DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Chili Bowl entry update, unified dirt late model rules, Perrego joining Super DIRTcar Series | Daily 12-22-2021
Coming up we talk the new unified late model rules, a Chili Bowl and Silver Crown update, and a new full timer for the Super DIRTcar Series. Let's go!
Today is Wednesday, December 22nd, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
We continue to creep ever closer to the record number of entries for the Chili Bowl with less than three weeks to go before the event. As of yesterday the total list sits at 370 drivers. Names added yesterday include Shane Cottle, Ronnie Gardner, and Ricky Thornton Jr. Both Cottle and Gardner are Chili Bowl veterans, but this will be RTJ's first time in a midget. The 2021 Lucas late model rookie of the year will be in an Esslinger powered Spike for Michele and Ricky Johnson as a teammate to RJ Johnson and young Arizona driver AJ Hernandez. Cottle and Gardner will be teammates in the Six8 entries. The addition of someone like RTJ is what makes the Chili Bowl so much fun. You have an incredible diversity of drivers from all forms of motorsports coming together to compete inside the expo. There are obviously plenty of sprint car and midget drivers, but you also have IndyCar drivers, and NASCAR guys, modified racers and late model competitors in there also. At this point, I'd be surprised if we didn't end up breaking the entry record with still a few weeks left to go. And speaking of the Chili Bowl, my work has begun on that part of the dirtrackr.com analytics section. I previously had every race entered going back to the 2013 edition of the event, and I'm going to try and get as many past races entered as possible before that week. Things are a little more difficult beyond that 2013 year in terms of finding accurate results and in an easy format to enter, so I'm working off a few different sources for information and will piece things together. Bryan Hulbert has always been a big help with this stuff too. Last night I added in the Saturday feature from 2012, and the full championship Saturday from 2011. I'd like to get all the past Saturday feature results entered first, and then back fill any preliminary racing after that. At last check, I'm up to 50 total Chili Bowl race days represented, including prelim nights, and we are well over 1000 individual drivers in the database. You can find a lot of that stuff for free at dirtrackr.com/analytics.
If you're a Silver Crown fan, there have been a bunch of driver and team announcements in recent days. Jason McDougal will run the five dirt events for Daigh-Phillips, returning to the team in which he raced for during the 2018 and 2019 seasons. McDougal was in the Klatt car last season, and has nine career Silver Crown starts. DMW Motorsports will field two cars in the five dirt track events, one for Jake Swanson and the other for Casey Buckman. Swanson was a USAC National Sprint Car winner in 2021, and is a past USAC West Coast Sprint Car champion. Buckman has experience in winged sprint car competition and has past Silver Crown Series starts. He's also the track and facility manager at Wildhorse Pass Motorsports Park near Phoenix. And 2021 WAR sprint car champion Mario Clouser is joining Kazmark Motorsports for his rookie attempt at the Silver Crown Series. The 2022 Silver Crown season kicks off May 1st at Terre Haute.
Up in the northeast, the Super DIRTcar Series will have a new full time competitor next season with the announcement that Anthony Perrego will team up with car owner Vinny Salerno to take on the full schedule. Perrego is a past winner with the Super DIRTcar Series, and was in contention all season long for both Short Track Super Series championships. This will be his first attempt though at chasing the SDS title. Perrego was the 2021 track champion at Albany-Saratoga, and took down the small block and big block championships at Orange County. To see more about the announcement, check out Ken Bruce's story over at dirttrackrdigest.com.
In my YouTube comments yesterday, Biff asked what my thoughts are on the new late model body and droop rules. If you aren't aware, most of the major players in dirt late model racing got together at the PRI Show in Indy and put together a standard rule package that I believe just about everyone has adopted. That includes Lucas, the Outlaws, and a bunch of the regional series. I saw where someone said the XR series is not adopting the new rules, but I don't have confirmation on that. The idea behind all of this being that you won't need different cars or completely different setups to go run across the country. You can just show up anywhere with the same car and be legal. This new rules package includes limits on rear travel or the droop, a standard weight of 2,350 pounds, standard tire sizes, and rules for body skew, decking, and plastic quarterpanels. The group also talked about standardizing the tire compounds, but with all the issues with tires this year and supplies, that is being shelved until possibly 2023. In regard to my own thoughts on these moves, I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I know much about dirt late model tech. If you wade into some of the forums and Facebook stuff you'll see all kinds of opinions from the various internet experts. What I will say though, is that if these things are going to save teams money and make it easier to race at different tracks and with different series, than I'm all for it. That group that got together and met at PRI has forgotten more about dirt late models than I'll ever know, so I'll defer to them on this type of decision making. I do know that there has been a lot more engineering and time spent in wind tunnels with some of these cars, which is why we've seen some of the crazier body changes. But when things like that start to creep in, the price of racing rises, as wind tunnel time isn't free. If you want to get super into the weeds on this stuff, Ray Cook, who runs Tri County Racetrack and the Spring and Southern Nationals Series put out a video on YouTube explaining the tech process for all the new body rules. It's about 13 minutes and he takes you completely around the car with a tape measure and various tools to show what it's going to take to be legal in 2022. I'll throw a link to it in the description below, or you can find it by searching for Tri County Racetrack's channel on YouTube. Big rules changes always illicit strong opinions from the various parties, but if you can get a group like that to all agree on something, than it's probably for the best.
There are a few new episodes this week from the different dirt racing podcasts. Winged Nation has the Drydene Family, the Dirt Nerds have DJ Foos, the Dirt from Knoxville has Casey Shuman, Passing Points has Jonathan Beason, and there is a new episode of the Dirt Reporters from Dirt on Dirt. To see the full list of shows and episodes, check out dirtrackr.com/podcasts. If there is a show I'm missing from that page, please drop me an email or message on social media.
There are two shows on today's streaming schedule on the services. DIRTVision has weekly DIRTcar eSports action from the virtual Knoxville Raceway tonight, and there is FloRacing 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!