DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Sheldon Haudenschild's exciting duality; North Wilkesboro coming back, dirt races planned | Daily 4-18-2022
Coming up we are talking Outlaws at Pevely, All Stars at Attica, USAC at Atomic, Spring Nationals late models, plus NASCAR on dirt and North Wilkesboro. Let's go!
Today is Monday, April 18th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
It's been a jam packed last few days in the dirt racing world, so a lot to get to from the weekend. We'll start with the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars at Pevely...
The Outlaws lost the Friday night show at Pevely to rain, which was pretty much expected with the forecast. But we did get to see them race on Saturday night and things were wild. I saw a tweet from Shane Stewart that referenced new dirt down on the track, and that combined with the Friday rain led to what ended up being a rough race track. Three and four wasn't terrible, but one and two was treacherous, with a really big bump into one that caught a lot of cars out. Especially on the midget side. The midget heat races were a mess with several crashes and flips. On nights like this, you certainly don't want to see anyone tear up equipment, but I feel like we often end up talking about these race nights long after they are done. I know the drivers and teams don't like them, but tough conditions like we saw at Pevely always make for wild races and Saturday was no different. Thanks to his first dash win of the season, Logan Schuchart was on the pole for the feature, but a well timed caution early on allowed third starting Carson Macedo to take advantage, and he ended up officially leading all 35 laps. Macedo didn't escape unscathed though, and there were fireworks behind him as well. On a restart following a caution for a slowing Joe B. Miller, Sheldon Haudenschild got into the back of Brad Sweet, and the contact broke Sheldon's front end. He ended up tipped over because of the damage. In the work area, the teams were able to get a new front end installed, get the wing good enough, and Sheldon returned to the track. We were then treated to an epic run through the field, with Sheldon eventually finishing fourth. And honestly, without contact with James McFadden towards the end, he may have finished even better than that. It was the perfect example of the ongoing duality that is Sheldon Haudenschild. He's incredibly talented, and can win on any night out. But that aggressiveness and full send mode we saw on Saturday night also gets him into trouble, and leads to crashes and tough races through the season. He won't contend for a championship until he can find ways to reign it in when necessary, but man does it make him fun to watch. And I said that Macedo didn't get away unscathed. The lap car of Kerry Madsen jumped the cushion in one and two, and Macedo hit the 83JR with his right rear. Somehow the contact and whatever damage there was didn't effect the speed of the 41. So Macedo became the first three time winner in 2022. Logan Schuchart was second in his best run of the season, Brad Sweet was third, Sheldon fourth, and James McFadden completed the top five. David Gravel was hard charger with a 17th to 7th run. The series now will head to Tri-City Speedway in Illinois on Friday and Haubstadt on Saturday, and Sweet maintains the lead atop the standings. Macedo and Gravel are tied for second 48 points back, Sheldon is fourth, 72 back, and James McFadden is now fifth, 120 back. Another driver to keep an eye on coming up is Spencer Bayston in the CJB 5. That team had a rough opening weekend at Volusia, but things have stabilized in recent weeks, and now Bayston has seven top tens in his last eight races, and the third best average finish over the last five races. As we get into the meat of the Outlaw schedule, this team could make some noise. CJB obviously has a decorated sprint car history, and Bayston is a two-time Outlaw winner. I would not be surprised to see this team grab some wins as we head into the summer.
In the midget portion of the night, Chase McDermand grabbed his first POWRi national victory, topping Joe B. Miller and Tanner Berryhill. It was also the first win for the Mounce/Stout midget team. So a big night for those guys.
In Ohio, we got sprint car racing of both the non-wing and winged varieties. At Attica, Friday and Saturday saw the first two points paying races of the season for the All Stars, and it was a banner way for Tyler Courtney to begin his title defense. Friday night he outdueled Craig Mintz and Justin Peck to grab the win, and Saturday was just complete domination, with Sunshine leading wire-to-wire. So if you include the two nights at East Bay earlier in the year, Sunshine's All Star finishes are first, third, first, first. That's a strong message to send the rest of the All Star field. The rest of the Friday night top five included Greg Wilson, Mintz, Scott Bogucki, and Parker Price Miller. The rest of the Saturday top five was Zeb Wise, Cole Duncan, Cory Eliason, and Hunter Schuerenberg. We had really good car counts both nights, and there was some drama. The Justin Peck, Sunshine battle from Friday was definitely noteworthy. Peck was my Friday night win pick and things were looking pretty good until late in the going. Courtney tried a slider in three and four that didn't really work, and Peck ended up up the race track and spun out. It was tough to tell if there was any contact, but per the 360 rule, Peck had to go to the rear. He ended up ninth. Afterwards, both Courtney and Peck seemed okay with what happened. On Saturday night we saw Travis Philo upset after a crash and he had to be held back and escorted away by track officials. And after a flip, big kudos to Craig Mintz for getting out of the car, running back to the work area, and helping his team get the 09 fixed and ready to roll again. Rare to see a driver out of the car and actually fixing the car in the work area. Headed to Pennsylvania this weekend, Courtney obviously leads the All Star points. Hunter Schuerenberg, Greg Wilson, Cap Henry, and Bill Balog are all in tie for second, 26 points back.
A few hours away on Saturday night, the USAC National Sprint Cars were taking on Atomic Speedway for the first time in many years. The car count was light at only 20 entries, and you have to believe the tire situation had some affect on that. The Lincoln Park show on Saturday night had Jake Swanson, Tye Mihocko, TMez, and Shane Cockrum among others, who you would probably normally see in action with USAC. I think that owners' meeting USAC held did some good following the tire testing results, but it seems like some teams are still not pleased and are staying away. This will definitely be a storyline to follow as the season progresses. As for the actual event itself, it was a crazy day for Robert Ballou. His toter home blew a steer tire on the way to the track, causing significant damage, but they were able to get to Atomic and race. Ballou then grabbed a second place finish to turn a crap day into a decent one. Out front, the win belonged to Brady Bacon. He started on the pole and led all 30 laps. Justin Grant tried to challenge late, but he exploded a left rear tire in the closing stages and only got back to seventh. So Bacon with the win, Ballou second, CJ Leary third, Chase Stockon fourth, and Kyle Cummins completed the top five. Things at Atomic are definitely on an upswing this year with Charlie Vest in charge, and it was fun to watch the non-wing cars go around that place. With four race nights complete, Emerson Axsom maintains the USAC points lead over Grnt, Stockon, Cummins, and Bacon. The series is back April 29th at Bloomington.
As for season long win picks, we've done selections for 44 races. I have seven correct picks, and the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula has eight. We each were one for four this weekend, with the formula correctly picking Sunshine on Saturday, and I had Bacon on Saturday.
In weekend late model action, we had some good racing with the Spring Nationals at Wythe and Tazewell. Friday at Wythe, Brandon Overton stalked Jonathan Davenport throughout the race, then put a move on him in the final corners to steal the victory. Saturday at Tazewell, Chris Madden scored another big money win, taking home the $21,000 top prize over Ricky Weiss and Dale McDowell. Both Wythe and Tazewell are pretty wild joints, with the banking. Elsewhere, Cory Hedgecock was an Iron Man winner at Ponderosa, Josh Rice earned $10k at Florence, Kaden Honeycutt was the crate winner at Golden Isles, and Johnny Pursley won the Carolina Clash race at Fayetteville.
In other weekend open wheel action, Danny Dietrich won again at Lincoln, Anthony Macri hard charged his way to the win at Port Royal after also winning Friday night at Williams Grove, Mitchel Moles was a USAC Western States midget winner at Bakersfield, and Corey Day topped the weekly 360 show at Ocean.
Normally we would close the show down around this point, but I did want to talk about the NASCAR weekend and the North Wilkesboro news today. Ben Rhodes won the truck series race on Saturday at Bristol, but we did get to see the debut of Buddy Kofoid. He had to start in the rear, raced his way into the top five, before spinning late and finishing 27th. It wasn't the result he was hoping for, but he looked good in that KBM truck so hopefully we get to see him again in the future. I said it Friday, but Buddy is one of the most talented young racers we have in this country right now.
In the Cup race last night, Kyle Busch was the benefactor of a last lap incident between leader Tyler Reddick and second place Chase Briscoe. Reddick looked like he was on his way to his first career Cup win, but Briscoe threw an overly ambitious slider attempt and wiped both of them out. Reddick was incredibly diplomatic afterwards, and unlike some other NASCAR drivers we've seen lately, didn't throw hands at Briscoe when he came up to apologize. With Briscoe's dirt experience, I would have hoped for some better decision making on his end, but he chose to go for the win, which I also understand to some point. It just sucks that he basically ruined Reddick's chances and in turn finished 22nd himself. I did think the racing was better this year with the way track prep went. It wasn't completely confined to the bottom. It was also not great to have the races slowed by so many cautions, but with some of these guys having so little dirt experience, it's going to happen. The Cup cars are done on dirt for the year, but the trucks are still headed to Knoxville later this summer.
And finally today, another paved track will see some dirt racing this year. In an announcement on Friday, it was revealed that North Wilkesboro is being revived and it will host a combination of paved and dirt races in 2022, before being repaved for the 2023 season. Speedway Motorsports owns the facility, and it will work with Barry Braun and XR to make this all happen. The dirt events specifically will happen in October, with several divisions of racing planned, including super late models, 410 sprint cars, and big block modifieds among others. They are still working through a lot of details, including potential sanctioning bodies getting involved and broadcast details, but Wilkesboro coming back is really cool, and it will be interesting to see that place as a dirt track for the month of October. There will be some scheduling conflicts, including for the first super late model weekend October 7th and 8th, but I'm curious to see what happens with that sprint car weekend October 21st and 22nd. There is no Outlaw race that weekend, and the All Stars are done by then. It's probably a bit too much wishful thinking to hope that the Outlaws might sanction those two nights, but a guy can dream I guess. As things get more clear, we'll keep you posted on what's to come at Wilkesboro.
The only thing 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!