever Outlaw win came at Silver Dollar Speedway in 2014, and you expect him to be fast on the smaller race tracks. But all of a sudden Macedo has become a terror for his competition on the big tracks. Four of his five wins this season have come at 1/2 mile tracks, including wins at Knoxville, Williams Grove, and Volusia. He leads the series in 1/2 mile wins in 2021, a stat that belonged to Kyle Larson in 2020, and Donny Schatz in 2019 and 2018.
The streaming schedule is busy for a Tuesday with five shows to check out. Dirt Track Digest has action from Thunder Mountain Speedway, the Summer Nationals get started from Brownstown on DIRTVision, and FloRacing has Ohio Sprint Speedweek from Sharon, USAC Eastern Storm at Grandview, plus Flo 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 Tuesday. 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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