DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Do you recognize these faces? If they put on a good World of Outlaws battle, does it matter? | Daily 5-5-2022

Coming up we are talking Outlaws and USMTS at Mississippi Thunder, Eldora rained out, plus news from Kaylee Bryson and the Chili Bowl. Let's go!

Today is Thursday, May 5th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

The World of Outlaws Late Model Series and USMTS Modifieds get started tonight at Mississippi Thunder Speedway in Wisconsin for the three day Dairyland Showdown. The Outlaws will race tonight and tomorrow for $10,000 to win each night, and the Saturday finale will be $50,000 to win. The modifieds will run for $3,000 tonight, $5,000 on Friday, and $10,000 on Saturday. The Outlaws are coming off those two nights at Bristol where Jonathan Davenport and Ricky Weiss each picked up $25k wins. Davenport has been on a roll lately, earning big money victories with XR, the FloRacing series and now the Outlaws. He is headed to this event this weekend, so he'll be hard to ignore over the next three nights. On top of JD and the Outlaw regulars, we'll also see Bobby Pierce, Mike Marlar, Jimmy Owens, and plenty more. This weekend drew nearly 40 cars last year, and with even more money on the line, I don't see why we shouldn't have at least that this season. With Brandon Sheppard and Rocket off to chase the Lucas championship, the Outlaw points battle has shifted to Dennis Erb and Max Blair right now. Those two are separated by 38 points with 12 nights complete. Tanner English and Tyler Bruening are third and fourth, both just a little over a hundred points back. From Kyle Hammer in fifth on back, everyone else is over 200 back, and probably out of it at this point. That group includes Ryan Gustin, who I thought would continue to improve with the series in his second season. But the Reaper took a beating in Florida at Volusia, and over these first 12 nights only has four top tens. His average finish has declined more than 6 positions per race versus a year ago. He finished second in the Mississippi Thunder finale a year ago, and he needs to try and find that speed again. I know when you look up and down the Outlaw order right now, there doesn't appear to be much star power, with all the big names either running Lucas, or not running a series at all. But I think this Outlaw championship fight is really intriguing and could stay close all season. You've got the journeyman Erb versus the upstart Blair right now. Both can win races, and even though this is Blair's first crack at a national tour, he's got plenty of regional experience winning championships. Two very different situations and approaches to watch as these guys race it out. BShepp ran away with this Outlaw championship in four of the last five seasons, so it will be nice to maybe have a little drama this year. In the win picks department, the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula likes Max Blair tonight. He's got six top tens in his last seven Outlaw starts. I think I might roll with Bobby Pierce tonight just for fun. This feels like a weekend where we could see some regional guys grab some victories. I wouldn't sleep either on names like Jimmy Mars or Jake Timm at this race track either.

As for the USMTS Modifieds, they've only raced four times this season, and Dustin Sorensen enters as the points leader over Jason Hughes, Tanner Mullens, Tyler Davis, and Rodney Sanders. Sorensen, Davis, Kale Westover, and Jake O'Neil have the four victories so far. Defending series champion Dereck Ramirez is down in ninth, with two top fives in those four races. Both of the top two in the standings have won at this track in their careers, with Sorensen being the most recent winner, back in 2020. According to the series, 34 drivers have run all four events this season, and with good money on the line, there shouldn't be a lack of cars on that side over the next three nights.

Now, if you want to watch tonight because you can't get to the track, things are going to be messy. The Outlaw portion of the night will be live on DIRTVision, while the USMTS modifieds will be over on RacinDirt. The two sides couldn't agree on a deal to show both divisions, as you might expect, so it's going to be one of those crappy streaming nights where you'll have to have a subscription to both, and be flipping between the two. Be prepared for the complaints on social and in the forums. This issue still sucks, and it doesn't seem likes it's going to change any time soon.

The World of Outlaws Sprint Cars and USAC National Sprint Cars were supposed to be at Eldora this weekend for the Let's Race Two event, but wet weather and saturated grounds have forced the track and series to sack the entire thing. Neither day of racing will be made up in the future. Ticket holders will get credits on their accounts. This is now four straight shows for the USAC sprint cars that have been affected by rain. They will be back in action on May 12th at Lakeside. As for the Outlaws, they are up to nine shows now cancelled or postponed because of weather so far this year. With Eldora lost, they will now head to Pennsylvania next week for three shows. They'll take on Lincoln on Wednesday, May 11th, with two nights at Williams Grove to follow that weekend. For more details on the cancellation, visit eldoraspeedway.com.

When the USAC Silver Crown Series heads to Port Royal Speedway for the first time coming up on June 18th, Kaylee Bryson will be making her debut with the series. She's going to team up and run the event with Sam Pierce Racing and she'll be the 10th woman to make a start with that series. Bryson is currently ninth in the USAC midget national points standings and has two podium finishes in her career. She's part of the Toyota pipeline, and has also found success in micros along with making select pavement starts recently. Bryson's most recent finishes in the midget driving for Keith Kunz Motorsports were a third and a ninth at Port City a few weeks ago. Nice to see her continuing to expand into other cars and types of racing. I think it's super valuable for drivers to get experience in a variety of car types.

If you are a fan of the Chili Bowl, that event is making a schedule change for the 2023 version of the event. When they added Monday of Chili Bowl week as another prelim night, they kept the Monday practice session, but instead of there being two practices, they shortened it to just one in the morning, with racing then happening that evening. For next year they are moving practice to the Sunday before, and bringing back the two sessions. Teams will be on track in the morning, there will be a rework around lunch, and then they'll reverse the order and teams will get to practice again in the afternoon. Monday will then just be dedicated to that first prelim night. The event's operations director, Matt Ward, said they were concerned with moving things back to the weekend because they usually have used those days to get everyone parked in the building. But they will now use all day Saturday to get trailers moved in, so they should be good to go for Sunday. For next year, they have also bumped the weeklong pit pass price, it's now $405 for the seven days. You will continue to see some complaints about the prices, especially with the event still only paying $10,000 to win. But it's hard to blame them when cars and fans keep showing up to that event in record numbers. In the business world, you'd call this pricing power. They have the ability to raise prices without affecting demand. As a business owner, that's what you want. But this payout situation is really a problem for dirt racing as a whole. Racers and teams say they want to race for more money, but there are still a lot of events that don't pay a lot that get huge car counts, and yet others that have nice purses that don't get attendance. So don't tell me payouts matter as much when that is the case. Either way, I'm a big fan of the Chili Bowl personally. I've been a few times, and it's an incredible week-long festival of racing. Awesome to see it continue to grow and expand.

There are five shows on today's streaming schedule. DIRTVision has night one of the World of Outlaws late models from Mississippi Thunder. FloRacing has Flo 24/7 and more IMCA racing from Tulare. And RacinDirt has the USMTS Modifieds from Mississippi Thunder. 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 Thursday. 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!