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Gio Scelzi on the Knoxville Nationals pole, Overton wins at Florence | DIRTRACKR Daily 8/13/21

Today is Friday, August 13th, two thousand and twenty one. This is DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

Coming up we talk about Knoxville Nationals night two including who's in, who's out and more. We are also talking Lucas at Florence, Super DIRTcar Series at Orange County, the Summer Nationals, and more.

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 second of two Knoxville Nationals prelim nights is complete and we have the first 16 spots in Saturday's feature set along with the first five rows of the B main. Things got off to a late start last night because of a rain delay. That meant the track was going to be juiced up and fast. They did a lot of wheel packing through hot laps, and it did help, but qualifying was definitely faster. Kasey Kahne ended up going quick time in the Roth 83 and was about a half a tenth faster than quick time the night before. Tyler Courtney, Brad Sweet, Kyle Larson, and Ian Madsen completed the top five in qualifications. In heat races, we had a mixed bag of results for the fast guys in qualifying. Kasey Kahne and Kerry Madsen didn't transfer, Tyler Courtney and Carson Macedo did, as did Brent Marks and Brad Sweet. Surprisingly, Kyle Larson was also on the outside looking in following heat races. As we did on night one, we again had several drivers with difficult nights on Thursday. Cale Thomas crashed in his heat race which ended his night, and Tim Kaeding never really got going following issues for his Sides Motorsports team. Jeff Swindell was leading the second heat race on the final lap, but ended up eighth and never really recovered. Eventual heat winner Sawyer Phillips said he thought Swindell ran it out of fuel. All of those guys will need to make big things happen on Friday. I talked on yesterday's show about the desparation move from Scott Bogucki in the Wednesday B main, and we saw more of that last night in heat race five. Jacob Allen battled TJ Stutts for much of that race for the final feature transfer spot, but eventually finished outside. TJ made his car really wide a few times, with some not great darting moves down the backstretch. It paid off for Stutts with an A main appearance, but it was a sketchy way to get in. With so many guys not transferring in from heat races, that turned the B main into a murderers row of guys to try and get through. In the end it was Larson, Kerry Madsen, Kahne, and Ian Madsen bagging transfers with names like Brock Zearfoss, Bill Balog, Shane Golobic, Daryn Pittman, and Jac Haudenschild all on the outside. Once green in the night's feature, which was led to the stripe by polesitter Sam Hafertepe Jr. and Sye Lynch, things got wild pretty quickly. On an early restart, Parker Price Miller went for a wild ride after he climbed the right rear of TJ Stutts into turn one. PPM was okay, but his car was destroyed. We also lost Shane Stewart from the race early after engine issues. He'll need a good run tonight. And then not long later, we had a huge crash in turn three involving multiple drivers. Carson Macedo tried to slide Paul McMahan into turn three, but climbed the berm, and ended up taking both of them out. The crash also collected Sammy Swindell, Sawyer Phillips, Kerry Madsen, and Marcus Dumesny. Paul's car caught fire, but thankfully he was out of the car quickly and the fire crew did a great job putting it out. The safety crew was actually running out onto the track before some of the cars were even stopped to aid McMahan. In the incident, a few drivers were somehow able to sneak through, including Tyler Courtney, Larson and Greg Wilson. In the aftermath, it sounded like everyone was okay. Jan McMahan tweeted this morning that Paul checked okay at the hospital, but his head is hurting. In an interview afterwards, Macedo took the blame for the crash. He said the hole closed up quicker than he thought. Decent enough results earlier in the night though mean that Macedo, McMahan, and Kerry Madsen all have guaranteed spots on the Saturday B main. After that big crash, things settled out and in front it was all Brian Brown. He started fourth, took the lead on lap 2 and never looked back. Behind him though, there were plenty of fireworks with several guys making big moves. Larson ended up second after starting 21st to earn hard charger. Brent Marks finished third, Brad Sweet fourth, and Rico Abreu fifth. Kasey Kahne went 23rd to sixth. Austin McCarl 18th to 7th, and Ian Madsen 24th to 8th, and that was after he caught a piece of PPM's crash. So with Hard Knox Friday coming up tonight, we have the first eight rows of the Saturday A main set, along with the first five rows of the Saturday B main. Gio Scelzi will start the Knoxville Nationals from the pole, with Brad Sweet to his outside. They will be followed by Kyle Larson, Brent Marks, Donny Schatz, David Gravel, Kasey Kahne, Logan Schuchart, Brian Brown, Ian Madsen, Brooke Tatnell, Tyler Courtney, James McFadden, Justin Henderson, Justin Peck, and Danny Dietrich. In the B main we'll see Josh Baughman, Carson Macedo, Sye Lynch, Spencer Bayston, Cory Eliason, Kraig Kinser, Paul McMahan, Kerry Madsen, Sheldon Haudenschild, and Sam Hafertepe Jr. The top four from tonight's feature will grab the last four Saturday A main starting spots, and then everyone else will be in the soup tomorrow for those final four B main transfers. Earlier in the week we talked about win predictions and drivers to watch, and we did pretty well with those names. Of the 12 I gave you (Larson, Gravel, Sweet, Schatz, Schuchart, Macedo, Kerry Madsen, Brown, Eliason, Scelzi, Courtney, and Pittman), eight are guaranteed A main starters, three are in the B main, and only one is outside, which is Daryn Pittman. Larson is the pick from the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula, and that still plays. I think we are in for an epic Saturday night with so many really fricken good drivers in the mix. And I think it could be really fun to watch someone like Macedo or Madsen try and drive their way through the field for a win. Racing is on the same schedule for the next two nights with grandstands opening at 5:30 PM CT and hot laps set for 7:15. Enjoy the Nationals and we'll be back Monday to talk about all of it.

The North/South weekend at Florence Speedway got underway last night for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. Ricky Thornton Jr. was working with new crew member Anthony Burroughs, and right out of the gate it seems like it paid off. Burroughs moved over from the Black Diamond house car team of Earl Pearson Jr. to join the SSI team and Thornton was good last night, going quick time in his qualifying group, winning his heat race, and bagging the pole of the feature. At the start, RTJ was quickly out to the lead, but it wouldn't last long. On lap 14, second starting Brandon Overton drove by the 20RT on the top side and was never challenged again, leading the final 37 laps en route to the $10,000 victory. Thornton ended up second, points leader Tim McCreadie third, Jimmy Owens was fourth, and Jonathan Davenport hard charged from 23rd to finish fifth after needing a provisional to start the feature. For Overton, the win was his third Lucas score of 2021 in 16 starts. He'll be hoping that translates into success on Saturday for the big money. McCreadie finishing in front of both Davenport and O'Neal last night extended his lead in the points standings to now 165 over Superman and 190 over Hudson. Looking ahead to tonight, drivers will compete in two sets of heat races with passing points on the line. Those points will then set the feature and B main lineups for Saturday's $50,000 to win, North South 100. There will be plenty to watch the next two nights, with the points battle continuing to be a topic of conversation, along with who can bag another crown jewel in 2021. I think Overton and McCreadie are probably the guys to beat, but we'll have to wait and see.

With the Super DIRTcar Series last night at Orange County Fair Speedway, it was eighth starting Stewart Friesen who took down the $10,000 to win Centennial 102. He moved past leader Billy Decker at half way and drove away to the win. Chris Hile, Matt Sheppard, Mat Williamson, and Max McLaughlin completed the top five. The second place finish for Hile earned him a guaranteed starting position in the 200 lap main event at Super DIRT Week coming up. Leaving last night, Friesen's win extended his points lead over Matt Sheppard with I believe 10 races left in 2021. The Super DIRTcar Series is back next Tuesday night at Brewerton Speedway for the Demon 100.

While a lot of eyes will be on Knoxville and Florence over the next few days, don't forget that the Summer Nationals will be rolling again starting tonight at Highland and again tomorrow at Pevely. The series hasn't raced since July 25th at Richmond. Bobby Pierce continues to lead the late model standings over Tanner English and Ashton Winger with only six nights left to decided the 2021 champion. The modifieds are also in action, but eventual champion Nick Hoffman won't be in attendance as he's racing Scott Bloomquist's late model at the North South 100. This will be a good weekend for some others to step up and bag some mod wins. Following tonight and tomorrow, the Summer Nationals close out next week with four final races, Wednesday at Butler, Thursday at I-96, Friday and Tri-City, and the finale on Saturday at Merritt. For more info, checkout dirtcarsummernationals.com and modifiednationals.com.

At Knoxville yesterday, Peter Murphy told Speed Sport that the Dirt Cup at Skagit next season, which will be the 50th edition, will be a 410 winged sprint car event and pay $50,000 to the winner. That will make it the richest sprint car race on the west coast, and the event changes to 410s from 360s. Murphy is part of the new partnership running Skagit Speedway which also includes Kevin Rudeen and Mike Anderson. Long time promoter Steve Beitler is working towards retirement and recently sold the track. He will continue running Skagit through the end of the year, before the new group takes over for 2022. Murphy along with his partners are hoping to continue building 410 racing on the west coast.

Looking at the streaming schedule for the weekend we are around 90 shows as I record this, highlighted by the Knoxville Nationals on DIRTVision and the North South 100 on MAVTV Plus. The Summer Nationals are also back in action this weekend, and there is a ton of local and regional racing. To see the full daily streaming schedule through the weekend, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

That's it for the show today, hope you have a good Friday and a good weekend. 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!