DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Schuchart, Overton grab big money Outlaw wins; Larson & Bell race tonight | DIRTRACKR Daily 6/28/21
It is Monday, June 28th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today we are looking back on a busy big money weekend for both World of Outlaws series, we've got Silver Crown, Dirt Cup, and Summer Nationals results, and we look ahead to this week's Pennsylvania Speedweek action. Let's jump in.
The Jackson Nationals for the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars wrapped up yesterday after the finale was rained out on Saturday night. Going back to Friday, Kerry Madsen picked up where he left off from Thursday night. He slipped past early leader Carson Macedo on lap 13 and drove away to this second win in as many nights in the Tony Stewart Racing 14. Macedo finished second, Logan Schuchart third, Brad Sweet fourth, and Shane Golobic completed the top five. Gio Scelzi had a big 24th to 8th run to grab the night's hard charger award. On Sunday in the 35 lap, $50,000 to win finale, Logan Schuchart sat on the pole, but it was third starting David Gravel who made a big move on the opening lap to grab the early lead. He was out front until lap eight, when Schuchart was able to slide by him following a caution for Donny Schatz and an expired engine. From that point, Schuchart went unchallenged the rest of the way. He knifed his way through lap traffic and drove to his second consecutive Jackson Nationals win and the $50,000 pay day. Gravel, Sweet, Madsen, and Macedo rounded out the top five. The win was Schuchart's third of the season, and he's been rolling along nicely here in the last six weeks or so. He's got 15 top ten finishes in his last 16 starts, including wins now at Jackson and Bridgeport, and six podium runs. He never finished worse than third in the three nights at Jackson. He's now moved himself back into the top five in the standings with Donny Schatz having issues through the weekend. Schatz crashed in a heat race Thursday and battled back to 11th in the night's feature. He finished 12th Saturday, and then had those engine issues Sunday and ended up 22nd. Out front in the standings, Sweet crept away by four more points, with the gap back to Gravel now at 60. Macedo is third, 120 points back. Barring some sort of insane run from James McFadden, the top seven in the points shouldn't change the rest of the way. Reutzel has nearly 300 points on JMac in eighth. It will just be a matter of who finishes where in that top seven. After winning the big money at Huset's, Reutzel had three straight nights at Jackson outside the top ten. With Macedo picking up some blemishes, this is a two horse race right now between Sweet and Gravel. The Outlaws are back this weekend at Cedar Lake in Wisconsin for two nights.
Brandon Sheppard won the opening feature of the Firecracker weekend back on Thursday night at Lernerville, but the remaining two days belonged to Brandon Overton. In Friday's second prelim feature that went caution free, he slipped by polesitter Mark Whitener and led the rest of the way for the $6000 score. Local favorite Mike Norris ended up second, Whitener, who was driving for Big Frog Motorsports ended up third, Dennis Erb Jr. was fourth and Brandon Sheppard rounded out the top five. Chris Madden was ninth on the night, and he gave up more ground to Sheppy in the points standings. On Saturday night in the 100 lap, $30,000 to win finale, Madden led the first 40 from the pole, but he admitted afterwards they missed the setup a bit. Overton started fourth and was able to run Madden down before half way. He took the lead on lap 41 and never looked back, grabbing his third Outlaw win of the season and yet another big money race. Madden, Erb, Lanigan, and Sheppard completed the top five. Lanigan had a nice 21st to 4th run. With a win and two fifth place finishes, Sheppard has stretched the points lead to now 58 over Madden. If you figure two points per position, Madden is about 29 feature spots behind Sheppard right now and we aren't quite half way finished with the season. So there is still plenty of time for Madden to make moves here. BShepp is the hottest driver in the series right now with an average finish of 3.4 over the last five races. As for Overton, he just continues to show why he's one of the top drivers in the sport at the moment. When the big money is on the line, he shows up and wins. I'm not really a power rankings guy, but there is a pretty easy argument to be made why he should be atop any such lists. He's won seven of his last eight dirt late model starts, which includes that Dream sweep and the Firecracker weekend. In a year where we've seen so much parity, Overton is starting to establish himself as the top guy. The Outlaws are back July 9th and 10th for two shows at Jackson Motorplex in Minnesota.
And speaking of national late model tours, Lucas was supposed to be at Deer Creek this past weekend for the Gopher 50, but both nights were lost to rain. They will not be made up. The series is back this weekend for two shows in Ohio, Friday at Portsmouth and Saturday at Muskingum County. Tim McCreadie continues to lead Hudson O'Neal and Jonathan Davenport in the standings.
On Saturday night at Eldora, as part of the SRX program, the Silver Crown Series was in action for 50 laps at the famed Ohio track. Tyler Courtney has been having an incredible season in the winged sprint car, but he's a threat in anything he jumps in, and the Silver Crown competitors were his next victims. Sunshine started on the outside pole and led every lap en route to his first series win of 2021 driving for Chris Dyson. Chris Windom, Kody Swanson, Kevin Thomas Jr., and Brady Bacon completed the top five. We've now had three different winners in three races so far. Shane Cottle is the only driver to finish top ten in all three events, and because of that he's the current points leader by 28 over Kody Swanson, with with Windom third, Justin Grant fourth, and Logan Seavey fifth. Next on the calendar is the Rich Vogler Classic at Winchester on July 22nd.
I finally went ahead and grabbed a MAVTV Plus subscription over the weekend. I normally use Dirt on Dirt to catch the extended Lucas highlights, but I wanted to check out the Dirt Cup for the ASCS National Tour, and MAVTV Plus was the only place to do that. Since they have past races available on demand, I'll probably check out a bunch more stuff there, including some of the POWRi races. Dominic Scelzi bagged the Friday night Dirt Cup prelim over Colton Heath and Dylan Westbrook. On Saturday night in the finale, we had a wild finish. Scelzi led the first 22 laps, but Blake Hahn, who won the Thursday feature, ran him down in lap traffic and took the lead on lap 23. Inside ten to go though, there was big trouble for Hahn. The lap car of Robbie Price flipped in turn three in front of the leaders, and Hahn had no where to go. He ended up with a bunch of damage, including the top wing, but his crew and several others were able to get the car fixed and back out on the track. He ended up 10th. Hahn was so distraught after the incident that he actually got out of the car in the work area, but his guys got him going again, which was great to see. The trouble for Hahn handed the lead back to Scelzi who went on to grab the $15,000 Dirt Cup win. Trey Starks, Matt Covington, Ryan Robinson, and Seth Bergman were the rest of the top five. Leaving the weekend, Hahn has taken control of the ASCS points with Covington, and JJ Hickle chasing him.
Due to poor weather, the Saturday and Sunday Summer Nationals shows at Pevely and Jacksonville were lost. The series did compete Friday night at Sycamore Speedway. After not winning during the opening week of the schedule, Brian Shirley ended week two winning both of the features completed. He led every lap on Friday at Sycamore, holding off Bobby Pierce in lap traffic to earn his 35th career Summer Nationals victory. Pierce, Ashton Winger, Ryan Unzicker, and Jason Feger completed the top five. With seven race nights in the books, Bobby Pierce leads Tanner English by 31 points, with Shirley, Winger, and Unzicker the rest of the top five. Nick Hoffman stayed white hot in his modified, bagging win number seven at Sycamore. Incredibly, he's led every single lap through the first seven nights, and has double the number of points that second place Tyler Nicely has in the standings. Just insane. The Summer Nationals and Modified Nationals are off today and tomorrow, with action getting back underway on Wednesday at Beaver Dam for week three.
Looking ahead to tonight, if you're a sprint car fan, make sure to tune into night number four of Pennsylvania Speedweek from Lincoln Speedway. Lance Dewease won the opener on Friday night at Williams Grove, and Brent Marks went back to back on Saturday at Lincoln and Sunday at BAPS. Marks is the current speedweek points leader. But things will ramp up tonight with Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell heading in to race. Larson is running four nights this week in the Silva 57, while Bell is in action tonight and tomorrow with the Swindell Speedlab 39. And besides the regular Central PA contingent, we've also seen Paul McMahan, Justin Peck, Rico Abreu, Sam Hafertepe and others racing. It should be a really fun couple of nights coming up.
There are two items on the streaming schedule for today, both on FloRacing. Pennsylvania Speedweek from Lincoln Speedway continues, and they have 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 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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