DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Blockchain company sponsoring All Stars, messy situation at The Rev with Outlaws | Daily 3-9-2022

On the show today, a bunch of news items to talk about, including a new sponsor for the All Stars, the cancellation situation at the Rev and more. Let's go!

Today is Wednesday, March 9th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

In an interesting announcement yesterday, the All Star Circuit of Champions announced a new series title sponsor with blockchain company Tezos set to replace FloRacing in the logo. Flo itself had already entered into a partnership with Tezos, and it seems as though this deal for the title sponsorship was brokered through the relationship Flo already has with the sprint car series owned by Tony Stewart. The Tezos All Star Circuit of Champions presented by Mobil 1, which is a mouthful, will debut at Attica on April 8th. The release says that the partnership will allow for the parties to educate sprint car fans about blockchain technology, Tezos, and NFTs. There is also mention of All Star specific NFTs. NFTs for those that aren't aware are non-fungible tokens. Think of them as sort of a digital certificate of authenticity. If you're a fan of other motorsports, or stick and ball sports, you may have seen Tezos before as they have existing deals with the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team and Max Verstappen. They also have deals with Manchester United and the New York Mets. If you're familiar with the world of crypto or blockchain at all, Tezos is basically a competitor to something like Ethereum. It's a blockchain that can be built upon and executes smart contracts, just like Ethereum does. The Tezos pitch is that they are more efficient with lower transaction fees, as they use a proof of stake model, versus the proof of work model that Ethereum is built on. Consequently, Ethereum is actually set to swap to a proof of stake model sometime this year. These two models are how the networks verify transactions and update the blockchain itself. If you've seen the big Bitcoin mining operations, with huge buildings filled with computers, that's for proof of work. It requires a ton of computing power to do that, whereas the Tezos proof of stake model does not, but there are other tradeoffs. There is your blockchain lesson for the day. I'm curious to see how this partnership plays out, because the dirt racing community isn't exactly known for it's forward thinking approach when it comes to technology. I know a lot of folks that are watching or listening to this episode, and those that regularly attend dirt races are probably not super educated on the blockchain and things like NFTs, or even interested. Some of you may own crypto through things like the CashApp or Robinhood, and yet others probably think it's all a scam. So I'll be interested to see how the series handles this education and activation going forward, and what exactly fans are able to get from this. I do like that a company like Tezos is taking a chance on dirt racing though. I think it shows how valuable the sport has become. As this partnership rolls out, we'll talk more in the future about how exactly it's happening. You can see more on the announcement at allstarsprint.com.

We've already lost the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series races that were set to happen this upcoming weekend because of a poor forecast, and as of yesterday we've lost the World of Outlaws Late Models at the Rev as well. In a release from the series, they mentioned rain already this week, with more to come over the next few days along with cold temperatures as the reasons for the cancellation. Fans with tickets already purchased will receive a credit for future events, or can request a refund. The next events on the schedule for the Outlaws are March 25th and 26th at Cherokee Speedway in South Carolina. Normally that would have been the end of mention of this announcement, but wait, there's more. Just to give you a little background here, these two Outlaw nights at the Rev were to be the final on the dirt track before the dirt was removed from the facility. The Rev is a 3/8 mile track in Monroe, Lousiana that was being operated by Nicholas Brown and country singer Dylan Scott, but those two were leaving the facility behind following this Outlaw weekend. So clearly having this weekend cancelled is a blow to those guys operating the track and the fans that were hoping to attend one more time. Following the announcement, Scott took to Facebook to express his disappointment, and he talked about how he wasn't certain why the event was cancelled to begin with. He mentioned the weather, but also that it sounded like ticket pre-sales for the event were not great. If you look at the forecast upcoming, Friday appears as though it will be a wash. Rain chances are near 90% right around the time action would have gotten underway. And then the Saturday high is only 49 degrees, so getting that track ready in the cold after rain the night before would have been challenging. Scott mentions they offered to run Saturday and Sunday instead, and that World Racing Group didn't want to do that, hence the cancellation. In this instance, I see both sides. I understand the disappointment from the track folks, especially for what was supposed to be their final weekend. It sucks to not get that last show in. But on the flip side, it's a huge risk to show up to The Rev this weekend with wet weather and cold temperatures in the forecast and put on two nights of World of Outlaws racing. With low pre-sales and that forecast, there is no guarantee that fans will show up, regardless of what the promoters say and what commentors on Facebook say. When there is weather involved, like I've said before, nobody wins. The fans, the track, the competitors, the series, everyone loses. And with the rising costs of parts and fuel, I'm not sure how much sense it makes bringing 25 or 30, or more teams to Louisiana to maybe get one race in, potentially on a heavy race track and for both the track and series to lose money. It's just a crappy situation all the way around. If you bought tickets to this event, don't believe what you read on Twitter or Facebook. You can get a refund. Head over to worldofoutlaws.com and fill out the refund form.

In some more streaming news, FloRacing and the NARC Series out west have renewed their deal for the upcoming season. Formerly known as the King of the West Series, the NARC Sprint Car Series is the winged 410 series that will run all across the west coast this season, including in California and all the way up into Oregon and Washington. Dominic Scelzi is the defending series champion, picking up six wins last year and topping DJ Netto and Tim Kaeding. Every NARC series race will be available to be watched live on Flo with your subscription. You can find more info on the series at narc410.com. If you want to buy a Flo subscription for the season, click the link below on this YouTube video, or the Flo links at dirtrackr.com.

We are just over a week away from the opening weekend for the ASCS National Tour, and the full time field of drivers continues to grow. So far we know about Brandon Anderson, Garet Williamson, Blake Hahn and Dylan Westbrook. In recent days the series has also added rookie driver Kyler Johnson and veteran Matt Covington. Johnson, who will be a rookie with the series, is only 18 years old, but already has three years of experience behind the wheel of sprint car, moving over from the United Rebel Sprint Series that is based in Kansas. He finished top five in all three years there, and was a series winner in 2021. As for Covington, this will be the ninth straight season he runs the full national tour, and he'll be back this season looking to contend for the championship yet again. He picked up four wins in 2021, and ended up third in the standings behind Blake Hahn and JJ Hickle. According to Bryan Hulbert, Covington is 11th all time in ASCS National Tour feature starts with 319 and has 14 career wins. With JJ Hickle off to run weekly at Knoxville in 410 competition, Covington and Westbrook will be the two biggest challengers to Hahn as he tries to defend his championship from last season. On top of those five drivers, I also saw a tweet from Scott Traylor that Jason Martin is joining the tour as well, though we haven't seen anything official yet. Martin ran part time last year, and picked up a win, three top fives, and five top tens in 11 feature starts. The 2022 ASCS season is set to get going on March 18th and 19th at Devil's Bowl Speedway in Texas.

If you are looking for other dirt racing content this week, there are plenty of new podcast episodes. Winged Nation has Mike Hess, LoudPedal has Lauren Stewart talking the Shamrock Classic, Forward Byte has Dylan Scott and Carson Ferguson, Ohio Dirt has Jerry Bowersock, Passing Points has Ronald Helmick, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters and the Dirt Nerds. To see the full list of shows and episodes, hit up dirtrackr.com/podcasts.

For my YouTube watchers, besides the usual round of weekly highlights, there are new videos from Swindell SpeedLab, Hunt the Front, David Gravel, Ryan Missler, and Tanner Holmes. You can find links to those other YouTube channels on the DIRTRACKR YouTube channel, or at dirtrackr.com/videos.

There are two shows on the streaming schedule today. DIRTVision has micros from Millbridge and there is FloRacing 24/7. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight. If you're interested in that Millbridge show, keep an eye out for announcements today. Last night's outlaw kart show was lost to rain, and it's been raining here again this morning around the Charlotte area.

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!