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Ryan Timms wins Trophy Cup finale, Buddy Kofoid champion; Gio Scelzi tops Outlaws at Lakeside | Daily 10-25-2021
Coming up we are talking fast young drivers at Trophy Cup, Gio Scelzi beating the Outlaws, we've got a first time ASCS champion, a big weekend for Matt Sheppard and more.
Today is Monday, October 25th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Trophy Cup 27 is complete, and the story of the weekend was centered around young drivers with immense talent. On Saturday night it was young Ryan Timms winning the battle, while Buddy Kofoid was winning the war. Kofoid's win on Thursday night, plus a second on Friday to winner Rico Abreu, and a fourth on Saturday carried him to the Trophy Cup points title and the $27,000 pay day. He was strong all weekend long in the Works 57 with Paul Silva on the wrenches, and I'm not sure many are surprised to see him walk away as the champion. Kofoid's talent and Silva's knowledge were going to be a very potent combination to try and beat. He joins a very strong list of names to have won the Trophy Cup, and I'm sure it means a lot to Kofoid, as he's from California. In the final rundown, Kofoid topped Colby Copeland and DJ Netto. As for Ryan Timms, the 15 year old from Oklahoma continues to be massively impressive in a sprint car. He won five times this season with the ASCS national tour, and on a night where he was just hoping to make the feature, ends up winning over a field of more than 80 cars and some of the best sprint car drivers in the country. We've talked about Timms on this show plenty in the past, and he continues to just be a gasser and pick up wins. For several of the other big name drivers in the field, results were mixed. It was a very respectable event for Anthony Macri, who finished 2nd on Thursday, 12th on Friday, and 11th on Saturday. It's really great to see him venturing out of Pennsylvania to get experience elsewhere, and he was strong. Tyler Courtney was a feature runner all three nights, but didn't compete for wins or top fives. Cory Eliason had two top ten finishes, Justin Peck couldn't transfer out of any of the B mains, and defending champion Rico Abreu's only bright spot was the Friday night win. Up next for the California sprint car scene is a pair of King of the West races coming up this weekend at Keller Auto Speedway and Kern County.
On Friday night at the Lakeside Speedway, Brad Sweet took another step forward towards the 2021 World of Outlaws championship, topping David Gravel by three positions in the final rundown and extending his points lead to 98 with four races remaining. We talked back on Friday about Sweet being a better finisher and better qualifier than Gravel at Lakeside, but Gravel did just about everything he needed to do early in the night to try and turn it around. He went quick time in qualifying and won the first heat race to make the night's dash. Gravel got burned by the dash draw though, starting back in eighth, and only climbing to seventh. That meant a seventh starting position for the night, with Sweet up in third. That seventh starting position has been a kiss of death all season, with no Outlaw wins coming from seventh, while sixth has five and eighth has one. According to the numbers, the odds were against Gravel. Both drivers finished lower than they started, but Sweet's sixth with Gravel back in ninth was exactly what the 49 needed. So 98 points over four races is 24.5 points a night, divide that by two, and Gravel must average beating Sweet by 12 and a quarter spots per night. That isn't going to happen. Out front in the feature, it looked like Kerry Madsen was on his way to a dominating win. He led the first 26 laps from the outside front row, but a caution with four to go for a slowing Brian Brown gave Gio Scelzi the opening he needed. He slipped by Madsen on the restart and drove away to his first Outlaw win of the season, and third of his career. Donny Schatz finished second, Madsen dropped to third, Aaron Reutzel was fourth, and Logan Schuchart was fifth. Scelzi ran much of the race with a bent up race car after he and Aaron Reutzel came together on the front stretch early on, and Scelzi made sure to thank Reutzel in his victory lane comments saying quote “I fell back early when Aaron Reutzel tried to crash me on the frontstretch. It bent the tie rod, drag link, the steering was almost sideways, but it just gave me some extra motivation to race that much harder” unquote. Gio certainly not mincing words. That KCP team has definitely had an up and down year, winning the 360 Nationals, but not much else. Bernie Stuebgen left the crew chief post a few weeks back, and since then former Reutzel crew chief Dylan Buswell has taken over. Not a bad start to his tenure as the head wrench. Looking ahead, the Outlaws race Friday night at Lawton in Oklahoma, Saturday at Devil's Bowl in Texas, and then they close out the year at World Finals November 4th through the 6th.
The ASCS National Tour for 360 winged sprint cars closed out their 2021 season over the weekend at I-30 Speedway for the Short Track Nationals. We entered the final event with JJ Hickle 52 points shy of championship leader Blake Hahn which meant that Hickle would probably need Hahn to have issues to really have a chance. Unfortunately for Hickle, that trouble never materialized for the 52 team. Instead, Hahn put on one hell of a performance, battling the likes of Jordan Mallett and Sam Hafertepe and eventually coming out on top for his third career Short Track Nationals win and claiming his first ever series championship. Hahn started fourth and was in the mix for the entire race, initially leading laps 12 through 15, but lap traffic made the battle out front really interesting all race long. The races only cautions happened inside the final ten laps and that kept the top runners bunched together, and helped Mallett keep Hahn at bay. But coming to three laps to go, Hahn was able to finally clear the 14 and he drove away over the final few laps to the $10,000 victory. Hafertepe finished second, Mallett third, Hickle ended up fourth, and Derek Hagar was fifth. In the end, Hahn topped Hickle in the standings by 72 points on the strength of seven wins, 23 top fives and 35 top tens in 39 feature events. Hickle in his rookie season had five wins, 25 top fives and 32 top tens in 38 feature appearances. Congrats to Blake and his team on the championship, and what a great season for Hickle. So impressive all year long, and hopefully we'll get to see him on a touring series again in the future.
At the KKM Giveback Classic at Port City on Saturday night we had a relative unknown driver in Steven Snyder Jr. jump up and stun a talented field of racers to grab the win in the finale. The 16 year old from Maryland started way back in 14th and rolled some hot bottom to the front. He got by leader Daison Pursley late in the going to bag the win and his choice of either a Chili Bowl ride with Keith Kunz or $15,000. In his victory lane interview he said he would be taking the ride, so come January he'll be making his Chili Bowl debut with Keith Kunz Motorsports. Pursley, Brent Crews, Frank Flud, and Gavan Boschele completed the top five behind Snyder. I love the idea of this event, with drivers able to come in and win their way into a seat. It feels very much like the gong show we used to get from Roush Racing for their developmental seats, or even something like Q school for professional golfers. People always piss and moan about ride buying, but Snyder came in this weekend, was really impressive, and muscled his way into a top seat for Chili Bowl. It doesn't get more meritocratic than that.
The Eastern States weekend at Orange County Fair Speedway is in the books, and it was a good few days to be Matt Sheppard. On Friday night he bagged the nearly $6000 to win Hard Clay Finale with the Short Track Super Series, and then on Sunday outdueled Stewart Friesen in the Eastern States 200 to take down another $40,000. It was Sheppard's first career win in the Eastern States. Behind Superman, Friesen finished second, Mat Williamson was third, Anthony Perrego fourth, and Peter Britten completed the top five. Sheppard has already claimed the Short Track Super Series north region title, he's headed this weekend to Georgetown to try and take the south region from Mike Mahaney, and then following that he'll be at World Finals to claim the Super DIRTcar Series championship. Not a bad few weekends to finish the season for Sheppard.
Even though both national tours didn't race over the weekend, there was still plenty of money to be had in a dirt late model around the country. Jimmy Owens rolled down to Florida in a crate late model owned by Michael Lloyd and bagged the $26,000 to win Powell Family Memorial at All Tech Raceway. Up in Pennsylvania, future World of Outlaws rookie Max Blair used a backup car to win the $25,000 top prize in the Keystone Cup at the Bedford Fairgrounds. The Fall Classic down at Whynot Motorsports park saw it's first ever back-to-back winner with Dennis Erb Jr. taking down the $15K. The One Man Band topped a nice field that included Cade Dillard, Tony Jackson Jr., and Spencer Hughes. Ashton Winger made it a clean sweep at Senoia over the weekend, winning both Friday and Saturday night's Southern All Star events for a combined $13,000 payout. Cory Hedgecock was a $12,000 winner at I-75, Trent Ivey bagged the super late model win at Modoc, and Josh Rice took the win at Florence. To see more from the late model weekend, check out dirtondirt.com.
There is a little dirt racing on this Monday with the opening of the Carolina Midget Showdown at Millbridge Speedway here in North Carolina. Millbridge normally hosts outlaw karts and micros, but they did run this midget event last year, and if you might remember this was one of the first times, if not the first time we saw Chase Elliott in a midget. This event is a two day affair with full programs both nights. Tonight is a $2500 to win race for the midgets along with 600 non wing micros and beginner box stock karts. This isn't really a big area for midgets, so don't expect a huge car count, but the quality of the cars we do get should be really good. I've seen that Christopher Bell and Gavan Boschele will be in attendance with Keith Kunz rides, Chad Boat is bringing Ryan Timms, Brent Crews, and Jade Avedisian, Alex Bowman will have his midget out for CJ Leary, and we should also see Cannon McIntosh, Zach Daum, Ethan Mitchell, and Nick Hoffman back in a midget. If you aren't nearby, both nights will be live on DIRTVision and you can watch with your fast pass. Also, Walkapedia is sponsoring the event, so you know he'll be posting a ton of updates to his Twitter account.
Speaking of streaming...
There are two shows on the streaming schedule today with DIRTVision showing night one of the Carolina Midget Showdown at Millbridge, and Flo 24/7 happening over at FloRacing. 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 Monday. 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!