DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Macedo wins Kings Royal opener, Hendrick backing Larson's dirt racing | DIRTRACKR Daily 7/15/21
Today is Thursday, July 15th, two thousand and twenty one. This is DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Coming up we go deep on night one of the double Kings Royal weekend, we've got an interesting Kyle Larson news piece, plus results from across the country last night.
Before we dive in, if you like what I'm doing here, please subscribe to the show, leave a review, and hit those follow and notification buttons depending on where you consume this. Make sure to follow @dirtrackr on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. And don't forget dirtrackr.com has a bunch more cool dirt racing stuff. Now, let's get going.
The double Kings Royal weekend is off and running, with last night's Jokers Wild kicking off the four race stretch with big money on the line. Last night's $10,000 to win show was the standard Outlaw format and featured the biggest car count of the season so far at 57. When the night was complete, we were left with a dominating win from Carson Macedo in the feature, in which he started sixth, was somehow second by the backstretch on the first lap, and leading out of turn four. Brian Brown tried a few times to make it interesting, but the JJR 41 was just too strong. Macedo said afterward that he wasn't sure how good they would be for the feature after he went third to sixth in the dash, but Philip Dietz had that thing tuned up and ready to roll. It was Macedo's sixth win of 2021 with the Outlaws and first at Eldora. I mentioned back on the June 15th Daily that Macedo had improved dramatically on 1/2 mile race tracks this year, and we are now at five of his six wins this season happening on the bigger speedways. He now has wins in 2021 at Knoxville, Williams Grove, Volusia, and Eldora. If you want to win an Outlaw championship and be a factor in big money shows, you've got to be good at big tracks, and Macedo is blossoming. In his last eight Outlaw races, Macedo hasn't finished worse than sixth, and that stretch includes five podiums. He's now jumped over Brad Sweet to take over that spot atop the Who's Hot stat at dirtrackr.com/analytics. His average finish over the previous five is 2.8, and over the last ten it's 5.5. Behind Macedo, it was a very good night for Brian Brown. He recently made a change at the crew chief position on his car and it appears to be paying off. Long time team boss Chad Morgan was let go and Brownie is rolling with his uncle, Danny Lasoski, going forward. Last night's second place finish broke a string of five straight Outlaw races outside the top ten. David Gravel, Kerry Madsen, and Aaron Reutzel completed the top five. A weird story of the night that emerged was a bunch of broken wings. Between top wing side boards and even some front wings, there were some guys really affected last night. We saw Logan Schuchart have issues, as did Paul McMahan, Ian Madsen, James McFadden, Daryn Pittman, and others. The explanation seemed to be dirt clods from the track being kicked up. And after having issues at the Doty, Kyle Larson was again the victim of mechanical gremlins. He slowed to a stop in the final heat race with torque tube problems and was forced to the night's B main. After a win there, he drove from 21st to 10th to score the night's hard charger award. As for Sweet and the championship hunt, Sweet's 11th place finish last night was his first outside the top ten since June 12th at Knoxville. Macedo chopped 22 points out of his lead with his win, but it's still 120, which is about 60 positions. Sweet can afford to have some off nights with as big as the lead has grown right now.
Looking ahead to tonight, the first round of big money is on the line. The winner will take home $175,000 and the title of King the 38th. I have not seen an official release about the format for tonight and Saturday, but you can assume time trials with a six car invert in heat races. We'll then do a C and a B to set the rest of the feature starters. There were some other weird things last time in 2019, including the heat race order being changed and the starting lineup being set by a revenge draw. I'm not sure if any of that is back this season. The 36th Kings Royal back in 2019 was also only a show up points event, so I'm going to assume the 38th and 37th we are seeing this week will be show up points only as well, with last night and Friday night's prelim shows being full points. As for win picks for tonight, I think you're looking at the usual suspects. Sweet, Macedo, Gravel, Madsen, Schuchart, Larson. I also think Brent Marks could be a factor, Aaron Reutzel was fast last night, and Sheldon Haudenschild has won at Eldora before. If you can't be at Eldora, watch live on DIRTVision.
In some NASCAR news from yesterday, it was announced that Hendrick Motorsports has extended Kyle Larson's contract through the 2023 season. That's not something I'd normally mention on this show, but there was an interesting tidbit in there about Larson's extracurricular racing. Through much of this NASCAR season, Larson has been sponsored by HendrickCars.com, which is notable because initially Hendrick had issues trying to secure sponsorship for Larson. That's not surprising given the initial reasoning behind Larson's Ganassi departure and his issues in 2020. Mr. H. decided he was going to run Larson regardless of sponsorship, but in the process, something interesting has happened. Larson's performances have brought a ton of exposure to Hendrick's dealerships, so much so in fact, that they are not going to seek sponsorship for Larson for the next two years. HendrickCars.com will be the main sponsor for the team for 35 races each season. Hendrick's website traffic is up 27%, vehicle sales up 18% and leads up 37%. Those are massive increases. And to extend that exposure with Larson, the release mentions that HendrickCars.com will also back him in all non-NASCAR events as well, including branding his helmet, gloves and firesuits. And we've seen that this week. The Paul Silva 57 sprint car had Hendrick on the nose wing at Attica and it's there at Eldora. I think that's a big endorsement of not only Larson, but his short track endeavors as well. The attention he garners across the country running sprint cars, late models and more is valuable enough for a top ten dealership group with nearly 100 locations to benefit. As fans of dirt racing, that should make you proud and excited for the future prospects of the sport.
Week five for the Summer Nationals officially got underway last night at Circle City Raceway in Indianapolis. And it was more Bobby Pierce and Nick Hoffman domination. Hoffman actually had to work a little bit for his victory last night, starting third and battling with polesitter Tyler Nicely and front row starter Dylan Woodling early on. He would eventually get by Nicely, and Woodling suffered a mechanical failure and was out of the race only five laps in. From there, Hoffman went basically unchallenged the rest of the way to earn his 13th win in 13 starts this season. Nicely, Dillon Nusbaum, Tommy Sheppard Jr., and John Demoss rounded out the top five. It was Hoffman's 51st career Modified Nationals win. The joke on social media lately has been that Hoffman hasn't even needed to use his tearoffs as he's been out front so much, but that wasn't the case for the whole feature last night. In the late model show, Pierce led all 40 laps to win his eighth Hell Tour race of the season and 35th of his career. That puts him in a tie with Brian Shirley for fourth all time in Summer Nationals wins. The battle for second behind Pierce was pretty epic, with Joe Godsey, Spencer Hughes, Tanner English, and Rusty Schlenk all in the mix. They were throwing sliders, three wide, threading the needle. Eventually though it was Godsey seizing second and taking home his best ever Summer Nationals finish. Hughes finished third, English fourth, and Schlenk fifth. Hughes continues to be impressive in that PCC Motorsports entry. He's had some really good runs with the Outlaws and Lucas and I wouldn't be surprised to see him take down a win this season as he gets more comfortable. Both the late models and modifieds are back in action tonight at Thunderbird Raceway in Michigan. You can watch the racing live on DIRTVision.
Last night's USAC midget event at Solomon Valley was postponed due to rain. Hot laps were just about set to begin when the storm came. They will try and get that program in tonight before they head to Jefferson County on Friday and Saturday.
The Short Track Super Series event at Bloomsburg Fair was also affected by weather last night. They had completed 29 laps of the feature but were unable to continue because of rain. Jeff Strunk was declared the winner as he was the leader after 29 laps. Anthony Perrego, Mike Mahaney, Matt Sheppard, and Ryan Krachun completed the top five. Sheppard and Perrego were tied atop the standings entering the night, so Perrego will inch ahead of Sheppard following his second place result. The north region is back in action next Thursday night, July 22 at Utica-Rome.
With the USMTS modifieds at Casino Speedway last night, Jake O'Neil kept his strong 2021 campaign going with his second straight win and fourth of the year. O'Neil led the final 25 laps of the 40 lapper, topping Dan Ebert, Scott Ward, Dustin Sorensen, and Tyler Davis. Rodney Sanders finished sixth and points leader Dereck Ramirez was 13th. The win for O'Neil seems him move into second in the standings, jumping over Sanders. He's now just three shy of Ramirez for the championship lead. The USMTS modifieds are back Friday and Saturday night for Mod Wars at Ogilvie Raceway in Minnesota.
In Western Sprint Tour action in Oregon last night, Justyn Cox finally picked up a win at Sunset after finishing second each of the first two nights. The win vaults him to the top of the speedweek points standings. Tanner Holmes, Corey Day, Colby Copeland, and Drake Studley were the rest of the top five. The speedweek is off tonight before closing out at Cottage Grove on Friday and Saturday.
The season of rainouts continues for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. They were supposed to be at 34 Raceway tonight in Iowa to kick off a three race weekend, but that show has been cancelled because of saturated grounds. The series is still planning to race on Friday at Tri-City Speedway in Illinois and Lucas Oil Speedway on Saturday in Missouri.
There are six shows on the streaming schedule for today. The headliner is definitely the Kings Royal on DIRTVision, with the Summer Nationals from Thunderbird Speedway also on DV. FloRacing has Flo 24/7 and weekly racing from Kossuth County. Dirt Track Digest has modifieds and ULMS late models from Genesee Speedway, and Speed Sport has weekly action from Grand Rapids Speedway. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
That's it for the show today, hope you have a good Thursday. If you have thoughts about the topics on today's show, leave them in the comments below or tweet at me.
Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!