DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Tim Shaffer out at Heffner, Aaron Reutzel takes $30k at Huset's Speedway | DIRTRACKR Daily 6/23/21
It is Wednesday, June 23rd, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
On the show today we are talking last night's big money win for Aaron Reutzel, Tim Shaffer is out at Heffner, the Summer Nationals are racing tonight, and more, so let's jump in.
Whatever you want to call it, the Summer of Money, or the Month of Money, Aaron Reutzel kicked it off in a big way last night at Huset's with the World of Outlaws. A heat race win and a dash win set him up for the pole of the $30,000 to win 50 lapper, and he took full advantage. He survived a wild first lap crash with Carson Macedo and led every lap en route to his third win of the season. Coming to complete lap one, with Donny Schatz actually out front, Macedo and Reutzel came together on the front stretch and Macedo went for a wild ride into the turn one fence. It looked like both drivers were going for the same real estate and Macedo just got the short end of the stick. Amazingly, Macedo was able to continue after extensive repairs in the work area. He finished 14th. Brad Sweet and Schatz both tried to run down Reutzel, but were unsuccessful. The feature was split by a lap 30 caution to allow teams to change tires and make adjustments. That was put in place after the track took rubber on night one. With Sweet finishing second and Gravel ninth, the gap in the standings has widened from 42 to 56. And a third finish outside the top ten in his last four races sees Macedo slip to 124 back now, after closing to 60 in recent weeks. It shows just how quickly things change when luck doesn't go your way. The Outlaws are off tonight before heading to Jackson on Thursday to start a three race weekend. Thursday and Friday both pay $10,000 to win, with Saturday's Jackson Nationals finale paying $50,000 to win. If Reutzel is able to win on Saturday night as well, he would receive an additional $100,000 bonus from track owner Tod Quiring.
In looking at this current championship battle with the Outlaws, I wanted to do a little comparison between Brad Sweet and David Gravel. I've talked about this on the show before, but average finish seems to be a big factor in who wins the Outlaw championship. In the previous three seasons, the driver with the best average finish has won the title, which may or may not be surprising. So far this season, Sweet's average finish is about seven tenths of a position better than Gravel's. If you multiply that out over the 35 races we've had, Sweet has bested Gravel by 24 positions so far. If you figure two points per position, that's 48 points. Tack on a few more wins for Sweet, and there is your 56 point difference. Looking at races back through 2018, Sweet's average finish across the different track sizes is better than Gravel's in every category, but the biggest glaring gap is on 1/4 mile tracks. Sweet has four wins and an average quarter mile finish of 3.7, while Gravel only has one 1/4 mile win and average finish of 9.2. That's a place where Gravel will need to improve if he's going to contend. Comparing the two drivers this season specifically, Gravel has one more top ten finish than Sweet, but Sweet's four more wins and five more top five finishes is the difference. Gravel qualifies much better, has more heat race wins and dash wins, but Sweet shows up in features. Sweet's feature plus minus is 60 positions better than Gravel, and his top five and top ten efficiency numbers are both higher. When the money is on the line, Sweet makes it happen. As the season progresses, if Gravel is going to make a real run at the title, these are the places he'll have to improve.
When it was announced that Tim Shaffer was headed to Ohio to run speedweek with Bryan Grove a few weeks ago, there were rumors about his status with the Heffner team in Pennsylvania. While he was gone, Heffner had Mark Smith, Billy Pauch Jr., and young Washington driver Devon Borden make starts in PA. Crew chief Heath Moyle posted to social media that Shaffer was still the driver, but in the days since, Heffner decided to make a change. Both Jeremy Elliott and Kyle McFadden reported yesterday that after starts at Williams Grove, Lincoln and Path Valley that included two top five runs and a 21st to seventh, Heffner has decided to put Borden in the car full time. Borden is 18 years old and has been running in Pennsylvania in recent weeks, including three appearances with the World of Outlaws. He made the feature at Lincoln back on May 12th, ending up 21st. With Pennsylvania Speedweek on tap, he'll have plenty of opportunities for experience coming up. As for Shaffer, in nearly 30 races this season with Heffner, he'd picked up four wins, but they've struggled in recent months, which Heath Moyle talked about on a recent episode of Conversations with me. At the time, Heath wasn't sure what the issue was, but when the other drivers had success in Shaffer's absence, you wondered if his days were maybe numbered. This will be a good opportunity for Borden to drive good equipment with an experienced crew chief, but the pressure will be on him to perform. The combination will be on track on Friday night at Williams Grove to open speedweek. The short series runs 10 straight nights from June 25th to July 4th, with stops at Williams Grove, Lincoln, BAPS, Grandview, Port Royal, Hagerstown, and Selinsgrove. You can find more details at paspeedweeks.com.
The Super DIRTcar Series race at Albany Saratoga Speedway was rained out yesterday. Track and series officials have rescheduled the Horsepower 100 for Tuesday, July 13th. Up next on the calendar for the big block modified competitors is Thursday, July 1st at Land of Legends Raceway in Canandaigua for the Liberty 100. To see the full Super DIRTcar Series schedule, hit up superdirtcarseries.com.
The Summer Nationals and Modified Nationals are back tonight to start week two after a few days off. They take on LaSalle Speedway tonight with Bobby Pierce leading the late model standings and Nick Hoffman on a dominating run of five straight wins with the modifieds. Following LaSalle tonight, the series will head to Spoon River on Thursday, Sycamore on Friday, Pevely on Saturday, and Jacksonville on Sunday. Series officials have amended the tire rule for this week because of ongoing supply issues. All late model competitors will be required to run LM40s on three corners, with LM20s required on the right rear. Teams will be limited daily on how many they can purchase. Hopefully this doesn't last long. Hoffman and Brian Shirley were the winners at LaSalle in 2020, and Shirley will be looking to get his team on track. The defending series champion is still looking for his first win of 2021 and is currently fourth in the standings. Pierce, Devin Moran, Tanner English, and Shannon Babb were the late model winners from week one. Remember that with the late models it's a driver's best 31 finishes that count towards points, and 12 best finishes with the modifieds. We saw some great racing in the first week, and hopefully the competition stays tight as we progress. A three or four way battle for the late model championship could be really entertaining, and a guy like Tanner English has been impressive this season. If you can't be at LaSalle tonight, watch all the action live on DIRTVision.
If you'd like to check out some other dirt racing podcasts this week, dirtrackr.com/podcasts is a good place to start. Winged Nation has Scotty Traylor, Paul McMahan and Tyler Courtney. Open Red has Tom Devitt and Todd Quiring, Passing Points has Jeremy Campbell and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, Dirt Nerds, Quicktime, Wednesdays with Wayne, and the Midwest Autosports Podcast. You can find links to everything on that page.
There are five items on the streaming schedule today. Dirt Track Digest has weekly action from New Egyp, DIRTVision has the Summer Nationals at LaSalle, FloRacing has Flo 24/7 and weekly racing from Action Track USA, and Speed Sport has IMCA racing from Buena Vista Raceway. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Thanks to everyone that dropped me a comment or message yesterday about my thoughts on the future of the DIRTRACKR shows. The Daily definitely isn't going anywhere, but I will continue to try and evolve the show and make it better. I may throttle back on Conversations episodes as they are time consuming to setup, record, and post and they don't seem to move the needle much. I will probably still do some from time to time, but the Daily will be my focus. I would like to find some more opportunities for live streams as well.
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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Thanks for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!