DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Late Model Knoxville Nationals open, Hockett/McMillin Memorial on tap | DIRTRACKR Daily 9/16/21
Today is Thursday, September 16th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Coming up we'll preview tonight's openers for the Late Model Knoxville Nationals and Hockett/McMillin Memorial, and dig into Bill Balog's rookie All Star season by request.
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.
After not happening in 2020 because of the pandemic, the Late Model Knoxville Nationals are taking place this weekend, with racing starting tonight at Knoxville. This is a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event, with Thursday and Friday serving as prelim nights to setup Saturday's racing. The next two nights feature full programs of racing, with $7000 going to the winner. Saturday night's 100 lap main event will pay $50,000 to the winner. In 16 previous runnings of the event, we've had 12 different winners, with Jimmy Owens winning the two most recent races, in 2019 and 2018. Mike Marlar won it two years in a row before that, in 2016 and 2017. On the Knoxville Raceway website, they have a pre-entry list that includes 40 drivers. It's the regular cast of characters for Lucas, plus names like Rick Eckert, Brandon Sheppard, Ricky Weiss, Kyle Strickler, Ryan Gustin, Jason Feger, Chris Simpson and more. Matt Cosner is on the entry list, but we know he won't be there as his team is recovering from covid. There are also rumors about several other drivers showing up that aren't on that list. But we know that the Texas Dirt Nationals which is paying $50,000 to win on Saturday night is going to draw some cars away, and the ongoing parts and tire shortages will also probably affect some guys. Also, Kyle Larson will be at Knoxville in the Rumley six, but their plan is to only race tonight, with Larson off to Bristol this weekend for NASCAR. Larson is coming off that sixth place finish on Monday at Fairbury, after leading laps early but suffering a flat tire. Jonathan Davenport tweeted this morning that only Saturday night's racing pays points, so we won't have any movement in the standings until then. Tim McCreadie is the current series championship leader by 270 points over Davenport. Hudson O'Neal is only another five points behind Davenport in third. Nobody else is really in the fight behind them, with Kyle Bronson and Owens completing the top five. McCreadie is coming in off the strength of back-to-back wins at Port Royal and Portsmouth, and has been the hottest series driver as of late. Davenport doesn't have a Lucas win since Lucas Oil Speedway on July 17th and will need to piggyback off that World 100 win to get things going again. O'Neal hasn't finished worse than sixth in his past five races, and that includes wins at Port Royal and at Batesville for the Topless 100. So there are plenty of storylines to follow the next three nights, between big money on the line, an ongoing points battle, Kyle Larson, etc. It should be a really fun couple of days. All three nights are being streamed on MAVTV Plus, with Saturday night's racing also available live on MAVTV.
Also starting tonight is the three day Hockett/McMillin Memorial at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Missouri. The event features the ASCS National Tour and the POWRi WAR Sprint Cars. At last check I saw 60 winged entries for the event and 58 non-wing entries. So there will be no lack of cars to watch over the three nights. The winged list includes the ASCS regulars plus Brenham Crouch, Ayrton Gennetten, Zach Daum, Chase Randall, and Josh Baughman. The WAR list includes Zach Daum, Noah Gass, Casey Shuman, Joe B Miller and more. We talked on the show yesterday about the points battle happening with the ASCS between Blake Hahn and Matt Covington. With WAR, things are pretty much over I'd say. This is the final WAR weekend of the season, and Mario Clouser enters with a 100 point lead in the standings on the strength of six wins, eight top fives, and 12 top tens in 14 races. I believe this will be Clouser's first WAR championship. There are two full nights of racing Thursday and Friday, with Saturday being the $10,000 to win finale for the ASCS drivers and $3077 to win finale for WAR. Sam Hafertepe Jr. won the winged portion last year, while Garrett Aitken was the non-wing winner. All three nights will be streamed live on MAVTV Plus.
A big topic of yesterday's show was James McFadden quietly having a very good season with the Outlaws, and in the YouTube comments on the show, Brian popped up and wanted to know why I don't talk more about the All Stars, and specifically Bill Balog. I'm going to push back a bit on Brian, because we talk All Stars pretty regularly on this show and have been following Tyler Courtney's dominance all season. As for Balog, his rookie season with the series has definitely gotten lost a bit, so I figured we do this for Brian and take a look at the Northpole Nightmare's season to date. Through 44 races, Balog is currently fourth in the standings behind Courtney, Cory Eliason, and Hunter Schuerenberg. Fourth through sixth is pretty tight right now, with Balog, Zeb Wise, and Cap Henry all only separated by 46 points. While the top three in the standings are pretty much set with only five race nights left, this battle for fourth is still very much in play. Balog joined the All Stars full time this season after racking up 10 IRA sprint car championships racing across Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and more. He is also a previous World of Outlaws winner, at Beaver Dam back in 2016. So far this season for Balog and the team, there have been some incredibly high points, and definitely some tough stretches. The high point was definitely winning back to back at Plymouth Dirt Track and Angell Park back in early June. They were Balog's first two series wins ever. Along the way though, he's also had 14 finishes outside the top 15. In all, he has 11 top fives and 18 top tens in 44 starts, including the two wins and 67 laps led. His average finish is just under 12th and does have a positive feature plus/minus at plus 52. He had a solid weekend most recently at Port Royal during the Tusky, finishing second on Thursday, 11th on Friday, and eighth in the big Saturday race. With Williams Grove and Lincoln on tap for the weekend, Balog will need to keep up the strong runs to stay ahead of Wise and Henry. If you'd like to know more about Bill, go find Open Red episode 157. Me and Ross had him on back in 2019 and we covered a lot of his journey. We'll have more on the All Star races ahead on tomorrow's show.
If you ever have topics you'd like to see me cover or questions for the show, don't hesitate to let me know. You can comment on the YouTube videos, drop me messages on social media, or email info@dirtrackr.com. I also got asked recently if I'll continue doing shows during the offseason, and as some of my long time followers know, we did shows all through the offseason last year, and I don't have any plans to slow down once the season ends. There is always silly season news to talk about, plus winter racing in the south and down under, and we'll get into other topics. Just to get some of you up to speed, the first episode of this show debuted on February 6th, 2020 and since then we are sitting on 407 episodes as of today. They rack up quick when you do them five days a week. I've also done an additional 52 conversations episodes with various dirt racing personalities. So plenty of content already out there, with a lot more to come. Thanks to everyone that continues to tune in regularly.
There are eight shows on the streaming schedule today. FloRacing has practice from the Fonda 200 and Flo 24/7. MAVTV Plus has the opening nights of the Hockett/McMillin Memorial and Late Model Knoxville Nationals. RacinBoys also has the Hockett. RacinDirt has the WISSOTA 100, Speed Sport has action from Cedar Lake Speedway, and SprintCarUnlimited.TV has 410s tonight from BAPS Motor 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!