DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Jonathan Davenport ends drought with $50k score, has Justin Grant hurt his reputation? | Daily 4-25-2022
Coming up, we've got a huge Monday show talking XR, Outlaws, All Stars, Anthony Macri, Justin Grant, and a whole lot more. Let's go!
Today is Monday, April 25th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Down in Florida at All-Tech Raceway, the XR Super Series gave away a bunch more cash this weekend at the Florida Dirt Nationals. Friday night it was Tim McCreadie taking home the $25,000 feature win over Kyle Strickler and Kyle Bronson. McCreadie drove up from tenth, taking the lead from Brandon Overton who ended up fourth. With the Lucas late models back to racing this coming weekend at Tri-City and Macon, I wonder if this will give TMac a little momentum as he tries to defend his championship. I know he hasn't been super thrilled with his teams performances so far this season, but that $25k should ease things a little bit. On Saturday night, with another $50,000 payout on the line, it was all Jonathan Davenport out front. He started second and handled the field for his first victory of the season. It's almost hard to believe, but it was Superman's first win since the XR show at Las Vegas in November of 2021. Behind him, Strickler and Overton rounded out the podium. Davenport will continue chasing the big money this week, as will quite a few of the late model heavy hitters, with FloRacing shows at Eldora and Brownstown on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then Bristol this weekend with the Outlaws. Hat tip to Kyle Strickler for those two second place finishes over the weekend. We haven't talked about him a whole lot lately, so it was nice to see him with some speed. As for Kyle Larson, it was a bit of a tough weekend. We talked on Friday about him dominating at All-Tech in 2021, but that wasn't the case this weekend. He finished sixth on Friday after starting 13th, and he ran in the top ten on Saturday before getting a flat tire late and finishing 17th. I do think it's funny how our expectations of Larson have become so high that when he isn't winning every damn race, he's off or there is something wrong. Regular commenter JD pointed out on Friday that Larson has only the one Cup win so far this year, and one sprint car win. But I do think everyone on dirt has stepped their game up, and I think the Longhorn guys have struggled a bit to adapt to some of the rule changes this year. In Cup, the Next Gen car has definitely leveled the playing field a bit, so there are other factors at work here. It doesn't change the fact that Larson is still a threat no matter where he goes. As for the rest of the late model world, we'll start to see that separation this weekend, as Lucas and the Outlaws are scheduled against each other. So we should see Devin Moran and Brandon Sheppard fall down the Lucas standings, and Hudson O'Neal fall down the Outlaw points. The XR season continues in a few weeks at Charlotte.
Speaking of the Outlaws, the World of Outlaws late models took on Atomic Speedway over the weekend, and the story has to be the down, then up couple of days for Brandon Sheppard and Rocket Racing. On Friday night, they battled with Tyler Erb for most of the feature before settling for second. But the good finish was wiped out when Sheppard and the one car were DQ'd in post race inspection for failing the droop check. The team tweeted they failed by a full inch, and it was caused by a shock change they made before the feature. It's not a common occurence for a team to publicly comment on something like this, and they even took blame for the move. Unfortunately though, the DQ meant the team took a pretty big hit in the standings and fell even further behind leader Dennis Erb Jr. On Saturday night though, they began the climb out of the hole, leading the most laps and taking their first series win of the season. Kyle Hammer, Devin Moran, and Max Blair all led laps, but Sheppard took over on lap 17 and held off Dennis Erb down the stretch to earn the victory. The win for BShepp now ties him with Josh Richards for the most World of Outlaws late model series wins all time with 78. With as much of a struggle as 2022 has been for Richards and his Boom Briggs owned ride, Sheppy shouldn't have a problem taking the lead this season for most wins ever. So with 10 features now complete, Dennis Erb leads Max Blair by 44 points, with Sheppard third 66 back. Tanner English and Hudson O'Neal complete the top five. At about two points per position, Sheppard definitely has some work to do in the coming weeks to chase down Blair and Erb. It won't be easy though, as Blair now has five straight top six finishes, and Erb has only finished outside the top ten once this season, back on night two at DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia. We might actually get a decent points battle here if Blair and Erb can maintain the pace. The late models are in action this weekend with the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars at Bristol.
Those same World of Outlaws Sprint Cars were at Haubstadt on Saturday night after losing the Friday show at Tri-City to rain. Haubstadt always seems to put on good racing and Saturday night was no exception. Brad Sweet led through half way from the second starting position, but things were wild out front, especially when the leaders got into lap traffic. You could have thrown a blanket over the top four, with Sweet, James McFadden, Carson Macedo, and Sheldon Haudenschild all in the mix. Macedo, who was the defending winner at the track, got to the lead on lap 24 with some big moves through that traffic that had me tensed up a few times. We ended up losing McFadden from the battle when he was collected by spinning lap cars. The KO Motorsports teammates of Kyle Cummins and Jason McDougal got together, and McFadden had no where to go. Macedo actually got a little damage from that incident when he tagged the spinning Brock Zearfoss and damaged his nose wing. The contact didn't slow him down though, as Macedo was able to keep Sweet and Sheldon at bay through the closing laps. It was Macedo's third straight Haubstadt win, and his fourth already of 2022. He leads the series in wins through these first 15 races. Behind him, Sweet, Sheldon, Spencer Bayston, and Logan Schuchart completed the top five. With Sweet finishing second, Macedo wasn't able to take a big chunk out of the points lead, he's still 44 back in second. David Gravel's sixth place finish saw him lose a little ground to the top guys, and he's 56 back in third. He doesn't seem to have quite the pace he did a few weeks ago, especially in qualifying. His last five time trial performances are 13th at Vado, 12th at Devil's Bowl, 4th in his group at Lake Ozark, 21st at Pevely, and 3rd at Haubstadt. He's now fallen behind both Jacob Allen and Brad Sweet in average qualifying position for the season, which is uncharacteristic for the driver with the most quicktimes over the last five seasons. Behind Gravel, Sheldon and McFadden complete the top five in the standings. Sweet extended his top ten streak now to 14 straight races. With Bristol on tap for the weekend, we'll see if Gravel can repeat his weekend sweep from a year ago.
Over to the All Stars, they were in Pennsylvania this weekend for three shows. Anthony Macri kicked off the weekend back on Thursday by winning at the Bloomsburg Fair. On Friday night at Williams Grove, Macri was going for his fifth straight win in a sprint car, but it wasn't meant to be. He was quick time in qualifying, but the dash bit him a bit, and he started fifth in the feature, and that's where he finished. Out front, it was all Brent Marks. He started on the pole, and was pretty much gone for the duration. He led all 30 laps to earn his first All Star win of the year and fifth of his career. Lance Dewease and Danny Dietrich rounded out the podium, with points leader Tyler Courtney in fifth. Fortunately for Macri though, that fifth place result would end up being his worst finish of the weekend. On Saturday at Port Royal, he started sixth, and ended up in a whale of a battle with track rival Logan Wagner. The two were throwing big slide jobs, working through lap traffic, Macri was banging the boards, and Earl and Blake could hardly keep up on the call. On the final lap, Macri blocked low into one to stop Wagner's slide job, and that was the race winning move. The two nearly collided, and Wagner had to take evasive action. That split the two apart enough for Macri to take the victory. Wagner came home second, Lance Dewease third, Ryan Smith fourth, and Mike Wagner completed the top five. And if that wasn't enough for Macri, he rolled to Selinsgrove on Sunday and won again. It wasn't an All Star show, but it was the sixth win in seven races for the Concrete Kid. What a stretch he's having right now. The All Stars are now headed to Lernerville, Sharon, and Waynesfield this coming week, and with five races complete, Sunshine continues to be the points leader. Parker Price Miller is second, 22 back, with Bill Balog, Zeb Wise, and Cap Henry completing the top five. Unfortunately though, it isn't all good news for the All Stars. They did lose a race this week, Thursday at Bedford, because of the tire shortage. They cited limited tire supply and a potentially low car count. They do hope to reschedule the Bedford show for later in the year.
Before we get into the closing stretches of today's show, I also wanted to talk about the USAC national midget weekend at Port City Raceway. It was their first time back in action since the season opener down in Florida back in February. Justin Grant won Friday night to become the first driver to ever win the first three races of a USAC midget season. He topped Buddy Kofoid and Kaylee Bryson. We'll get back to Grant in a second. Saturday night it was KKM versus CBI and Kofoid versus Moles. Buddy finally took control right before half way and led the final 28 laps en route to his second straight Saturday win at Port City. Moles was second and Grant hard charged to the final podium spot. Grant leaves the weekend with a short five point advantage over Kofoid in the standings.
Now, back to Justin Grant. He won Friday night, but the way he got the lead was pretty unpopular. There was a caution called for an incident involving Taylor Reimer, and into the next corner, Grant threw a huge slider at race long leader Chase McDermand. The two made big contact, and McDermand ended up turned over. He was obviously upset, and afterwards in victory lane, Grant was showered with boos from the Port City crowd. JG didn't really celebrate the win, and was apologetic in his post race interview, telling Drake York that he felt terrible about what happened, and that he was sorry. From my seat, it looked like a pretty crappy move from Grant, and while I'm guessing he wouldn't have meant to crash McDermand, the decision making in that moment with a yellow out was suspect. Grant has been fast to start this season, but after what we've seen, I'm wondering where you guys stand on him right now. I don't know how JG is viewed inside the non-wing community, but I have this idea that he at least was pretty highly regarded. His kind of "race for a living," journeyman image always seemed to be pretty popular, at least on social media. But now in the span of a few weeks he's been suspended by the Xtreme Outlaw Series for tire doping, had questions around him regarding the USAC tire stuff, and now this really suspect slider on McDermand. Do you think that JG has tarnished his reputation in the last few weeks? I feel like he has. We hear complaints all the time about these quote kids that race and how they make bad moves, and then you see TMez talking about slider or die, and now this from JG. It's hard to feel bad for these veteran guys when they aren't doing any better. Drop me a comment, let me know where you are on Grant right now and how you view him after this pretty rough start to the season.
In the win picks department, I had a banner Saturday, correctly picking all four winners, with Macri, Macedo, Kofoid, and Sheppard. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula had Grant on Friday night at Port City correct, and Sheppard on Saturday at Atomic. So for the first time this season, I have more correct picks than does the formula. I'm now 11 for 52, with the formula at 10 for 52. We'll see if I can continue my good fortunes this week.
Other weekend open wheel winners included recent conversations guest Chase Briscoe with the USCS on Saturday night at Talladega. Cole Macedo won the Friday night show at Attica, AJ Flick took the 410 win at Lernerville, Cole Duncan won Saturday at Atomic, Scotty Thiel won the IRA opener at Beaver Dam, Greg Wilson won at Fremont, Trey Starks was a 360 winner at Grays Harbor, Ryan Bernal took the Sprint Car Challenge Tour win at Merced, Damion Gardner won the CRA show at Mohave Valley, and Jamie Veal won the 410 show at Eastern Creek down under.
And did you see the monsoon at Knoxville on Saturday night? They had just started the 360 feature and had a red flag for a crash. While they were cleaning up the incident, the bottom fell out and halted the season opener. The Trunk Bar Twitter account had a wild video showing the torrential rain. They will make up the rest of the night coming up soon.
Other weekend late model winners included Johnny Scott and Payton Looney with the MLRA at Lucas Oil Speedway, Carson Ferguson and Jadon Frame were weekend Spring Nationals winners, Zack Mitchell won the Clash show at Lavonia in a fresh Longhorn Chassis, and Max Blair won the season opener at West Virginia on Sunday for $10,000.
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!