DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Justin Peck takes PA Speedweek show at Lincoln, Duncan vs. Schuerenberg | DIRTRACKR Daily 6/29/21
Today is Tuesday, June 29th, two thousand and twenty one. This is DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today on the show we are talking last night's PA Speedweek show at Lincoln, Cole Duncan vs. Hunter Schuerenberg and more so let's jump in.
Pennsylvania Speedweek continued last night with round number four at Lincoln. Lance Dewease and Brent Marks won the first three rounds, with Marks entering the night as the weeklong points leader. The field was beefed up last night with Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell joining the fray. In the feature, it was all Justin Peck out front. He had a few challenges from Robbie Kendall, but was strong on the top and bagged the win. The race of the night though was behind Peck. Kendall and Larson had a hell of a battle for second, with slide jobs and contact between the two. In the end, Kendall did a whale of job keeping Larson at bay, with the help of a few timely cautions. That's the interesting thing about Lincoln, and feel free to tell me I'm wrong here. But I feel like there you really have to earn passes. On several occasions, Larson had Kendall cleared, but momentum kept Kendall in the fight. I kind of feel like that's what's cool, and not so cool about Lincoln. Sometimes it leads to races without a ton of passing, and sometimes it leads to great battles like we saw last night. So your top five was Peck, Kendall, Larson, Dietrich and Bell. After not having raced dirt much this season, Bell didn't seem to have any rust last night. He went fourth quick in his flight of qualifying and bagged a heat race win before the top five in the feature, driving the Swindell SpeedLab 39. It will be interesting to see his schedule going forward and if we might see him in more dirt races. Contenders Freddie Rahmer and Brent Marks both had issues on the night, with Rahmer out early with a popped engine, and Marks suffering a flat tire and finishing 16th. Marks did keep the points lead entering tonight at Grandview, with Dietrich, Abreu, Peck, and Paul McMahan in tow. Larson and Bell will be back in the field tonight, and you can watch the action live on FloRacing.
So I got called out yesterday in the YouTube comments for not talking about the Ohio Valley Sprint Car Association show from over the weeked at Atomic Speedway. Working four races over the weekend at Pocono got me on that one. I completely missed it, so I figured I should go back and watch what went down. The OVSCA 410 show was part of the Atomic 100 weekend, and it was a race that was mostly dominated by Cole Duncan. There was a caution with nine to go for Cale Conley who had exploded a right rear tire running night. That closed up the field and brought second running Hunter Schuerenberg to Duncan's tail tank. They traded sliders for a few laps after the restart before Duncan got away again. Later, with just a few to go, Duncan caught lap traffic and that allowed the 55 to close back up on him again. On the white flag lap Schuerenberg threw a slider into one and cleared Duncan, but the 22 had momentum and pulled alongside down the backstretch. Schuerenberg tried to hold him down into three and take away the slider line, but they were too close together. Duncan got into Schuerenberg's left rear sending both cars spinning. Duncan caught the wall and turned over, while Schuerenberg just spun out. Duncan then emerged from his battered race car to confront Schuerenberg during the ensuing red flag. I honestly don't know that I have a big problem with what either driver did in the situation. Schuerenberg was trying to protect into turn three and Duncan was trying to get back to the lead of a race he'd dominated. It didn't look like anything was intentional from either side, just a racing deal. And even afterwards, it didn't look like punches were thrown or anything. Duncan was yelling a lot and waving his hands, but there didn't appear to be physical contact until one of Schuerenberg's crew guys came onto the track to get Duncan away from the car. I certainly don't blame Duncan for being upset. Hell, people get mad on iRacing when they crash while running 15th in pixel race cars. I can only imagine the emotions in a situation like that. I don't love physical altercations in some of these situations, I think that's taking things too far. But I don't have a problem with some spirited conversations. Guys have adrenaline going, they're tuned up, it happens. It's not different than Blake Hahn who I talked about on yesterday's show being so upset after crashing out of the lead at Dirt Cup. These drivers and teams have a lot invested in these races. I'd almost be worried if they didn't have some sort of reaction. As for what happened on track, Schuerenberg still had the lead into three, so he's not going to lift and there's no reason to give Duncan any more room than is necessary. Same for Duncan, he had the inside line, and trying a move into three was probably his last chance. That's just racing. Schuerenberg ended up sixth, while Kory Crabtree went on to the win after assuming the lead following the crash. If you watched it, or go back and watch it, drop your thoughts in the comments and let me know where you stand on it and drivers confronting each other after incidents.
And since I didn't do it on yesterday's show, here are some other winners from the weekend. Mark Whitener bagged the $10,000 RUSH win on Thursday at Lernerville, Cameron Weaver was a crate late model winner at 411, Josh Rice and Rod Conley won the Iron Man features at Atomic, Matt Cosner grabbed a win at Hagerstown, and Jacob Hawkins was a winner at Elkins Raceway. In open wheel action, Jake Swanson was a non-wing winner at Bloomington, Bud Kaeding grabbed the win at Ocean, Paulie Colagiovanni won Friday at Outlaw and Saturday in Patriot Sprint Tour action at Fonda, DJ Foos won at Fremont, Tye Mihocko at Lincoln Park, Dale Blaney grabbed a 410 win at Sharon in an off weekend from his All Star official duties, and Bill Balog grabbed the IRA win at Angell Park on Sunday.
There are two items on the streaming schedule today, both at FloRacing. Besides Flo 24/7, they have tonight's Pennsylvania Speedweek race from Grandview Speedway. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Stay tuned today or tomorrow as I have a new conversations episode that will drop. I talked to Toby Bellbowen about his sprint car career in Australia and his growing YouTube channel Sprintcar Hub that recently featured a really cool video on sprint car traction control. You can find that episode in the podcast feed or the DIRTRACKR YouTube channel.
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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Thanks for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!