DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Donny Schatz enters Chili Bowl, Cade Dillard goes Black Diamond, Chili Bowl history | Daily 1-4-2022

Coming up we are talking Donny Schatz returning to the Chili Bowl, some Silver Crown full timers, the dirt late model offseason, and past Chili Bowl races. Let's go!

Today is Tuesday, January 4th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

One of the recent additions to the Chili Bowl entry list is a driver with a ton of success in open wheel racing, but not really at the Chili Bowl. After sitting out the 2021 event, 10 time World of Outlaws champion Donny Schatz is headed to Tulsa next week. He'll be driving a car co-owned by Mike Curb and owner of Spike Chassis, Mark Cooper. The car will feature Schatz's famous number 15, with support from Sage Fruit and Carquest. Schatz has previously run the Chili Bowl three times, in 2017, 2018, and 2020. He's appeared in all three prelim night features, with a best finish of eighth. His best Saturday result was a seventh in a B-Main back in his debut year of 2017. You don't really think of midgets and non-wing stuff when it comes to Donny Schatz, but his talent and experience behind the wheel is unmatched, and a strong run next week is very much in play. He joins a few other full time World of Outlaws guys that will be in the building, including Brad Sweet, David Gravel, Kasey Kahne, and Spencer Bayston. Through the years, a lot of World of Outlaws drivers have competed in the Chili Bowl, but only two guys have won both a Chili Bowl and a World of Outlaws championship. They are Sammy Swindell and Dave Blaney. Sammy famously has five Chili Bowl wins, while Dave Blaney won the event in 1993. Not that I think Donny Schatz is going to win the Chili Bowl, but with everything else he's done in his career, if he did win, I don't think I'd be that surprised.

I mentioned last week that I had gotten all of the Saturday features for the Chili Bowl added to the analytics section of dirtrackr.com and I've just started diving into some of the stats. My own history with the event only really goes back to 2016, when I started paying attention because of some of my World Racing Group co-workers. I was vaguely aware of the event before that, but Brian Dunlap, who owns two cars with his dad Mike, and video guy and my Open Red co-host Ross Wece, got me interested in the event. I've since been twice, in 2017 when we got Ross a ride with Johnny Murdock, and again in 2018. But beyond that, my historical knowledge of the event has been pretty minimal. That was until going through all these race results. In the 35 years of Chili Bowl features, we've had 21 different winners. Only eight guys have won it more than once, with Sammy Swindell leading the way with five, as I mentioned earlier, and Kevin Swindell second with four. Christopher Bell has three, and Tony Stewart, Kyle Larson, Rico Abreu, Cory Kruseman, and Dan Boorse all have two. Billy Boat, Damion Gardner, Donnie Beechler, Andy Hillenburg, Tim McCreadie, Dave Blaney, Tracy Hines, Leland McSpadden, John Heydenreich, Bryan Clauson, Scott Hatton, Jay Drake, and Rich Vogler all have one win each. Sammy has the most Saturday feature appearances with 25, Jerry Coons Jr. is second with 18. Sammy also leads in top fives with 14 and top tens with 17. With the analytics section, I've mostly focused on recent racing, one because that's what I want to talk about, and two that's what we have really good data for. But it's pretty neat with the older races to see names like Rich Vogler, Doug Wolfgang, Ron Shuman, Jack Hewitt, and Steve Kinser in the DIRTRACKR database. After entering a bunch of these races, the one feature I really wanted to go track down and watch was the 2002 edition of the event. It was the first of Tony Stewart's two victories, and the race featured eight lead changes, with seven of them happening between Stewart and Kevin Doty in the final 17 laps of the race. It was the classic high-low battle, with Stewart right on the bottom, and Doty working the middle to the top. What the results don't really show you, is that Cory Kruseman was right in the thick of it as well, and Doty just nipped him at the line to finish second. In his post race interview, Stewart sounded very much like Kyle Larson did after Larson won his first Chili Bowl in 2020. Stewart said quote "I like winning Winston Cup races and I hope Joe Gibbs doesn't take this personally, but this kicks ass" unquote. It was also the third event win for Keith Kunz, to go along with wins in 1994 with Andy Hillenburg, and the year before Stewart's win, in 2001 with Jay Drake. At this moment, Kunz has racked up eight total wins inside the Tulsa Expo as a car owner. These are just a few examples of the info you can find at dirtrackr.com for the Chili Bowl. If you've been tuned into this event for a long time, drop me a comment and let me know what your favorite year was. Maybe a particularly good battle or significant win. We'll continue talking Chili Bowl all week as the event draws near.

The start of the 2022 Silver Crown Series is still a ways off, but we've added two more full time names in the past day or two. First, Brian Tyler will try and capitalize on the success he had in 2021 and parlay that into a championship this season. His 201 career starts are tied for the most all time, and he's third all time in wins with 18. In 2021, he made three starts, and picked up two podium results, with a win at Du Quoin, and a third late in the year at Toledo. His win at Du Quoin came after early leader Kody Swanson had trouble, and Tyler held off Logan Seavey and Jake Swanson through the second half of the 100 lapper. He's contesting his first full season since 2013, and is partnering with BCR Group out of Ohio to make it happen at all 11 events. He'll be joined by another veteran driver, Shane Cockrum, in chasing that championship. By day, Cockrum is the Benton, Illinois fire chief, but come the weekend he's been known to show up at a dirt track or two. In 2021, he was a Silver Crown winner at Williams Grove, leading 28 laps and topping Shane Cottle and Chris Windom. Cockrum will run the full schedule for BLS Motorsports after running six dirt events in 2021 with the team. The Silver Crown Series kicks off the year on May 1st at the Terre Haute Action Track.

The dirt late model silly season has been pretty quiet this year, but I did see that Cade Dillard will be running a new chassis this season. After being an MB Customs driver in the past, Dillard is switching to Black Diamond, with the chassis builder posting photos of Dillard's new ride to Facebook in recent days. Dillard is headed out to Vado to compete at the Wild West Shootout. And from what I can gather, he's going to focus on regional racing in 2022, and not rejoin a series. He'd been a regular with the World of Outlaws, but dropped off in 2021 over status issues when he needed to attend a function with his daughter. He'd become a pretty serious contender with the Outlaws, grabbing four wins, 28 top fives, and 56 top tens over his past 118 starts with the Outlaws. He finished third in the standings in 2020 behind Brandon Sheppard and Ricky Weiss. Dillard will also compete in a modified at Vado, in a chassis he built himself. The Wild West Shootout gets under way on Saturday.

The only thing on the streaming schedule today 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 Tuesday. 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!