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Sheppard tops Moran and Davenport at All-Tech, All Star weekend sacked, full USAC run for Mitchell | Daily 2-4-2022

Coming up on this Friday, we are talking BShepp's Lucas win at All-Tech, more sprint car paint schemes, the All Stars, and more. Let's go!

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

Wednesday night was off for the Lucas late model competitors, but Thursday they were right back at it for Speedweeks, moving over to All-Tech Raceway in Lake City, Florida. My YouTube thumbnail for yesterday's show asked if Brandon Sheppard could slow Devin Moran at All-Tech, and that question ended up being answered in a big way last night. Sheppard trailed Moran in the standings and in average finish headed into Thursday's program, but the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula didn't care. It had BShepp as the win pick, and it was correct. The Rocket house car was overall fast time, won heat three, and started on the front row of the feature. Sheppard ended up leading all but a single lap to earn his first Lucas victory of 2022. He battled with polesitter Ricky Thornton Jr. through the opening laps, with RTJ briefly leading right at the line on lap seven. From there though, the 20RT just couldn't really mount a serious charge again through traffic. The Rocket one dodged lap traffic and some late cautions to bag the win. Behind him, Moran kept his top two streak alive with a very solid run from 15th to second. He was third on the white flag lap, but second running Jonathan Davenport slowed out of turn four coming to the checkered, and that allowed Moran to get by. So your top five was Sheppard, Moran, Davenport, Shane Clanton, and Thornton faded to fifth at the finish. With two more nights at All-Tech still to come, Moran maintains the Lucas points lead over Sheppard and Tim McCreadie. For Lucas full timers, only your best five finishes from Speedweeks count towards your points total, so starting last night, we are now throwing out races. Moran and Sheppard are still the only two drivers to finish in the top ten in all six Lucas races in 2022. As for the field of cars, we ended up with 43 last night, and that did include Davenport, Brandon Overton, and Chris Madden. Overton didn't have a good qualifying lap, and went eighth to fifth in his heat, and then needed to transfer into the feature from the first B. He charged from 17th to finish ninth. Madden grabbed the final transfer in the second B, but ended up 25th. Looking ahead, the series is at All-Tech again tonight and tomorrow. Sunday is a practice day at East Bay, before six straight nights of racing get underway starting Monday. I mentioned a second ago that the prediction formula correctly chose Sheppard last night, while I went with Moran. So we are both 2 for 7, or 28.5%, for the season picking winners. Tonight the formula likes BShepp again, no shock there. I'm going to go off the rails a bit and choose RTJ. He was fast last night, and I think a few turns on some wrenches, and those guys will be dialed for tonight. If you want to watch these races live, grab a subscription and tune in on MAVTV Plus.

Elsewhere this weekend, the All Star Circuit of Champions was supposed to be kicking of their 2022 season at Senoia Raceway in Georgia, but as of this morning, the two nights have been cancelled because of wet weather in the south. That means the All Stars will now get underway on Tuesday at Volusia for DIRTcar Nationals. Remember these early season races for the All Stars are non-points, so the fields could be a little wonky at Volusia. For example, we know Kyle Reinhardt is running the full slate again this year, but his 91 team did not come south for these races. There were also probably some drivers we were going to see at Senoia, who now won't go to Volusia, but maybe show up at East Bay. Volusia is a different animal that requires big horsepower, and the possibility always exists to break motors there. With the continued issues getting parts and pieces, you know some teams won't risk their equipment during DIRTcar Nationals. I went around earlier to try and get an idea who was coming to Senoia, and I figured we'd get Justin Peck, Chris Windom, Kevin Thomas Jr., Hunter Schuerenberg, Parker Price-Miller, Cory Eliason, Brent Marks, Tyler Courtney, Ricky Peterson, Danny Dietrich, and Donny Schatz among others. Of that group, I'm not sure who we'll see at Volusia outside of Schatz, Marks, Peck, Eliason, and Dietrich. I could see some of those guys skipping Volusia. The rainout sucks for the folks at Senoia. They've done a nice job getting that facility into great shape, so hopefully they'll get to try this again. I'll probably save an All Star season preview until we get closer to the points opener at Attica in April. That way we'll have a much better idea on the full time field. We'll talk plenty of DIRTcar Nationals starting on Monday.

If you want to see some sprint cars today anyway, I've got a couple of new paint schemes to show you. The first is for Noah Gass as he prepares for his first ever season with the World of Outlaws. He'll run this simple and clean, mostly blue and black car this year. He's vying for the Outlaw rookie of the year trophy against Spencer Bayston and Kasey Kahne. It will definitely be a tall task, but you can't fault the kid for taking his shot. Also yesterday, Chris Windom and his Hayward team showed off their NOS sponsored winged car they will race this season. Windom isn't running a series full time, but is taking on a sizeable winged schedule, similar to his non-wing breathren that have made the move lately like Sunshine and KTJ. Windom was set to debut this weekend at Senoia, but I don't know if we'll see them at Volusia or not. Nice looking blue and black ride though.

Over to USAC midgets, as his father Bundy continues to recover from a December heart attack, Ethan Mitchell is getting set to run the full slate of USAC National Midget races this season. Bundy spent nearly two months in the hospital, but is now out and working on rehabilitation. In a week, Ethan will head to Florida without his father to begin the 2022 season, with plans to contest all of the points paying races. Skipping the non-points races like the Du Quoin indoor show will allow Ethan some more time to be at home, especially early in the year, to help his father when necessary. Mitchell ran a sizeable portion of the midget schedules in 2020 and 2021, earning a top five at Port City last year, along with five top tens. The family is famous in the pit area for their Bundy Built midgets that feature a Honda powerplant, which are uncommon in a world full of Toyotas, Stantons, and Esslingers. A few weeks ago at the Chili Bowl, Mitchell finished top ten on his prelim night, and 16th in a Saturday B-Main. The USAC midget season starts February 11th at Bubba Raceway Park.

And speaking of midgets, I had Ryan comment on my video yesterday asking how come I haven't mentioned Kaylee Bryson running full time USAC in 2022, but I can't find anywhere online where that has been talked about. If that is indeed the case, drop me a message with the link to a story. I literally spend all day scouring for these news items, so I'd hope I didn't miss something big like that. In the future, if you know that I've missed something, feel free to reach out with tips or news. Twitter DMs are open, email is available, I'm pretty easy to get in touch with.

There are now seven shows on today's streaming schedule with plenty more to come this weekend. That includes the Lucas late models at All-Tech on MAVTV Plus, DIRTcar Sportsman Mods from Lake View on Racing America, more crate late model action from East Bay on Flo, and the Winter Freeze from Screven, where super late models and the SCDRA will race for good money. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

That's it for the show today, 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 tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!