DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Kerry Madsen joining Roth for 40-50 races; Toyota involvement, 410 sprint car engine update | Daily 12-27-2021
Coming up we are talking Kerry Madsen, TRD's 410 sprint car engine, and more. Let's go!
Today is Monday, December 27th, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
As we get closer to the end of 2021 here this week, the sprint car picture for next season continues to get clearer. Back on Christmas Eve Friday we found out officially where Kerry Madsen will race next season. In a story at Sprint Car and Midget from Kyle McFadden, it was revealed that Madsen will pilot the second Roth Motorsports car, the 83JR, in a 40 to 50 race national schedule next year. That second Roth car has typically stayed around California with the 83 being the national car, but now both teams will be racing across the US. The plan right now is for the car to debut at Thunderbowl Raceway in California during the World of Outlaws sprint west coast swing. Madsen will be joined by crew chief Paul Baines, who is a fellow Australian, and who recently departed Tarlton Motorsports after 14 years together. The Mad Man spent 2021 with two different teams, Mike Barshinger's 24 team in Pennsylvania early on, and with Tony Stewart Racing in the 14. The run in the TSR 14 turned into one of Madsen's best seasons in several years, grabbing three Outlaw wins in 28 starts and two All Star wins in 17 appearances. Those 28 Outlaw races also produced 15 top fives and 21 top tens and an average finish of 6.5. Madsen hasn't had numbers like that since 2017. The piece from McFadden doesn't say specifically, but outside of the big events like the Knoxville Nationals and Kings Royal, I'm guessing will see Madsen at a decent number of Outlaw shows and probably at some weekly stuff at Knoxville.
What might be the most interesting part of the story about Madsen is the involvement with Toyota Racing Development and their ongoing project of creating a Toyota 410 sprint car engine. In the piece that is currently up, the TRD stuff has been removed that was in the original version, as apparently the deal isn't 100% complete yet. But TRD's involvement is very real, and there were some interesting bits in there about the Toyota program last season. The KCP Racing 18 with Gio Scelzi was part of the engine development last season, but the team and Toyota split following the National Open at Williams Grove. It was an up and down season for Gio and KCP, with the team going through three crew chiefs, and ending the year with Dylan Buswell spinning the wrenches. But there were some bright spots in there, with Gio earning 12 top fives and 29 top tens in 49 Outlaw starts. So it would seem there is some speed with the TRD power. Apparently Toyota has also been working with Aaron Reutzel and his new Ridge & Sons Racing ride, and with Lucas Wolfe and the 5W in Pennsylvania. And late in the season when Tyler Courtney went to California to run some races with Roth, he was using Toyota power as well. If you're on the TRD side, this is a great pickup with Roth, Madsen, and Baines. An established team with veterans to help lead the effort should pay dividends. As was evidenced last year, Madsen is still at the top of his game, and he's coming over from TSR where he did help them continue sorting through the Ford engine development. It really seemed like Donny Schatz's performances started to pick up once Madsen got into the 14. For next year though, it sounds like the squad is tempering expectations until they can really go deep and start sorting through the car and engine package. According to McFadden, they had a test scheduled recently, but it was lost to weather. There is still plenty of time though for them to get work in before they debut with the Outlaws next March. If you're a sprint car fan, make sure you're following Kyle on Twitter @ByKyleMcFadden. He's been putting out a ton of content lately, and is a good follow for breaking sprint car news. He's also a past guest on my Conversations show.
Now, I know that when I start talking about Toyota on a show like this, a certain part of the audience is going to be triggered, but remember that more companies getting involved in dirt racing is a good thing. That means more teams with support and these larger companies are understanding that there is value in the dirt racing community. If you want the sport to continue being healthy, and for there to be opportunities for guys to race, we need some level of involvement from companies like TRD. It's a positive sign when you see Ford and Toyota putting money and resources into developing engines and backing teams. The common attack you will hear is that Toyota coming in is just going to raise the costs for other teams to be competitive, but to be fair, speed has always been expensive, and that isn't going to change. And as of right now, it's not like TRD has a piece that is way better than what is available from the other engine builders. You can't both want dirt racing to grow and get things like TV coverage, and then be upset when it gets noticed by outside companies that want to get involved. One is naturally going to attract the other.
With Christmas now in the rearview mirror, that means it's Tulsa Shootout week. Cars and teams are moving into the Expo Center today, and practice starts tomorrow afternoon. The event features six divisions of micro sprints and junior sprints, and something like 1500 entries are expected to race through the weekend. There will be hundreds of names you don't recognize, but there will be plenty that you do, including guys like Christopher Bell, Tyler Courtney, Brady Bacon, and many others. If you need a dirt fix, there will be plenty to watch through Saturday night. This will also be a nice way to whet your appetite too for the Chili Bowl in a few weeks. We'll talk more about the Shootout later in the week, but just prepare yourself for all the crappy tweets that are going to come out over the next few days. There will be plenty of hate and vitriol for all of the quote unquote rich kids and their terrible parents, and the bad on track moves and blah blah blah. Every year it's the same story and every year these same "get off my lawn" outburts happen. If you don't like it, don't watch and don't participate. This is the nature of the beast. If you do want to watch, FloRacing will have live coverage all week.
There are two items on the streaming schedule. DIRTVision has the iRacing World of Outlaws World Championship from the virtual Knoxville Raceway, and there is FloRacing 24/7. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Over the weekend I continued adding past Chili Bowl results, and I've now got Saturday races in the database all the way back to 2004, with much more to come. Interesting note, in the 18 years of races I've entered, there hasn't been a repeat hard charger in the Saturday night main event. I find that a little strange. To see all of these new races and stats, visit dirtrackr.com/analytics and click on the Chili Bowl.
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!