DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Dietrich wins in the rubber at Sharon, Pierce tops Summer Nationals opener | DIRTRACKR Daily 6/16/21
It is Wednesday, June 16th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today we are talking about last night's All Star, Summer Nationals, and USAC races. There are also new podcast episodes and today's streaming schedule. Let's jump in.
Ohio Sprint Speedweek for the All Stars continued last night at Sharon Speedway and when the show was over Danny Dietrich was standing in victory lane and social media was mad. Real mad. The track surface slicked off very early in the program last night, and it made me and a lot of others concerned about the possibility of rubber for the feature. And unfortunately, those concerns were realized pretty quickly into the 35 lapper. Sharon took rubber and the racing was locked down on the bottom. Out front, Dietrich slipped past pole sitter George Hobaugh to lead lap one, and nobody could do anything with him from there. It was Dietrich's 14th career All Star win, and first during Ohio Sprint Speedweek. According to Jacob Hord on Twitter, Dietrich is now the 13th driver to win a race during both Ohio and Pennsylvania Speedweeks. The other names on that list are Cole Duncan, Kyle Larson, Greg Hodnett, Stevie Smith, Keith Kauffman, Tyler Walker, Jeff Shepard, Chad Kemenah, Rico Abreu, Dave Blaney, Ed Lynch Jr., and Christopher Bell. The rest of the top five behind Dietrich was Tyler Courtney, Justin Peck, Kyle Larson, and Hobaugh. The complaint about rubber down tracks is always that there isn't any passing, but we didn't really see that last night. Cole Duncan was +11, Paul McMahan was hard charger at +12, and several others were plus three or more. And if you look at the numbers, we actually saw more position changes from start to finish last night at Sharon on a rubber down track than we saw the previous two nights at Wayne County and Fremont. I did appreciate my buddy Blake Anderson not glossing over the conditions last night while he announced. Instead of pretending it wasn't happening, he gave context, and talked about the challenges the drivers were facing. I do think it's important to understand that while nobody clearly wants tracks to take rubber, sometimes it happens, and that not every race on the schedule can be a barn burner. The outrage is always interesting to me to witness on social media. There were still intriguing things to watch in that feature last night, but it seems like a lot of folks will never see past the issues with the track. It's really unfortunate. Regardless of track conditions, somebody is going to win these races, and other guys are racing to try and maximize their positions because of prize money and points. As is the case any other night, there are challenges to overcome for the competitors and that's why we watch. The win for Dietrich was good enough to see him take over the speedweek points lead. He tops Tyler Courtney by 12 points with four nights left to race. Courtney extended his season long points lead to now 132 over Ian Madsen, thanks to his 14th top five finish this season. Tonight the All Stars head to Waynesfield for night number five. Watch the action live on FloRacing.
The 2021 versions of Summer Nationals and Modified Nationals got underway last night at Brownstown Speedway and when the night was over it was two familiar faces in victory lane. In the night's late model feature, outside front row starter Bobby Pierce was quickly to the lead at the start, had to fend off a mid race challenge from eighth starting Tim Lance, and held off Devin Moran in the closing laps to grab the win on night one. Moran was second, Lance third, Tanner English fourth, and Devin Gilpin completed the top five. Pierce is a three time Summer Nationals champion and last night was his 28th career series win. Following the late model race, defending series champion Nick Hoffman put on a dominating performance in the modified feature, leading all 25 laps from the pole to get the $1500 win. Tyler Nicely, Steven Brooks, Jacoby Hines, and John Demoss completed the top five. There are obviously still potentially 35 nights remaining, but these races were a great start to the season for both Pierce and Hoffman who are looking for more championships. Remember that only the 12 best races count for the modifieds and 31 best races count for the late models. As is usually the case, there is a lot of "I'm gonna race for a week or two weeks and see where I am" type stuff from the late model drivers. As of right now, it looks like Pierce, Moran, English, Shirley, Moyer Jr., and a few others are committed to the full schedule, but that can and will change based on how each of those guys performs. If they are up in contention, they will continue to race. If they have some bad nights and get in a hole, they will fall off. Pretty typical. This opening week continues tonight at Peoria Speedway for both the late models and modifieds. You can again watch live on DIRTVision if you can't be at the track.
At Grandview Speedway in Pennsylvania last night we saw the opener for USAC's Eastern Storm. The national sprint car competitors took on the 1/3 mile track and at the end it was Justin Grant celebrating his second win of 2021. He held Tanner Thorson and Brady Bacon at bay and led all 40 laps en route to the victory. Bacon finished second, Thorson third, Kevin Thomas Jr. fourth, and Robert Ballou was fifth. It was Grant's 23rd career series win, which moves him one spot ahead of his late father in law Bubby Jones on the all time win list. Grant mentioned Jones in his post race comments, and also talked about Jesse Hockett, who last night's race was named after, and Bryan Clauson. Yesterday was Clauson's 32nd birthday. Grant remains 36 points behind Bacon for the series points lead, but there is still a lot of racing left to do this week and this season. Robert Ballou stayed hot last night with another top five result, and the fifth place finish was his 12th straight top ten with the series. Looking around the country, only Tim McCreadie with the Lucas Late Models has more consecutive top ten finishes right now than Ballou. Briggs Danner was the top finishing outsider, grabbing a sixth and his third top ten finish with the national series in 2021. The USAC sprint car competitors are back in action tonight at Bridgeport.
There are plenty of new dirt racing podcast episodes to check out this week for your ears. Winged Nation has Paul McMahan, Tim Kaeding, and Scotty Neitzel. Stick Signals has episodes with Nick Hoffman, Tanner English, and Brandon Overton. Forward Bite has Zach Dohm, I was actually the guest on Passing Points this week, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, Dirt Nerds, Ohio Dirt, Wednesdays with Wayne, and the Midwest Autosports Podcast. To see the full list of shows and episodes hit up dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
It's another busy night on the streaming platforms with seven shows on the schedule. DIRTVision has night two of the Summer Nationals from Peoria. FloRacing has the All Stars from Waynesfield, USAC sprint cars at Bridgeport, and IMCA racing from 141 Speedway. MAVTV Plus has the POWRi Illinois Speed Week opener at Charleston, and Speed Sport has weekly racing from Buena Vista. 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 Wednesday. 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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