DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Chris Madden cashes in at Bristol, new World of Outlaws video game coming | Daily 4-4-2022
On this Monday we are talking the Bristol weekend, including more big money for Chris Madden, the Outlaws in Texas, plus winners from around the country. Let's go.
Today is Monday, April 4th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
We'll start today off with the big money action from Bristol for the super late models. Chris Madden continued to show why it was a good idea for him to drop off the Outlaws full time. Friday night he put in another dominating performance to grab his second $50,000 win of the event. Chris Ferguson, who had a win the previous weekend finished second, with Devin Moran going 10th to 3rd, Kyle Larson 9th to 4th, and Ricky Weiss 5th. With some of the cancellations around the country, we did add a few cars for this second weekend, including Brandon Sheppard and Ross Bailes, but there were some guys that took part the first weekend who were missing the second weekend including Tim McCreadie. McCreadie had a rough first two nights, including a crash, and didn't return. He'll be back in action this week for the Lucas shows at Tyler County, Hagerstown, and Port Royal. Saturday night was not what several big names were hoping for, including Larson and Brandon Overton, who both bowed out early with mechanical issues. Moran and Jonathan Davenport were also both outside the top 15. Out front, Ricky Weiss was the early leader from second, but before half way Dale McDowell ran him down, and then with 20 to go, slipped by for the lead. The Georgia driver, who already has two Outlaw wins on the year, drove away to the $50,000 win in the event finale. Madden charged from 12th to finish second, Fergie was third, Scott Bloomquist fourth, and Jimmy Owens completed the top five. This was actually McDowell's second career Bristol win, as he won the inaugural dirt late model race at the big half mile way back in the year 2000. On top of his race winnings, Chris Madden ended up the weeklong points champion, and grabbed an additional $100k for doing so. So his total Bristol earnings came out to $227,900. That's a good season for some drivers, and Madden made that in two weeks of racing. Leaving Bristol, Madden also tops the XR Super Series points standings, with the next race coming up April 21st through the 23rd at All-Tech in Florida. There was again talk about the crowd sizes at Bristol, and again I think a number of factors were at play including travel costs, colder temps, and the novelty of the racing wearing off. It just goes to show that just because you pay big money, and get some big names, doesn't mean teams and fans will show. Promoting races is a difficult game, and there is no magic bullet. The future of the XR racing will depend on how successful their streaming service is and if they can improve and evolve as they learn more about what fans want.
The World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series was supposed to race twice over the weekend, but the Friday show was lost to rain at Lawton. Officials are trying to find a reschedule date, so stay tuned for that. On Saturday night, they went south to Devil's Bowl in Texas for $20,000 to win. With a few other sprint car shows lost, especially in the midwest, the race drew 32 cars, which was the highest car count we've seen at Devil's Bowl in recent years. Unfortunately though, the quality of the field didn't equate to super great racing. We had 20 total position changes from start to finish in the feature, which was the second lowest we've seen there in the past eight races. The track just never really widened out through the night, and even in the feature the lap times were super fast. Brent Marks started second, slipped by polesitter Brian Brown on lap four, and that was it. Marks dominated the rest of the way for the $20,000 score. Donny Schatz, who I picked to win, finished second, Brownie third, James McFadden fourth, and Jacob Allen earned his second top five of the season in fifth. With his third finish outside the top ten in his past five races, David Gravel is now back to third in the points, with Macedo jumping over him to second. Sheldon Haudenschild sits fourth, and Schatz is back to fifth. And while his Shark Racing teammate was rolling around in the top five, it was another difficult night for Logan Schuchart. The winner of the Outlaws' three previous trips to Devil's Bowl had a solid top ten qualifying effort, but his heat race ended in a puff of smoke from the engine. He then had to get into the feature from the B-Main, and was only able to race his way up to 16th. He's back to eighth in the standings, with a widening 140 point margin between he and leader Sweet. The series will spend the next two weekends in Missouri, with stops at US36, Lake Ozark, and Pevely coming up.
In some other Outlaw news from the last few days, Adam Stern, who writes for Sports Business Journal, tweeted back on Friday that the series is working with iRacing and it's Monster Games studio on a new console video game. This comes nearly 20 years after the Outlaws last released a game, and is a constant question from fans of that game and the series, when will they get another. Stern says the game should be released this fall for Playstation and XBox, and the deal should be formally announced this week. This will be the first time iRacing releases a game for consoles.
We talked back on Friday about all the tire testing drama with USAC and the teams who announced they weren't racing at Lawrenceburg, and in the end it didn't matter. The Saturday show at Lawrenceburg was cancelled because of a poor forecast. As I mentioned in that Friday show, USAC has scheduled an owner's meeting for today to go over all the results of the tire tests, so they can provide some transparency and show the reasoning behind their move to not penalize those four teams from Ocala. We'll see if that makes any difference for some of these teams that had decided not to race. We'll keep you posted if anything comes out of that meeting.
Elsewhere this weekend, we saw a bunch of shows out in California. Tanner Carrick won his second straight 360 show on Friday at Ocean Speedway. He topped Bud Kaeding, Max Mittry, and Tanner Holmes. Ocean got pretty technical, with a big bump in one and two, and it was fun to watch those guys handle that and lap traffic. With the USAC CRA Series, we had our first two winners of 2022 not named Damion Gardner. The Demon swept the opening three shows at Cocopah, then won again at Perris a week ago. But Friday night Austin Liggett got by him late to score the win at Hanford. And at Tulare on Saturday night, we saw a great battle for the lead all race long between Ryan Bernal and Chase Johnson, with Bernal eventually coming out on top for the victory.
Also in California, the NARC 410 series kicked off their season on Saturday night at Stockton. Colby Copeland started second, but lead all 25 laps en route to the opening night victory. Defending champ Dominic Scelzi settled for second with Mitchell Faccinto third, Shane Golobic fourth, and Willie Croft in fifth.
Up in Pennsylvania, we saw a dominating win at Lincoln for Danny Dietrich. He became the first repeat winner at that track this season. And at Port Royal, Logan Wagner got by Justin Whittall in lap traffic and earned his 12th career win at Port.
With the Short Track Super Series, they had big cash on the line at Orange County Fair Speedway, and after early leader Mike Mahaney dropped out with mechanical issues on lap two, all anyone saw was the rear of Matt Sheppard's nine. He dominated the 50 lap main event and scored $25,000. Max McLaughlin and Mat Williamson completed the podium. This was the second round of the Elite Series, which is the big money schedule inside the normal slate of modified races for the Short Track Super Series. The mods are back in action on April 26th at Delaware.
Before we shut it down today, let's do a little something different in the comment section for today, shall we? Drop me a message, let me know what your best and worst from the dirt racing weekend was. It can be anything, including on track stuff, drama, or maybe that you spilled your beer during the B-Main at your weekly track. Let me know what you've got.
The only thing on today's streaming schedule 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, have a good Monday. If you have thoughts about the topics on today's show, leave them in the comments below or tweet at me. If you want to support what I'm doing, make sure to like these videos and subscribe where you watch or listen. You can also grab a decal at dirtrackr.com/decal for $3.
Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!