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Jacob Allen couldn't run second again; Tyler Erb, Gregg Satterlee win with the Lucas late models | Daily 4-11-2022
Coming up we are talking victories for Jacob Allen, CJ Leary, Tyler Erb, and Gregg Satterlee, plus issues for Kyle Larson and other weekend winners. Let's roll!
Today is Monday, April 11th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
We are back at it today after a long weekend at Martinsville doing the day job thing. It was another weekend wrought with weather related cancellations around the country, but there was still plenty of big time dirt racing to be consumed.
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series did lose their Friday night show at Tyler County to weather, but they did get to race Saturday at Hagerstown and Sunday at Port Royal. With both Devin Moran and Brandon Sheppard racing with Lucas both days, we knew we'd leave the weekend with one of them atop the standings, even though neither is racing full time with Lucas this season. And that was true, but we did have a change. Moran entered as the points leader, but Sheppy leaves at the top. Eventually though, these two will go other directions, and that will leave the fight to the Lucas regulars, which right now still very early on is Tyler Erb versus Tim McCreadie. Ashton Winger, Ricky Thornton Jr., Earl Pearson Jr., and Hudson O'Neal are also in the mix, but the top two separated themselves a bit over the weekend. At Hagerstown on Saturday it was all Tyler Erb. He was overall quick time, won the first heat, started on the pole, and led all 50 laps. He was basically unchallenged for the duration. It was his first victory of the season, but he's been really solid up to this point. 13 top tens in 15 races, along with 7 top fives and an average finish of 7.4. All of those are improvements over last year. McCreadie finished second, Gregg Satterlee third, Kyle Hardy fourth, and Devin Moran kept his top ten streak alive with a fifth place finish. I tweeted on Sunday before Port Royal that Moran had top tens in all 14 Lucas races to start the year, and even though I hashtagged it not a jinx tweet, I think it was. He finished 12th at Port after starting 15th, and thus ended the streak. That's my bad. Out front on Sunday, we got a Kyle Larson late model appearance following a not great 19th place run on Saturday night at Martinsville in the Cup car. He started second and led the opening 25 laps, but things got interesting after that. Pole sitter EPJ chased him throughout, and on lap 26, he made his bid for the lead into turn three. The two made contact, and Larson ended up spinning out of turn four, causing a caution. Both drivers ended up in the work area. Larson returned to finish 15th, while EPJ appeared to have maybe suspension damage, and he was done for the day. Afterwards, EPJ said he actually hit the inside wall, which then pushed him up into Larson. The contact broke his steering rack when they hit wheel to wheel. That handed the lead on the restart to Gregg Satterlee, and he drove away over the final 15 laps to grab his third career Lucas win and first since 2018. Satterlee started sixth, and I think even if Larson and EPJ didn't tangle, the 22 would have been in the mix late. He was really fast coming up through the top ten. BShepp, McCreadie, Jimmy Owens, and Erb completed the top five. The wins by Erb and Satterlee push us to eight different winners in 15 races for the year. So with those two races in the books, BShepp is your Lucas points leader by 15 over Moran. Erb, McCreadie, and Owens complete that top five. We won't see the series again for a few weeks, with Tri City up next on April 29th. The Outlaws are also off this weekend, so if you want some late model action coming up find the Spring Nationals, MLRA, Iron Man Series, and some of the other local and regional stuff. And we were supposed to get the opener for the FloRacing Night in America Series tomorrow at Eldora but that event has been pushed back to April 29th because of weather. So not off to a great start for that series either. Larson's late model show is happening on Thursday though, and we'll get more into that later in the week.
On the open wheel side, the World of Outlaws and Xtreme Outlaws were also victims of weather, losing the Friday night show at US36. We did get to see them on Saturday though at Lake Ozark for the Jason Johnson Classic. On the non-wing side, we got a pretty big field of cars, with 34 eventually taking part. That included some USAC regulars, guys committed to Xtreme, some locals, and even a guy like Alex Bright towed from Pennsylvania to race with the series. With Xtreme being new, and the recent tire testing issues with USAC, there is definitely some momentum right now for this new venture from World Racing Group. In the feature, we had three different lap leaders in CJ Leary, Brady Bacon, and Robert Ballou. Ballou was light at the scales after his heat race win, and had to come from 17th at the start. He led four laps, but eventually settled for second. After Leary led early from the pole, he fell back through the field to fourth at one point, and Bacon looked like he was probably on his way. But with seven to go, we saw a rare Bacon mistake, as he got loose into turn one and spun out. On the restart, Ballou was the benenficiary, but Leary was on his way back to the front. He took the lead for good on lap 27 and earned his second Xtreme win in three races. Ballou, Shane Cockrum, Matt Westfall, and Jason McDougal completed the top five. McDougal was in the Keith Kunz sprint car. With three of 14 races complete, Leary leads Ballou and Cockrum in the standings. Up next for the Xtreme Sprint Cars is another trip to Lake Ozark in June. The midgets open in May at Millbridge.
With the World of Outlaws, we had two guys battling for the win that we probably didn't expect at the beginning of the night. Officials ended up shortening the feature to 30 laps from 41 because of track conditions. We had some good racing in the heats, which is often not a good sign. In the non-wing feature there were some tire wear issues, and that continued into the winged portion, although I don't think it really affected the quality of the race. We saw some good action, even with the track taking rubber pretty early on, especially in turns three and four. Jacob Allen started on the pole and led early, but Brady Bacon, who did double duty, was in the mix, and those two officially swapped the lead four times. Inside ten to go, the 21 of Bacon was out front, and it felt like if he could keep the right rear under him, he was in a great spot for the win. But Allen had other ideas. With three to go, Allen made a big move into turn one, muscling past the Macho Man on the bottom side and taking the lead. Bacon maintained second after the contact, but his time up front came to an end with the white flag in the air. The right rear came apart which led to a 17th place finish. Out front, Allen drove away to his second career win, with Spencer Bayston second, David Gravel third, Logan Schuchart fourth, and Brad Sweet completing the top five. The win for Allen was his first since Dodge City in September of 2020, and he told Chase Raudman afterwards that he feels like he's known as Mr. Nice Guy, but that he just couldn't run second again. Definitely some aggression from the 1A we haven't see in the past. We've talked about Jacob on this show already this year, and he definitely is driving like a different guy. I would have called you a liar if you told me before the season that the first Shark car to win in 2022 would have been Jacob Allen and not Logan Schuchart. The win was Allen's third top five finish this season, which matches his total top five count from the entire 2021 year. He's in the top ten in the standings, and I would not be shocked to see him win again. In the championship fight, Sweet maintains a 40 point lead, with Gravel back up to second and Macedo in third. Sheldon Haudenschild is fourth, while Donny Schatz lost more ground, and he's 110 points back in fifth. The World of Outlaws are headed next to the Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely, Missouri. They race on Friday and Saturday night.
Out in Calfornia, we lost the NARC 410 show at Hanford because of high winds, but we did get 360 shows at Ocean and Placerville. On Friday night at Ocean it was Chase Johnson getting the win over Blake Carrick and Bud Kaeding. Kaeding led a bunch of laps, and those three were in a pretty good fight for a lot of the race. Tanner Carrick had won two straight there, but he ended up spinning out and racing his way back to ninth. At Placerville on Saturday, we got Shane Golobic versus Justin Sanders. Sanders, in the Works Limited 57, threw a hail mary slider at Golobic with seven to go, and took the lead because Golobic had to get on the binders to avoid crashing the 57. Sanders drove away to the win, with Tanner Carrick second and Golobic third.
In Central Pennsylvania, the Friday show at the Grove was cancelled. That left Lincoln and Port Royal on Saturday. At Port Royal, Logan Wagner won again to go back-to-back topping Anthony Macri. And at Lincoln, Buddy Kofoid broke through in the Indy Race Parts 71 to get his first win at the track. He earned $6900 and topped Freddie Rahmer and Danny Dietrich.
In other weekend late model action, Bobby Pierce and Johnny Scott were MLRA winners at 81 Speedway. Zack Mitchell swept the Ultimate Southeast weekend at Carolina and Lake View. And Randall Beckwith was a $10,000 crate winner at Greenville.
Drop me a comment below, let me know your best and worst from the dirt racing weekend. Winners, losers, crashes, whatever is on your mind.
The only show on the streaming schedule today 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.
Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!