DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Leary wins midget show at Millbridge, lessons to be learned by dirt racing from F1 at COTA | Daily 10-26-2021

Coming up we are talking midgets at Millbridge, and then I've got thoughts on lessons to be learned from the Formula 1 weekend at COTA. Let's go...

Today is Tuesday, October 26th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

The Carolina Midget Showdown got underway last night at Millbridge Speedway, and after the weather cleared out, we were treated to a good night of racing. As expected, the field was pretty small at only 15 cars, but the quality was strong, and honestly, Millbridge is such a small joint, I'm not sure you get better racing there with more cars in the field. In the feature CJ Leary and Christopher Bell led the field to green, and Bell was quickly out front early, banging the boards. The top two were right together through the early stages though, as Leary, driving Alex Bowman's midget, was really strong off the bottom. Eventually, Leary was able to get clear of Bell and take control of the race. He then survived multiple restarts late to take the $2500 victory. Bell settled for second, Gavan Boschele finished third, Ethan Mitchell was fourth, and Ryan Timms completed the top five. Brent Crews also ran in the top five early, but ended up out after a slider attempt on Bell went sideways and he suffered some broken front suspension bits. Tonight, they will line em up and do it all over again, this time for $7500 to win. Other notables in the field included Cannon McIntosh, Zach Daum, Nick Hoffman, Tim Buckwalter, and Jade Avedisian. If you can't get out to Millbridge, the racing will again be live on DIRTVision tonight, and the card also includes box stock outlaw karts and non wing 600 micros.

Besides Bell and Leary last night, I think Crews and Boschele really stood out in the midgets. Both were fast, and I will add the caveat that they both have a ton of laps around Millbridge, but they had no problem mixing it up with the top guys. Crews has been strong all year, bagging a bunch of POWRi wins and fighting for the series championship. Both threw slider attempts at Bell, and watching Boschele really go wheel to wheel with CBell through the middle portion of the race was impressive. Not many 13 year olds are going to get the opportunity to race with a three time Chili Bowl winner and current Cup series regular, but Boschele raced him like a veteran. I've also seen a bunch of questions and social media posts about Bell, and it does appear as though he's back in the Kunz camp. His last few midget starts have come with KKM, and there is no reason to believe that he won't be in a Kunz midget for the Chili Bowl. We know Bell sold his sprint car, and he hasn't raced with Chad Boat since the Chili Bowl back in January, and he's got his own shop for the micro stuff now. Hopefully we'll get to see him run some more stuff this offseason, including maybe the indoor show at Du Quoin and it would be fun to see him back at Turkey Night.

On to my main topic of today's show. Formula 1 was at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas last weekend, and over the three days brought somewhere in the neighborhood of 400,000 people through the gates. In addition, according to Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal, another 1.225 million people watched the race on ABC, which was a massive jump versus past years and races. The F1 TV ratings trailed both the Cup Series and Xfinity Series at Kansas, but not by much. I've seen a bunch of social media posts about the US Grand Prix, and there have even been some articles about comparisons between decisions made by NASCAR and F1. Definitely an interesting situation to follow, and there has been a ton of chatter about the F1 show on Netflix, Drive to Survive and it's affect. And for good reason. The last several seasons of the show have taken us behind the scenes of the global motorsports series, and it has opened up a lot of eyes and brought new fans to the racing. You have a diverse cast of characters participating in a dangerous competition that takes them to all sorts of locales, with plenty of drama to be had from start to finish. What's not to like? For long time fans of motorsports though, this is nothing new. The same things you see happening on Drive to Survive play out every weekend across the country, from big time NASCAR shows to your local dirt track. The only real difference here, is that cameras are around to catch the F1 drama. Yes, Netflix's massive audience has helped drive the growth, but there is a big lesson to be learned here by not only NASCAR and IndyCar, but your favorite dirt racing series and track. Pepole want the story. They want to know the characters. They want to see the drama. Give them the whole package. The competition of the sport is great, but it's not the only thing it has to offer. For dirt racing specifically, the World of Outlaws, or USAC, or Lucas, or whoever don't need Netflix to drive a story about their racing. A real investment into their social platforms, including YouTube, would go a long way to helping grow the sport. It's been a few years ago now, but I spent nearly an entire day getting blasted by late model racer Tyler Erb and squaring off with much of the dirt late model universe on Twitter because I said they weren't doing enough to promote their racing online. I said their should be more coverage, more videos, more behind the scenes and was met with vitriol from Erb, some fans, and even resistance from people like Michael Rigsby who started Dirt on Dirt and now runs FloRacing. In the span of time since then, we've seen the meteoric rise of the Hunt the Front YouTube channel. Those guys are doing literally everything I suggested, and they now have the biggest dirt racing channel on YouTube. That channel didn't explode because people are super siked about regional late model racing. The channel exploded because it's a story about a group of guys chasing their dreams with some great visuals. Hunt the Front has nearly 30,000 more subscribers than the World of Outlaws. If you think I'm wrong, we can go further. The three biggest dirt racing YouTube channels I track are Hunt the Front, the World of Outlaws, and in third? Tanner Holmes. A kid from Oregon who started in outlaw karts and has moved into sprint cars. Outlaw karts aren't huge. Running limited sprint cars in Oregon, also not big. But Holmes has amassed over 50,000 subscribers. Why? Because story. He's taken you along for the ride. Bigger than USAC, Eldora Speedway, and Knoxville's channels combined. Motorsports is full of baked in drama. We just need to find more ways to show it. You'd be surprised how far a camera or two and some decent editing would go. If you're a series or track or racer and want to see more people at the track, give them something to be invested in. 400,000 people went to the US Grand Prix because they wanted to see Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton battle it out in front of them. They've seen all the sniping back and forth between Toto Wolff and Christian Horner on Netflix. This was their chance to see Red Bull and the Mercs do it on track, live. This old school horseshit about the streaming services and social media taking people away from the track is just flat wrong. A whole bunch of people watched a show on Netflix, bought tickets and travel, and showed up to a race track. The race was on network television, not pay TV. Not a streaming service. And they came to see it live. This stuff works. The lessons are there to be learned. The question is, who is going to get their head out of the sand, break through the antiquated thinking, and do something about it.

There are two shows on the streaming schedule today with DIRTVision showing night two 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!