DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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McCreadie, Scott get World 100 wins; Bobby Pierce DQ'd; Tusky 50 starts | DIRTRACKR Daily 9/9/21
Today is Thursday, September 9th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Coming up we've got everything you need to know from night one of the World 100s week at Eldora, including details on Bobby Pierce's disqualification. We also look at tonight's Tuscarora 50 opener and have news from the World of Outlaws.
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.
Last night was the prelim show for the 51st World 100 and we've got two feature winners and heat race lineups set for tonight's big money show. There has been some drama today regarding Bobby Pierce, which I'll get to in a bit. Last night's action featured qualifying, heat races, B mains, and features for the split field programs. Half the field in group A, the other in group B. Drivers earned points through the night, which were used to set heat race lineups, along with an invert, for tonight. In Group A it was Kyle Strickler going quick time, with heat races won by Brandon Sheppard, Bobby Pierce, Nick Hoffman, and Jonathan Davenport. In the first feature, Johnny Scott battled in the opening laps with pole sitter Nick Hoffman, but pretty quickly drove out to a big lead and he bagged the win in a non-stop race. Hoffman ended up second, Brandon Sheppard was third, Bobby Pierce fourth, and Jonathan Davenport completed the top five. Brandon Overton finished 6th after starting 12th, and Kyle Larson finished 12th after starting 14th. In Group B, it was young Spencer Hughes who grabbed quick time in qualifying, with Jimmy Owens, Hudson O'Neal, Darrell Lanigan, and Devin Moran winning the four heat races. In the feature, pole sitter Shannon Babb held Darrell Lanigan at bay for much of the event, but ninth starting Tim McCreadie was on the move early and often. He rolled some hot bottom to the lead with seven laps to go and drove away to the win. Behind TMac, Babb finished second, Lanigan third, O'Neal fourth, and Owens fifth. McCreadie ended up being high point man, so he spun the wheel of misfortune after his win and it landed on five, so tonight's heat races will have a five car invert. Behind McCreadie in the points after the prelim night are O'Neal, Pierce, Sheppard, Davenport, Shane Clanton, Chris Ferguson, Owens, Moran, and Johnny Scott. Tonight we'll have six heat races to kick off action with Mark Whitener and Gregg Satterlee on the front row of heat one, Michael Chilton and Kyle Bronson out front in heat two, Dale McDowell and Ryan Gustin leading heat three, Brandon Overton and Scott Bloomquist in heat four, Tyler Erb and Ricky Thornton Jr. in heat five, and Zack Dohm and Kyle Strickler for heat six. Heats will be 15 laps with the top three transferring on. Kyle Larson will start third in heat two. One driver we won't see tonight, even after a strong run last night, is Bobby Pierce. Just a little bit before I recorded this episode, it was announced that he has been disqualified from tonight's 51st World 100 after an altercation between one of his crew members and a track worker. Apparently the incident happened after the program had been completed last night, and Pierce was not involved. Pierce said in a Facebook post that it had to do with the track's four wheeler rules and that he apologized for the disturbance and to his fans for missing tonight. Pierce will be allowed to compete in Friday and Saturday's racing for the 50th World 100. Pierce was scheduled to start 5th in the third heat race tonight, so I'm assuming they will just adjust that heat race's lineup, and not reshuffle all of them. I'm not sure I've ever heard of an entire team being disqualified for an event due to the actions of a single crew member, but without knowing more details, it's hard to really make a judgement here. It's really unfortunate for Pierce and his team, but it wouldn't be the World 100 without a little drama.
My other thoughts from last night have to do with the event format. McCreadie made a comment in victory lane about bringing a certain engine package to make sure they did well in qualifying, which ended up not mattering, because of the way they decided to do heat race inverts. For those of you that are long time late model fans, is it normal for the World 100 format to change from year to year? And in looking at the Dream, it seems as though the two events have very similar formats, at least for the prelim nights. Has that always been the case? I guess I'm wondering why these two would have similar formats, and am wondering why they would change. We all know the Chili Bowl format, or the Knoxville Nationals, and the standard series rules. I would have assumed big events like the World and Dream would keep the same formats from year to year. This all goes back to my thoughts about dirt racing formats being too complicated. These aren't so bad, but the fact that you can show up not sure how exactly it's going to go is bad for everyone involved.
Looking ahead to tonight, hot laps get underway at 6:30 PM ET again with opening ceremonies at 7. Tonight's winner of the 51st World 100 will take down $54,000. We'll be back tomorrow to break it all down.
Elsewhere on this Thursday, the Tuscarora 50 weekend at Port Royal Speedway gets underway. Tonight and tomorrow night are prelim shows, with $8000 and $10,000 going to each respective winner, and Saturday's 50 lapper paying $54,000 to the winner. In 2020, Cory Eliason and Lance Dewease picked up prelim wins, with Dewease also winning the big show on Saturday night. This will be another classic clash of the All Star Circuit of Champions and the Pennsylvania Posse. We got to see a little preview of things back on Monday, when Danny Dietrich picked up the Labor Day Classic win with a bunch of All Star guys in attendance. Competition will ramp up significantly starting tonight though. The All Stars have already made two appearances at the track this season, with Logan Wagner winning back in April, and Dewease winning on May 31st. There will be no Kyle Larson in the field this week as he'll be in Richmond, Virginia for the Cup race, but there will be plenty of star power to deal with. In looking at win picks, Dewease has to be at or near the top of the list. He isn't racing tonight, but will be in the field on Friday and Saturday. His resume speaks for itself. Wagner is another to keep an eye on. He grabbed that All Star win earlier in 2021, and knows Port Royal better than most, having racked up multiple consecutive track championships. Series points leader Tyler Courtney is no stranger to big money races, and he finished third to Dewease back in May. We also know that Anthony Macri can wheel a sprint car with the best of them at Port Royal, as long as he doesn't get caught out by that outside wall. A possible outsider to watch over the next few days is Aaron Reutzel. He was fast on Monday at Port Royal, and he'll be motivated to grab some of that money with his new team. Racing gets going tonight at 7PM ET and continues through Saturday night.
A little news for you before we close out today...
Announced yesterday, the World of Outlaws west coast swing will have one less race than originally planned. Placerville Speedway is part of the El Dorado County Fairgrounds and the entire facility has been taken over by firefighters battling the nearby Calder Fire. Several events at the track have been cancelled, and the Outlaw show on September 18th is joining that list of races lost. In response, the Friday night race at Keller Auto Speedway in Hanford, California is being moved to Saturday and it is becoming the $21,000 to win Tom Tarlton Classic. There will not be a race on that Friday, September 17th. Ticket holders for the Placerville event will be able to use those seats for the 2022 race at Placerville, or request a refund at a later date. Tickets for the originally schedule Friday show at Hanford will be honored for the Saturday race. David Gravel is the defending series winner at Hanford, from back in 2019. To see the full announcement, visit worldofoutlaws.com.
There are eight shows on the streaming schedule today, including the World 100 and Tuscarora 50 on FloRacing, USMTS Modifieds on RacinDirt, the Super Nationals and Gold Cup on Speed Sport on more. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrack.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!