DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Jonathan Davenport is not retiring, more midget races for Nick Hoffman, preview of today's racing | Daily 2-9-2022
Coming up we are talking DIRTcar Nationals, Nick Hoffman, Lucas at East Bay, Jonathan Davenport, Short Track Super Series, Dylan Westbrook, and Jake Neuman. We better get going!
Today is Wednesday February 9th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Well, it just wasn't meant to be on Tuesday night around Florida. We lost both DIRTcar Nationals and Lucas at East Bay to the rain, but hopefully we are good to go for the remainder of the week. Things should be much dryer and a little warmer through Saturday. At Volusia tonight, we are hopefully getting the first night of UMP modifieds and the All Star opener. It's been a tough start to 2022 down south for the All Star Circuit of Champions, with both their nights at Senoia cancelled, and the first night at Volusia. These early season races aren't for points though, so these nights will have no effect on the championship anyway. I'm not going to dive super deep in to the All Stars, just yet. I said this before, but we'll wait until we get closer to the points opener at Attica to really look through the field of drivers for this season. What you'll see at Volusia tonight will be a mixture of series regulars and Outlaw guys. This will be a tuneup for a lot of teams for the Outlaw nights coming up. After tonight, the All Stars will move over to East Bay for two nights of racing on Monday and Tuesday. I mentioned yesterday that the win predictor likes Brad Sweet, and I'll go with that pick as well for tonight. The track will definitely be hammer down with all this rain, and you'll need big horsepower to be in the mix for the win. I'm hoping for all my friends at WRG that things go smooth tonight and through the rest of DCN. This event is a grind for those who put it on every year, and quite a large feat of organization. Remember that if racing does happen, streaming will be an issue tonight, with the All Stars live on Flo, and the modifieds on DIRTVision. So if you want to watch everything, you will be jumping back and forth. After tonight, the rest of the event will be on DIRTVision each night.
One driver who we will see all week in his modified is Nick Hoffman, but it sounds like we'll continue to see him branch out this season in other forms of dirt racing. He was really good in the midget at the Dome in December, was again at the Chili Bowl, and shared yesterday in a tweet that we could see him some with the new Xtreme Outlaw Series this year. He's been driving in this midget events for RAMS Racing, and it sounds like that will continue. I think Hoffman is a guy that doesn't get enough recognition or respect for what he does in a race car, but besides building really good modifieds, he's also one hell of a wheelman. I don't know about his late model schedule for 2022, but he did a really nice job driving a Bloomquist car last season also. I hope we get to see him more there as well.
Over at East Bay tonight, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series will pick up from where they left off on Monday night. Hopefully they have a little bit better luck with the track, but I did think the feature the other night was pretty good. As usual, anything can and will happen when those late models take to East Bay. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula still has Sheppard for the win, while I'm keeping my pick of Overton from Tuesday. Devin Moran continues to lead Brandon Sheppard and Tim McCreadie in the standings, with Ricky Thornton Jr. and Tyler Erb completing the top five. Obviously once things shake out and Moran and Sheppard go their separate ways, we'll probably have McCreadie leading this thing over some combination of RTJ, Erb and O'Neal. Keep in mind that only a driver's best five finishes from Speedweeks will count towards the season long standings, so guys can afford to have some not great nights. If you can't be at the Tampa area race track, you can watch live on MAVTV Plus.
One big name late model driver that is missing this week from East Bay is Jonathan Davenport, and if you watch or listen to this show regularly, you already knew that. But apparently a lot of other folks didn't, and there have been a lot of posts on social media about his absence. So many in fact, that Davenport and his team found it necessary to post on their Facebook page explaining what's up and reminding people that Superman hasn't in fact retired. They even used the hashtag #NotRetired. In the post, the team reiterated their commitment to late model racing, and again explained that they will not be racing for a championship this season, instead choosing to focus on big money races. The 49's schedule will continue to be fluid, but they did publicly share some races on their slate for this year, including the two Bristol XR weekends, Lucas at Tyler County, the FloRacing show at Eldora, the two XR nights at All-Tech, the Bristol World of Outlaws weekend, plus the big shows at Eldora: the Million, Dream, and World. This is in addition to the Outlaw weekend at Revolution Park which was already on their schedule. And that definitely won't be the only times we see Superman. All of this is in line with what we expected from Davenport and the team this season. There is a lot of money to be won around the country this year in dirt late model racing, and some guys have just decided that the series aren't worth it right now, Davenport being one and Jimmy Owens another. If that works for their teams and sponsors, than more power to them. This is not a new strategy for dirt racers, and one that Brandon Overton has worked to perfection, especially last year. If you'd like to see the full run down on JD's schedule, you can find it on his website, jonathandavenport.net.
Elsewhere tonight, if you want to check out a little modified action, the Short Track Super Series is also down in Florida to get things rolling. The modifieds and 602 sportsman are in action for the next four nights at All-Tech Raceway. Tonight is $4000 to win, with payouts ramping up through Saturday night. The series had scheduled a practice night for Tuesday, but the rain ruined that. Teams will get track time earlier in the day today before the racing program gets started tonight. Some names to expect include Billy Pauch Jr., Tyler Siri, Alex Yankowski, Tim Buckwalter, Larry Wight, Mike Mahaney, Mike Maresca, Matt Sheppard, Stewart Friesen, and more. A lot of these guys will then stick around to run the Super DIRTcar Series portion of DIRTcar Nationals next week at Volusia. If you can't be at All-Tech, the entire Short Track Super Series schedule can be watched live on FloRacing.
The ASCS National Tour season isn't set to get going until later in March, but the full time field of drivers continues to evolve. We have already talked about Brandon Anderson and Garet Williamson jumping in, along with defending champion Blake Hahn coming back. Joining those three will be Canadian driver Dylan Westbrook. Westbrook will be entering his third season with the 360 sprint car series, driving for the Hills Racing team. He finished fourth in the final standings in 2021, bagging two wins, 20 top fives, and 25 top tens in 38 feature appearances. He continues to make improvements, and should be set to challenge Hahn and others for that championship this year. According to Bryan Hulbert, Westbrook is headed south coming up to race with the USCS, All Stars and King of the 360s before the ASCS season begins. That will give them plenty of laps to get their car ready to roll when the season opener takes place at Devil's Bowl in Texas on March 18th. As a sidenote, I've been working on adding the ASCS to the analytics section of dirtrackr.com, making them the ninth series and event we are keeping track of. I should be able to debut that new section soon. I think this is an interesting series to track, especially with how much sprint car talent has come through there in the past. We saw Ryan Timms impress with the series in 2021, along with JJ Hickle. And past champions include Sam Hafertepe, Aaron Reutzel, Jason Johnson, Shane Stewart and others. I think it will allow us to keep tabs on some of these young drivers coming up through the ranks. I'll keep you posted as to when that new section is live.
Another driver we'll see a lot in a sprint car this upcoming season is Illinois driver Jake Neuman. He's set to run a sizeable 410 schedule between the IRA, MOWA, and the new POWRi 410 league that is racing in the midwest. Neuman was the 2020 POWRi National Midget champion, and picked up wins last year in both the sprint car and midget. His Brandt sponsored 3N cars have been recognizeable around the country for a while, including at the Chili Bowl. Neuman also made two appearances with the World of Outlaws last year, taking on the Ironman 55 weekend at Pevely.
On the podcast front, there are new episodes this week from a few shows. Winged Nation has Mark Smith and Wayne Johnson, LoudPedal has Taylor Reimer, Ohio Dirt has their 100th episode plus Corbin Gurley, and there is a new episode of the Dirt Nerds. To see the full list of shows and episodes, check out dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
There are six shows on the streaming schedule today. DIRTcar Nationals is again split between DIRTVision and FloRacing, with the mods on DV and the All Stars on Flo. Flo also has the Short Track Super Series from All-Tech and Flo 24/7. MAVTV Plus has the Lucas late models from East Bay, and Speed Sport has racing from Hendry County. 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 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!