DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Tough 2022 World of Outlaws start for Logan Schuchart, Outlaws at Vado Speedway Park tonight | Daily 3-29-2022
Coming up we are talking Logan Schuchart's tough start to 2022, tonight's Outlaw show at Vado, a few news items and more. Let's go!
Today is Tuesday, March 29th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
The Outlaw teams had Sunday and Monday off to travel, and today they are back racing again as they start the trek back east after the few week stretch in California. The series will take on Vado Speedway Park in New Mexico tonight, and then head to Lawton in Oklahoma on Friday and Devil's Bowl in Texas on Saturday. Tonight's stop at Vado is the first ever for the Outlaws at the track owned by Mesilla Valley Transportation's Royal Jones, and it's the first race in New Mexico for the series since 2008. The 3/8 Vado Speedway Park is an incredible facility located just off I-10 between Las Cruces, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. We saw some great racing there back in January when a lot of the top super late model teams were at Vado for the Wild West Shootout. The name of the game tonight will be how quickly these teams can adapt to a new race track, as none of these drivers or teams will have competed at Vado in any series before. I'm also curious to see what the car count looks like tonight. We'll obviously have the 13 full time Outlaw teams, plus Cory Eliason, Tanner Thorson, and I'm guessing Gio Scelzi as they head back east. I don't know about Rico Abreu, but he's a possibility as well. I doubt we'll get any of the California guys, as Vado is pretty far from most of those teams' bases, and there really isn't a 410 scene in New Mexico. But as my guy Jose pointed out yesterday, there are some regional 360 and 305 guys, so we may get a few locals in the mix as well. I'd guess we will probably be right around that 20 car mark, which means we could see the two heat format with the non-qualifier. If we do get to 21 cars, then we'd have enough for the three heat program, with seven cars in each. Following the weekend, Brad Sweet leads Carson Macedo by 20 points in the standings, with David Gravel, Sheldon Haudenschild, and Gio Scelzi completing the top five. In the YouTube comments on yesterday's show, Benny asked me to look into the start of 2022 for Logan Schuchart, who currently sits eighth in the standings and is 104 points out of the lead. And if you're a Schuchart fan, the numbers aren't great. If we roll back to 2019, the season where Logan and that Shark squad took a big step forward, they ended the season with eight wins and an average finish of 7.27. In 2020, it was another step forward. Logan challenged for the title and they ended the year with seven wins and a very good average finish of 5.96. The team then took a step back in 2021, still seven wins, but much lower win, top five, and top ten percentages, and an average finish of 7.78. And that regression has continued into 2022, and it's getting worse. Only two top fives in ten starts, an average finish of 10.3, and Logan spending a lot of time trying to catch up. He trails only Sheldon Haudenschild in feature plus minus, and is tied with Sheldon in races with a positive plus minus. Both not great signs when you're trying to win. The issues for that 1S are starting right away in the night, with a dramatically worse average qualifying position versus the previous seasons. In 2021 and 2020, Logan was qualifying, on average, somewhere between 8th and 9th. This season, it's worse than 15th, and that has led to his heat race average finish dropping more than a full position. And when you don't finish well in heats, you don't make dashes, and Logan has been in only a single dash this year. He's also had to come out of B-Mains three times, and his average feature start position of 14.8 is one of the worst of any full time driver. So, qualifying not great, heat races not great, leading to not good feature starts and Logan battling to try and salvage finishes. And another not good sign, over the last five plus seasons, Logan only trails Sweet, Gravel, and Schatz in most laps led, but so far this year, he hasn't led any. If that team is going to make some noise this season, they need to turn it around, and quickly. That 104 point hole they already find themselves in is basically 52 positions. IF they can somehow start beating the KKR 49 by two or three spots a night, it would still take something like 20 races to run down the leaders. We'll see if they can get things going back in the right direction tonight. If you want to get into these numbers and a lot more, grab a subscription to DIRTRACKR Plus over at dirtrackr.com. Looking at some win predictions, the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula favors Brad Sweet tonight. Back through 2017, he leads the series in wins on 3/8 mile race tracks. I think I'm going to agree, and say Sweet finally gets that first Outlaw win of 2022. For the season, the prediction formula is 6 for 35, and I'm 5 for 35 following an 0-4 weekend. If you can't get to Vado tonight, DIRTVision has live coverage.
Elsewhere tonight, week two of the Bristol Dirt Nationals gets underway with a new set of divisions taking to the high banks. The super late models don't race again until Friday and Saturday, but you will get to see street stocks, hornets, factory stocks, 604 late models, and open modifieds today and through the weekend. I've had some questions about car counts and the crowd sizes, and the reasons behind what appear to be declines from the first year aren't probably that hard to figure out. For car counts, Bristol is obviously not easy on equipment, and parts and tires continue to be a problem across the country. Also, higher fuel prices probably kept some teams from traveling. As for the crowds, last year was a novelty, this year isn't. The weather wasn't super warm last week, and that probably kept some away, along with those higher costs of travel. I can't speak for the streaming numbers, as the services like XR and Flo and DIRTVision keep their viewership numbers a closely guarded secret, but I'd say that interest in the event is still pretty high. The XR YouTube channel has done well in the last week with views, and they've had some nice engagement across their other social channels. The next three nights will feature full programs for each division, which will setup racing on Friday and Saturday nights. If you want to watch or get event info, visit racexr.com.
If you're a sprint car fan out west, USAC announced yesterday that the Western World will be back in 2022, but at a new race track. The event had been held at Arizona Speedway near Phoenix for the last several years, but that track was permanently closed at the end of 2021. So now the event, which will take place on October 28th and 29th, moves to Cocopah Speedway in Somerton, Arizona. Somerton is right next to Yuma, and the track is about 3 hours from Phoenix and about 3 hours from San Diego. The two nights will feature not only the USAC National Sprint Cars, but also the USAC CRA Sprint Cars. The CRA Sprint Cars have made regular stops at Cocopah in recent years, while only one national event has ever been contested there, a midget show back in 1989. So the national sprint cars will close out the midwest schedule on October 1st at Lawrenceburg, then head west for those two nights at Cocopah at the end of October, and close out the 2022 season with three nights at Perris, November 3rd through the 5th for the Oval Nationals. To see the full USAC schedule, check out usacracing.com.
In some track news from yesterday, Knoxville Raceway is getting a big upgrade to their lighting system coming up shortly. During May and June the track will be working with Musco to install over a million dollars worth of new LED light towers around the track. This new system will replace the current setup which was installed in 1997. I know our friends the Knoxville Moths will be stoked about these new lights. There is no completion date mentioned, but the World of Outlaws go to Knoxville for the first time this season on June 10th, and then the NASCAR truck series rolls through on June 17th and 18th, so I'm guessing these upgrades would be done before then. The weekly Knoxville schedule opens on April 16th with their normal slate of 410s, 360s, and pro sprints. Tyler Groenendyk is the defending pro sprint champion, Clint Garner was the 360 champion last year, and Davey Heskin was the 410 champ. To see the full season schedule for Knoxville, hit up knoxvilleraceway.com.
There are four shows on the streaming schedule today. DIRTVision has the World of Outlaws from Vado Speedway Park, plus outlaw karts from Millbridge. The Bristol Dirt Nationals continue on XR+, and there is FloRacing 24/7. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Before we close out today, I watched the newest Kyle Larson vlog this morning over on YouTube, and I want to leave you with this image of car owner and crew chief Paul Silva lighting birthday candles with a torch.
That's it for the show today, 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!