DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Champions set to be crowned at World Finals, Swanson beats Kevin Thomas Jr. in a photo finish | Daily 11-5-2021
Coming up we get you ready for two nights of racing at World Finals, we're talking a first time USAC winner at Oval Nationals, what's on tap for the weekend in California and with POWRi, we've got some track news, and I've got a little news of my own to share. Let's go.
Today is Friday, November 5th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
We lost night one of World Finals on Thursday to wet weather, but things should be good to go for the rest of the weekend, and fans won't miss out on any of the action. Thursday's qualifying and preliminary action is just being shifted to the Friday and Saturday programs. Tonight and tomorrow will feature full schedules and two complete race nights for the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series, World of Outlaws Late Model Series, and the Super DIRTcar Series. We've been talking about it a bunch, but Brad Sweet, Brandon Sheppard, and Matt Sheppard are all set to be crowned champions for 2021. But there is still plenty of money and trophies to race for coming up. The big blocks didn't race at Charlotte in 2020 because of the pandemic, so you have to go back to 2019 to find the most recent winners. Jimmy Phelps topped Erick Rudolph and Larry Wight on night one, and Billy Decker won the finale over eventual champion Mat Williamson and Mike Maresca. There is no championship drama this season, but names like Decker, Max McLaughlin, Rudolph, Phelps, and Wight are all still searching for their first wins of 2021. The World of Outlaws Late Models have had four different winners in the past four features at Charlotte, with Tim McCreadie, Brandon Overton, Jimmy Owens, and Chris Madden all taking victories. All of those drivers will be in attendance this weekend along with Jonathan Davenport, Shane Clanton, Scott Bloomquist, Chris Ferguson, Rick Eckert, and Nick Hoffman. Ashton Winger is the most recent winner with the series back in October at Senoia, and series champion Brandon Sheppard is riding in on an incredible streak of 28 straight top ten finishes. He and that Rocket team will definitely want to go out on a high note adding a win or two to that series championship. Just as a race fan, I'm going to be rooting for Ryan Gustin. He's not going to win rookie of the year, but he's been solid in this first season out with the Outlaws, and I thought we would have already seen him win. He's got nine top fives in 2021, including two seconds. A win sure would finish it off nicely. With the sprint car series, Logan Schuchart and David Gravel have combined to win the previous five trips to Charlotte, and Schuchart leads all drivers back through 2018 in average finish at the track. The only points position really in question right now is third with Carson Macedo holding it, and Donny Schatz only four points back. Whoever comes out on top there will earn an additional $5000, with third getting $60 grand and fourth getting $55k. A strong field of cars will be at Charlotte joining the full time Outlaws. We know this is the final ever sprint car weekend for Jac Haudenschild, All Star champion Tyler Courtney is here, as are Parker Price Miller, Cole Macedo is driving Alex Bowman's car, Buddy Kofoid is in the SpeedLab 39, Shane Stewart is back behind the wheel, Brian Brown, and a Central PA contingent including Danny Dietrich. So between the three series, no lack of talent, cars or storylines over the next two nights. If you're headed to the track, bring those warm clothes, but if not, DIRTVision has the live stream.
If you didn't stay up late last night to watch it live, make sure to go back today and watch last night's USAC sprint car feature from the first night of the Oval Nationals at Perris Auto Speedway. I talked on yesterday's show about Kevin Thomas Jr. needing to keep winning to try and close the gap between he and Brady Bacon, and he did just about everything he needed to last night to do that. He ended up leading 28 of the 30 laps, but ended up second in a wild run to the finish on the last lap. In a feature that was slowed by only one caution, pole sitter Jake Swanson trailed KTJ for most of the night, but was able to really challenge the nine car late in the going in lap traffic. He briefly took the lead on lap 25, before giving it right back. On the white flag lap, Thomas protected low into turn three to avoid a slider from Swanson, but Jake went the other way and went full send on the high side. Out of four coming to the checkered, we had Brady Bacon on the bottom, KTJ in the middle, and Swanson on the wall. Swanson and Thomas drag raced all the way to the checkered with Swanson stealing the victory at the line by exactly one one-hundredth of a second. Richie Murray from USAC wrote that it was the closest finish of the season and one of the closest in series history. Afterwards in victory lane, Swanson was obviously fired up for his first series win, saying quote "I wasn’t lifting. It didn’t matter if we hit the fence. It didn’t matter if I flipped the length of the front straightaway. I was not going to lift. I was buried in it. I bounced off the fence, I bounced off him, and he gave me just enough room." unquote. It was one hell of a finish to start the week, hopefully the racing continues like this through Saturday. Behind Swanson, KTJ was second, Bacon third, CJ Leary fourth, and Justin Grant fifth. In the race for the championship, Thomas was only able to make up a single point, so definitely still some work to do if he's going to catch Bacon. Tonight and tomorrow at Perris, they'll line it up and do it all over again. If you can't be there, watch it live on FloRacing.
Out in California this weekend, both the NARC King of the West Sprint Cars and the Sprint Car Challenge Tour wrap up their 2021 seasons on Saturday night at the Stockton Dirt Track. With the King of the West, Dominic Scelzi will be crowned series champion this season, and for good reason. He's racked up six wins and 16 top five finishes in 19 races so far this year. The battle for second in the standings is still very tight though, with DJ Netto, Tim Kaeding and Bud Kaeding all in contention. This weekend's field will also include Austin McCarl, recent series winner Shane Golobic, Sean Becker, Billy Aton, and Sean Watts. With the 360 Sprint Car Challenge Tour, Ryan Robinson is coming off his first win of the year, and leads the points standings by 47 over Colby Copeland. Robinson is trying to join his father David as champion of a California 360 sprint car series, and if he finishes it off, will become just the second ever champion for the tour, with Kyle Hirst winning the titles in 2017, 2018, and 2019. I'm sure you'll see quite a few guys run both programs on the night, and it was great to see the two series cooperating this season to maximize car counts and not draw away from each other. If you can't be at Stockton, the Tribute to Gary Patterson will be live on FloRacing.
If you're looking for some midget racing this weekend, POWRi is closing out their 2021 season for the national and west midgets at Caney Valley Speedway tonight and tomorrow. Bryant Wiedeman is set to take down the national championship for Keith Kunz Motorsports, with Emilio Hoover on his way to the west title. With the USAC midgets not back in action until the following week out in Arizona, I'd expect a decent car count both nights. If you can't be at Caney Valley, MAVTV Plus will have live coverage all weekend.
World Wide Technology Raceway near St. Louis is getting a NASCAR Cup race next season and track general manager Chris Blair is working on turning the weekend into a big motorsports event. Besides the NASCAR Trucks on Saturday and Cup on Sunday, Blair and his staff announced they are promoting a race on Friday night, June 3rd at the nearby Tri-City Speedway to kick off the weekend. The Short Track Classic will feature late models, winged sprint cars, outlaw karts, and other classes leading into a busy weekend at the big track. The two tracks sit less than nine miles apart, so race fans will have no problem finding their way to Tri-City on Friday. The 3/8 mile dirt track is owned by Kevin and Tammy Gundaker and is home to a regular weekly program, with the track also featuring the FloRacing Night in America Series, MOWA sprint cars, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, the ASCS sprint cars, and the Summer Nationals this season. This is the type of promoting we need to see more of in the future, with the cooperation between the bigger series and tracks and the local and regional racers. This will be a perfect opportunity to showcase Tri-City and some dirt racers in front of a big NASCAR crowd. Guys like Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell and now Chase Elliott have done a bunch of crossing over in recent years, and the tracks and series need to get on board. For more info on the 2022 weekend, visit wwtraceway.com.
The future of yet another dirt track is in doubt with the news from Jeremy Elliott last night that Trail-Way Speedway in Pennsylvania has been put up for sale by the family that owns it. Trail-Way is located in Hanover and has been home to a Friday night show for years, mainly featuring the local 358 sprint cars. 2022 was supposed to the the track's 50th year of racing, but with the track and surrounding farmland for sale, nothing for next season is guaranteed. The 1/3 mile track has also hosted ULMS late models, 410 sprint cars, and AMA motorcycles this season. Hopefully they can find a buyer who will continue operating the race track into the future. For more details, check out Jeremy's story at sprintcarunlimited.com or hit up trail-wayspeedway.com.
I've been hinting at some stuff with dirtrackr.com and the analytics section over the past few weeks, and I'm just about ready to launch what I've been working on. Before I really make it public and open it up, I wanted to share it with all of you first. Those of you who listen and watch daily are the backbone of this project, and I wanted you to hear it directly from me before I even so much as tweet about it. In the coming days I'm going to launch a premium section of the website called DIRTRACKR Plus that will feature a ton of new analytics and tools to better help those hardcore fans, basically people like me, understand the sport from the numbers side. If you're a media member, or participate in some of the fantasy racing or big pools, or if you work for a track or series, I hope you will find this new part of the website as valuable as I do. I'm going to do a full explainer video soon, but in the mean time you can get a bit of a taste of what's coming. If you visit the analytics section right now, you'll notice blue categories on the stats and driver pages, with those being unlocked with a subscription. A membership to DIRTRACKR Plus will also get you access to a dashboard featuring some new data visualations and new tools, including a side by side driver comparison section. And this is just the beginning. I've got plans to add more races, more racing series, and even more stats and tools in the near future. Nothing like this exists anywhere for dirt racing, and adding this premium section will allow me to build and create even more with the site. A lot of stuff will remain free, including race results, the driver profile pages, and a bunch of stats and numbers, so don't worry there. My initial plan is to offer this for $4.99 a month on a recurring subscription, or $49.99 a year. The yearly basically saves you two months over the monthly. So if you want to get a full year awesome, or if you just want to take advantage during January to make your Chili Bowl picks, that's great too. You will be able to cancel at any time. This whole DIRTRACKR project, from the website to the podcasts and YouTube shows has been one giant experiment, and DIRTRACKR Plus will be no different. These are tools I use daily to put the shows together, and I figured I might as well open them up and share them. So poke around, take a look, feel free to offer your thoughts or not. But stay tuned, I'll have a lot more on DIRTRACKR Plus in the coming days.
There are 11 shows on the streaming schedule for this Friday, highlighted by the World Finals from Charlotte on DIRTVision, the Oval Nationals from Perris on FloRacing, and the final POWRi Midget weekend of the season from Caney Valley on MAVTV Plus. To see the full daily streaming schedule through the weekend, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
A quick note before we shut it down, this is the last episode until late next week. I'm headed to Phoenix for the last NASCAR weekend this morning and am going to take a few days off afterwards. I'm thinking we'll be back with a new show next Thursday. Enjoy World Finals and all the happenings over the next few days, and we'll talk next week.
So, 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 next week for more DIRTRACKR Daily!