DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Kofoid and Silva top Trophy Cup night 1, Gravel chasing Sweet to Lakeside, Hahn vs. Hickle at I-30 | Daily 10-22-2021
Coming up we've got last night's Trophy Cup and KKM Giveback Classic results, plus we are talking what's ahead this weekend for the World of Outlaws, ASCS, northeast modifieds and more. Let's go!
Today is Friday, October 22nd, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
When you pair one of the best young talents in open wheel racing with one of the top crew chiefs, odds are you're going to have pretty good results, and that was the case last night at Trophy Cup. The first of two prelim nights for the 360 sprint car event took place at Thunderbowl Raceway in Tulare, California and at the end it was Buddy Kofoid standing on the top step of the podium. He started third and raced past early leader Kaleb Montgomery on lap 10 and then drove away to the victory. Pennsylvania star Anthony Macri banged the boards late to finish second, DJ Netto was third, Corey Day fourth, and Kyle Hirst finished fifth. Dominic Scelzi, Tyler Courtney, and Cory Eliason were all also top ten finishers. It was a rough night for some, with both Rico Abreu and Justin Peck not transferring from their B Mains. Back to Kofoid, we haven't seen him in a sprint car a ton this season, as he's focused on the USAC midget championship and he was getting some pavement late model experience before he had a big crash over the summer and suffered some injuries. Him being paired this weekend with Paul Silva and the Works Limited 57 is a combination I think a lot of us were excited to see, and it definitely played out in a big way last night. Silva has obviously gotten a ton of attention lately because of his work with Kyle Larson, but he's also been successful with other drivers this season when Larson hasn't been available. Silva and Justin Sanders picked up some King of the West wins earlier this year, and now Silva and Buddy are probably the favorite for the remainder of the weekend at Trophy Cup. Looking towards tonight and the weekend, the 85 or so cars in attendance will line it back up for another round of prelim action tonight, with event points setting things up for Saturday's big show. The champion will take down $26,000. If you can't be at Tulare, The Cushion has the live stream.
I know some folks are turned off by the price of the stream over at the Cushion for the Trophy Cup, and I certainly understand why. I also get why they priced it they way the did, but it's a big ask to get folks to drop nearly $100 on a three day package, especially in this day and age of lower priced subscriptions from the other services. For the rest of the weekend, if you want to keep up with Trophy Cup in a free way, find Alex Nieten on Twitter @AlexNieten. He does a ton of stuff for the King of the West Series and Speed Sport, and he's live tweeting from the track all weekend. He posted interview videos last night post race as well with Kofoid, Kyle Hirst, and Macri talking about the action. Definitely super grateful that there are guys out there like him that provide coverage of some of these events that are a little off the national radar. It's something the dirt racing community as a whole needs to do a better job of in the future in making sure there is plenty of information and coverage coming out of these events. Hopefully with bigger car counts and more stars in the field, events like the Trophy Cup can expand in the future.
Night one of the Keith Kunz Giveback Classic at Port City Raceway is complete, with four drivers now locked into Saturday's 600cc micro feature. Last night's A main was wild, with Frank Flud taking the pole over Cannon McIntosh. Those two battled for the lead in the early going, with Gavan Boschele on the move behind them from sixth. At one point we had a pretty fierce fight between the top three, with Flud and Boschele eventually stretching away from the rest of the top five. Inside ten to go, the leaders were in lap traffic, and unfortunately for Flud he tangled with Kale Drake and ended up flipping wildly into turn three. The crash ended his night and handed the lead to Boschele for the restart. The Swindell Speedlab five machine was able to get get clear and drive away to the $1000 victory. Gavin Miller, McIntosh, and Jeffrey Newell completed the top four, and all are locked into Saturday's feature. Tonight at Port City we do it all over again with the other half of the field. $1000 is again going to the winner with four more locking into Saturday's main event. The winner of the big Saturday show will then get to choose between a $15,000 pay day or a ride with Kunz at the Chili Bowl coming up in January. If you missed last night's program and want to watch through the weekend, you can do so over at MAVTV Plus.
It feels like forever since we talked about them, but the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series is back racing tonight after basically two weeks off. The last time out it was Kerry Madsen and Spencer Bayston picking up wins at Port Royal Speedway, and tonight the series heads to Lakeside Speedway in Kansas with just five features remaining in the season. In the race for the championship, David Gravel has closed to within 92 points of Brad Sweet, but it's still going to be a tall task for Gravel to really make this close headed to World Finals. That's about 46 positions between the two, which means Gravel needs to average beating Sweet by more than 9 spots per night. The last three trips for the Outlaws to Lakeside have been won by Daryn Pittman, Donny Schatz, and Shane Stewart who won in 2020 driving the JJR 41. Unfortunately for Gravel, over that three race span, Brad Sweet and Donny Schatz lead all drivers in average finish at Lakeside at 3.67. Sweet has finishes of sixth, third, and second. Gravel's average finish in his last three appearances at Lakeside is ninth, with results of 14th, seventh, and sixth. Sweet has also outqualified Gravel at Lakeside recently, topping him by more than four positions on average. And looking ahead to the coming weeks, Sweet will be favored over Gravel at every track the rest of the way based on past performance, so you start to understand how much that 2 team is up against it, and why Gravel needed to probably do just a little bit more in Pennsylvania. As for a win pick for tonight, the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula likes Donny Schatz. He's been good there in the past, and over the past five and ten races has the best average finish of any driver in the series. If you can't be at Lakeside tonight, watch live on DIRTVision.
The championship battle with the ASCS National Tour culminates this weekend at I-30 Speedway for the Short Track Nationals. Blake Hahn enters with a 52 point lead over rookie JJ Hickle with just two race nights left to decide it, but a packed field will make things difficult for the two this weekend. At last check there were 57 cars on the entry list, and Lonnie Wheatley's piece said they expected more to be on the way, with possibly up to 70 taking part this weekend. Friday's racing features a full program culminating in twin 20 lap features. Points will be awarded through the night and the top two finishers in each feature will be locked into Saturday's dash. Over to Saturday, heat races will be set by draw with passing points then being awarded. Those passing points will be combined with Friday's points to determine lineups for the alphabet mains. Saturday night's 41 lap main event will pay over $10 grand to the winner. Sam Hafertepe Jr. is the defending Short Track Nationals winner, while the past winners list is a who's who of sprint car racing including names like Sammy Swindell, Paul McMahan, Steve Kinser, Brad Sweet, Jason Meyers, Jason Johnson, and Christopher Bell. This might be a good place for points leader Hahn to close out the title though, as he finished fourth last season in the main event, and was the Short Track Nationals winner in both 2018 and 2019. Like I said earlier in the week, Hickle will probably need the 52 team to have trouble over the next two nights to really have a shot at this thing, but with some many cars, anything is possible. Besides the usual cast of ASCS characters, the entry list also includes Hafertepe, Jeff Swindell, Derek Hagar, Roger Crockett and many more. If you can't get to I-30 this weekend, you can watch live on FloRacing.
The Short Track Super Series is back in action tonight for a special non-points race at Orange County Fair Speedway in New York. The modified competitors will race for 50 laps and $5000 to win as part of the Eastern States weekend at the track. With big money on the line on Sunday, the Friday field will be stout and includes Matt Sheppard, Stewart Friesen, Anthony Perrego, Mat Williamson, Larry Wight, and a bunch more. Saturday at Orange County will feature USAC East Coast Sprint Cars and the 358 modified Eastern States 100. Alex Bright currently leads Briggs Danner in the USAC east coast standings, and is poised to win the championship with only one race remaining following this weekend. On Sunday, the big block modified competitors will take on Orange County for the Eastern States 200 that pays $40,000 to the winner and a nice $1500 to start. Money Mat Williamson is the defending race winner, and with the tear he's been on lately, he might yet again be the guy to beat. But Friesen has won three of the past five runnings of the 200, going back to 2016. Tonight's Short Track Super Series race will be available on Flo, while the rest of the weekend can be watch through the race track. For more details, visit orangecountyfairspeedway.net.
The winter midget racing calendar just got a little bit busier yesterday with the announcement from USAC that the Jason Leffler Memorial, which was originally scheduled for October 8th at Wayne County Speedway, is moving indoors on December 18th. The race was lost to rain back in October, but now fans will get to see it at the Southern Illinois Center in Du Quoin, so rain won't be a problem. The event will use a format similar to Chili Bowl with points on the line early in the night, and the winner will take home a cool $8000. It will not be a part of the USAC midget championship though as a special, non-points event. The Leffler has been run on seven previous occasions, while the Southern Illinois Center has been the site of ten previous USAC midget events, including most recently back in September when Daniel Robinson won a regional event. More details on tickets and an event schedule are forthcoming. To see the full release, check out usacracing.com.
There are 16 shows on the streaming schedule today including the World of Outlaws on DIRTVision, the Short Track Super Series and ASCS on FloRacing, the Keith Kunz Giveback Classic on MAVTV Plus, and the Trophy Cup on the Cushion. To see the full daily streaming schedule through the weekend, hit up 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!