DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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James McFadden quietly having strong Outlaw season, ASCS battle tightens | DIRTRACKR Daily 9/15/21
Today is Wednesday, September 15th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Coming up we have schedule news from the World of Outlaws Late Model Series, results and a points update from the ASCS National Tour from last night, and then we dive into James McFadden's rookie Outlaw season to date.
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 World of Outlaws Late Model Series announced yesterday that their upcoming races at the Rev in Louisiana have been postponed to next season because of ongoing issues with tire shortages. Fans with already purchased tickets can hold on to them for the future date, or request a refund once the new dates have been announced. In response, the series has added a new date at Senoia Raceway in Georgia. Following the October 1st Mike Duvall Memorial at Cherokee, the series will head to Senoia for a $10,000 to win show on Saturday, October 2nd. It will be the series first visit to the Georgia facility since 2018. Chris Madden is the most recent winner. With the Rev weekend gone, the only races that remain in 2021 now are the shows at Cherokee and Senoia, followed the World Finals at Charlotte. Brandon Sheppard is on his way to his fourth series championship.
The ASCS National Tour took on the Clay County Fair Speedway last night in a little mid week action before the Hockett/McMillin Memorial gets underway this weekend at Lucas Oil Speedway. After a win last weekend at I-80 Speedway, Blake Hahn had stretched away a bit from Matt Covington and JJ Hickle in the standings, but things got a little tighter last night. Covington started on the pole, was able to hold off Hahn in the closing stages, and he went on to lead every lap en route to his fourth series win of 2021. Hahn finished second, Dylan Westbrook third, JJ Hickle fourth, and Skyler Prochaska was fifth. So now with seven race nights left in the season, Hahn leads Covington by 55 points and Hickle by 88. ASCS points really vary by where you finish, but on average through the field it's about 2.67 points per position. But for example, it's 8 points between first and second. Unless Hahn really mets down, I'd say that Hickle is probably out of this. He needs on average more than 12.5 points per night to run the 52 down. Covington still has a chance though. He's less than eight points per night back, so this might come down to the wire. The Hockett/McMillin Memorial starts tomorrow night in Wheatland, Missouri. Besides being just a good weekend of racing, I'd keep an eye out here on this points battle. Besides the ASCS National Tour, the weekend also includes non-wing sprint car action with the POWRi WAR Series.
There have been a lot of different topics of conversation around the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series this season, including this championship fight between Sweet, Gravel and Macedo, the drama with Aaron Reutzel and his penalty, plus Donny Schatz trying to track down win number 300 and more. Through all of it, there is one driver that's having a really nice season that I think has been overlooked a bit. After missing the early part of the season because he was still in Australia for the birth of his first child, James McFadden has put together a very solid rookie campaign with the Outlaws. He currently sits seventh in both the drivers points and the team points, and even though it's close, he probably wouldn't be ahead of Schuchart if he'd run those races. But if you look at the stats, McFadden's average finish is actually two tenths of a position better than Schuchart's. The main reason being all of the tough nights the 1S team has faced. But Logan has more wins, quite a few more top fives, and more top tens, so I doubt McFadden could be ahead, but it shows just how good of a run JMac has had in 2021. McFadden's only real disappointing weekend of the season was at Eldora for the Kings Royals. He finished 21st in the first prelim race, and then 13th in the B main during the daytime Royal. But since then he's bounced back really strong. In the 22 races since, including the Knoxville Nationals, he's only finished outside the top ten twice. One was 13th at Eldora on July 18th, and the other was an 11th at Weedsport. Otherwise, he's been top ten every night, and that stretch also includes nine top fives plus that win at Skagit. Over the last five series races, only Brad Sweet has a better average finish, and over the last ten, he's just behind Sweet, Gravel and Schatz. While our attention has been elsewhere with the Outlaws, McFadden has suddenly become one of the most consistent drivers in the series, which as we've seen with Sweet, is vital if you're going to be a regular contender for the championship. The biggest knock I see for JMac right now is his lack of top five finishes. In the 60 races I have for 2021 in the database, McFadden only has 17 top fives, which is about 28%. Every driver in front of him in the standings all have 30 top five finishes or more this season. But I'm not going to ding him too hard for that, as this is still his rookie season. For a bit of a comparison, Macedo was a top five runner about 23% of the time during his rookie run in 2019. You can obviously make the argument that McFadden came in much more prepared than Macedo, but you are seeing that play out statistically. With Reutzel and Parker Price Miller out of the picture and Brock Zearfoss pretty far behind, McFadden will be the 2021 rookie of the year, but I'd say he's earned it. It's been a nice first time out with the Outlaws and definitely something to build on for the future.
There are a bunch of new dirt racing podcast episodes this week to check out from the various shows. Winged Nation has Tyler Drueke at Logan Wagner, Open Red has Peter Murphy and Jason Meyers, Forward Bite has Austin Kirkpatrick, Ohio Dirt has Creed Kemenah, Quicktime also has Tyler Drueke, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, Dirt Nerds, Wednesdays with Wayne and Passing Points. To see the full list of shows and episodes, hit up dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
There are four items on the streaming schedule for today. DIRTVision has micros from Millbridge Speedway, RacinDirt has another night of WISSOTA 100 action from I-94 Speedway, Speed Sport has fair racing from the Clay County Fair Speedway, and there is 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 you have a good Wednesday. 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!