DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Brent Marks, Daulton Wilson, Billy Decker win at Cherokee; Jade Avedisian set for USAC midget debut | Daily 11-3-2021

Coming up we've got a few stats to share to illustrate Brad Sweet's dominance, plus we have results from last night's racing at Gaffney, news on another young driver making their USAC debut and more. Let's go...

Today is Wednesday, November 3rd, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

I'm going to kick off today's show with a few numbers for you to help illustrate this run of incredible performances we've seen from Brad Sweet over the last three or four seasons with the World of Outlaws. He's going to roll into World Finals on Thursday and officially claim the 2021 series championship. This specific series championship is one of the most difficult to win in motorsports I think, with only 10 guys having done it in 44 seasons. With Sweet specifically the numbers show a driver who is incredibly consistent and rarely off his game. A few of the more advanced stats I have in the analytics section of dirtrackr.com are top five and top ten efficiency and top five and top ten value finishes. The efficiency numbers show how often a driver is able to protect a good start, and the value stats show how often they can turn a sub-optimal start into a good finish. In the efficiency categories, Sweet is at or near the top of both. Over the past four seasons, he's had 142 top five starts and 121 top five finishes in those races. That's an efficiency number of 85%. As for top tens, Sweet has 230 top ten starts, and 208 top ten finishes in those races. That's good for a top ten efficiency of over 90%. I have 275 total races in the database for Sweet, so just the fact that he's been able to start top ten in more than 83.5% of them is incredible. As for the value finish categories, Sweet has very solid numbers in both compared to his peers, but doesn't top either category. What's interesting though, is he doesn't need to be. In those 275 Outlaw races, he's only started outside the top ten 45 times. That is incredibly low. For comparison, Donny Schatz has 70, David Gravel has 70, Carson Macedo has 79, Logan Schuchart has 117, and Sheldon Haudenschild has 105. Sweet hasn't needed to make chicken salad out of chicken you-know-what at a high clip, because he just doesn't start outside the top ten very often. It's hard to beat a guy who damn near always starts in the top ten, and when he does is able to protect his position all the way to the checkers. Oh yeah, and he's got more wins over the last four years than anyone else. We'll have more on the Outlaws and World Finals tomorrow.

Cherokee Speedway down in Gaffney, South Carolina was in action last night with 410 sprint cars, super late models, and big block modifieds. They tried to piggyback off World Finals at Charlotte, which is only an hour away, but they were not able to draw a ton of cars for their $5000 to win shows. I saw a few tweets last night that they got something like six modifieds, 13 sprint cars, and 15 or 16 late models. Not super surprised by those numbers, and I saw a few folks talking about a few different reasons for the low car counts, including people and teams not knowing about the race and the entry fees. I also think the parts shortages combined with three days at Charlotte upcoming probably kept teams away as well. No sense in risking equipment with World Finals on tap. I do follow Cherokee Speedway's social media, so I've been seeing their posts about the event for the last few weeks or so, but I don't know how much outreach they did to try and lure teams to the race. You weren't going to get any of the full time World of Outlaws Sprint Car teams as I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have been given permission to run. And a lot of the big block teams aren't professional organizations, so it's a tough sell to get those guys to come down early. Either way though, they did have some cars and did put on racing for the fans in attendance. Billy Decker picked up the big block modified win in what was one of his final starts in the Gypsum Racing 91. If you might remember from a few weeks ago, John Wight is shutting down two of his three teams including Decker's 91. Decker now heads to World Finals tied with Mat Williamson for second in the points standings and still looking for his first win of the year. The sprint car field included Gio Scelzi, Parker Price Miller, Shane Stewart, Danny Smith, and Zach Hampton, but it was Brent Marks grabbing the win in his first night out in the white car with new partner Allen Murray. PPM and Eric Riggins were the rest of the podium. In the late model show, Daulton Wilson held off multiple late race challenges from Brandon Overton to get the victory. Chris Madden, and Ross Bailes were also in attendance. Bailes actually led early before he lost the drive shaft and went out of the race.

If you're in the area today, there is no racing at World Finals, but the Carolina Micro Showdown continues at Millbridge if you'd like to see some racing. Some pretty big names will battle it out for $10,000 tonight. Trevor Cline leads flight A event points over Ryan Timms, Brent Crews, Buddy Kofoid, and Brett Moffitt. Nick Drake tops flight B over Tim Nye, Briggs Danner, Jarid Kunkle, and Hunter Kohn. Also in the field are names like Sheldon Creed, Nick Hoffman, Christopher Bell, Gavan Boschele, and Joe B. Miller. The program tonight will include four qualifier races, C's, B's, and then the 50 lap main event. If you can't be there, watch it live on DIRTVision.

Elsewhere tonight, Lenny Batycki and PRN's At the Track are hosting a World Finals kick off party at the pavilion at ZMax Dragway starting at 6:30pm. They'll have driver Q&A's and live music through 10pm. Stop by and check it out, Lenny will have a solid group of drivers with him on the stage. ZMax is right next door to the dirt track.

You've heard me talk about her before, but when the USAC midgets begin their west coast swing next week at Arizona Speedway, Jade Avedisian will be making her series debut. Avedisian will campaign a third Chad Boat Industries machine along with teammates Chris Windom and Ryan Timms. So far in 2021, she has 12 victories in a micro and has made 10 POWRi midget starts, including three top ten finishes and a fifth at Lake Ozark in May. She's also a past winner at the Tulsa Shootout. Avedisian will run both nights at Arizona, and then be in the field at the final seven USAC events in her home state of California. Those races will feature some stout competition, between the USAC regulars and the strong contigent of west coast racers. It will be an awesome opportunity to get some experience against the best in the business. This final stretch of 2021 races for the USAC midgets begins November 12th and 13th at Arizona Speedway.

Every Wednesday I like to spotlight the other dirt racing podcasts out there and let you know what and who you can hear on the various shows. This week Winged Nation has Blake Hahn, Logan Schuchart and Seth Bergman. Open Red has Wayne Johnson, LoudPedal has the winner of the KKM Giveback Classic Steven Snyder Jr., Stick Signals has episodes with Mike Fowler, Chris Arnold, and Chris Ferguson. The Rigsby Report has Dale McDowell, the Dirt from Knoxville has Ayrton Gennetten, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, Dirt Nerds, Passing Points, and the Midwest Autosports podcast. To see the full list of shows and episodes, hit up dirtrackr.com/podcasts.

There are two things on the streaming schedule for today. DIRTVision has night two of the Carolina Micro Showdown at Millbridge, and FloRacing has 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!