DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Kasey Kahne back with the Outlaws at Lincoln; Kyle Larson, Jonathan Davenport headed to Charlotte | Daily 5-11-2022

We've got big midweek racing vibes today. We are talking the Outlaws at Lincoln tonight, plus dueling super late model shows between XR and FloRacing. Let's get into it!

Today is Wednesday, May 11th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

It's been nearly two weeks since they last raced, but the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series is back in action tonight at Lincoln Speedway in Pennsylvania. Tonight kicks off a three race week in Central PA that includes two nights at Williams Grove coming up this weekend. The weather looks fantastic for today, but keep an eye on the weekend at the Grove. There are rain chances in the forecast for both days, with Friday looking a little better than Saturday. Brad Sweet enters tonight as the points leader by 20 over Carson Macedo. David Gravel is third, 30 points back, Sheldon Haudenschild is 68 back in fourth, while everyone from Logan Schuchart in fifth on back is over 100 points behind. Schuchart and Spencer Bayston in sixth are moving in the right direction currently, with those drivers topping the series in average finish over the previous five races. They each won a night at Bristol to close out April, and before that Carson Macedo won two in a row at Pevely and Haubstadt. Macedo leads all drivers with four victories this year. Sheldon, Gravel, and Gio Scelzi each have two apiece, while Donny Schatz, Jacob Allen, Schuchart, Bayston, Kyle Larson, Sweet, and Brent Marks all have one win apiece. Now that you are back up to speed on where things stand with the Outlaws as a whole, let's look at Lincoln specifically. This week is the first of the classic Outlaws vs. Posse clash for the year, but honestly, it hasn't been much of a competition in recent seasons. The Outlaws have flat dominated Central PA. At Lincoln, Outlaw drivers have won three of the past five races there, including the last two. Lance Dewease is the most recent non-Outlaw victor at the track, back in 2019. Outlaw drivers also own the top spots in average finish at the track over the past five visits, with Gravel sitting at 2.8 and Schatz at 6.2. Names like Anthony Macri, Lance Dewease, and Freddie Rahmer are all pretty far down that list. If you want to win tonight, you'll have to start towards the front, as the past five winners at Lincoln have averaged a start of about 2.4. So far this year with the Outlaws, we've had six winners from the pole, four from second, three from third, three from sixth, and one from seventh. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula likes David Gravel tonight. His recent average finish there is a big reason why. I think I'm going to roll with Logan Schuchart tonight. He's been very strong lately, with five straight top fives, and he's qualifying much better in recent weeks. That will be key tonight, and he and that Shark Racing group are back home in PA. I'll be curious to see what Sweet and Gravel can do tonight as well. Sweet only has the one win on the year, but he's leading the standings because he's been so damn consistent. This part of the country isn't usually kind to the 49, but Brad did win at Lincoln in the series' last trip one year ago. As for Gravel, he started out the season red hot and had people talking championship, but he had a stretch where he had three finishes of 13th or worse in five races. In the past five events, they've stabilized, but they are behind both Sweet and Macedo. I'm personally still really high on Macedo here in year four. His qualifying average and average feature start are down a bit from last season, but that hasn't stopped him from improving his average finish. He's basically matched his feature plus minus from a year ago, and that is key when you look at past champions. Those guys are able to make moves come feature time, and maximize finishes even when they don't start well. Drop me a comment, let me know who you are picking for tonight. A couple of other Outlaw notes for you before we move on. Jason Sides is making way in the 7S this week for Tim Shaffer. The Steel City Outlaw will pilot the Sides entry in the next four events, tonight at Lincoln and upcoming shows at the Grove and Bridgeport. Also tonight, we'll see the return of Kasey Kahne to the seat of the KKR 9. He was supposed to be a full timer in 2022, but he's been dealing with the effects of a crash at Volusia back in February, and he's only made four appearances this year. Hopefully this means he's healthy and can continue to race going forward. It also sounds like we could see Christopher Bell racing tonight in the Swindell Speedlab 39, and Alex Bowman in his own Ally 55. If you want to watch tonight, DIRTVision has the live stream.

Elsewhere tonight, we get the first clash of the XR Super Series and the FloRacing Night in America Series. XR is starting four days at Charlotte for the Colossal 100 weekend, and tonight's Flo show at Spoon River kicks off the four night Illinois Speedweek. All of the national heavy hitters will be split between the two series, and I'm honestly a little surprised about who is going where. I think the two biggest shocks for me are Jonathan Davenport and Kyle Larson. They lead the Flo series points right now, and Larson is sponsored by FloRacing, but both of those drivers are expected to be at Charlotte for all four race nights. I definitely didn't see that coming. Last week, it seemed as though we may see Davenport at the two Flo shows tonight and tomorrow, then Charlotte for Friday and Saturday, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Also, Charlotte is much more convenient for Larson and team owner Kevin Rumley, but I thought that Flo connection would be too strong, along with chasing that championship. But that also isn't the case. So at Charlotte we'll see Larson, JD, Brandon Overton, Tim McCreadie, Chris Madden, Dale McDowell, Chase Briscoe, Chris Ferguson, Ricky Weiss, Scott Bloomquist, Jimmy Owens and more. At Spoon River, we'll get Bobby Pierce, Brandon Sheppard, Shannon Babb, Brian Shirley, EPJ, Tyler Erb, Devin Moran, Ryan Gustin, Ashton Winger, Cade Dillard, Dennis Erb Jr. and a lot more. So on both ends of the spectrum, we are getting great fields and should have some good racing. The XR show tonight pays $25,000 to win, while the Flo show is $22,000 to win. With Davenport, Larson, and Overton all not racing with Flo this week, that will elevate BShepp and Pierce to the top of the heap there for the championship. This feels like a bit of a blow to Michael Rigsby and Ben Shelton and the Flo series to lose those three guys. They are putting up extra cash for the champion if they have perfect attendance, but that wasn't enough to keep those big three in the mix. As for the XR shows, I may try and sneak out to the dirt track sometime this week. That facility is a stone's throw from my house, and I haven't been to a dirt event in way too long. If you are a late model fan, let me know your thoughts on XR vs. Flo this week. Are you going to try and watch both? Do you have subscriptions to both FloRacing and XR+? Let me know.

With the Short Track Super Series at Accord Speedway last night, it was pole sitter Mat Williamson who grabbed his third career victory with the series. Before the halfway point of the race, Danny Creeden was able to slip by Money Mat in lap traffic, but Creeden's time out front was short lived. On a lap 21 restart, Williamson dove low on Creeden to take the top spot with the two making contact, and Creeden ended up slipping back to third. Williamson led the rest of the way for the $6000 win. He also takes the north region points standings lead with two races complete. Behind Williamson, Creeden battled back to second at the end, Andy Bachetti was third, Bobby Hackel fourth, and Danny Tyler completed the top five. The Short Track Super Series has another midweek show, next Tuesday night May 17th at Outlaw Speedway. And kudos to the track and series for getting that main event complete by 9:30PM here in the east. As we talked about yesterday, that's what you've got to do with these week day races.

On the dirt racing podcast front this week, Winged Nation has shows with Cruz Pedrego, Lori McCarl, and Brian Kemenah. LoudPedal has Parker Price Miller, Forward Bite has Max Blair, Ohio Dirt has Cale Thomas, the Dirt from Knoxville has Scotty Johnson, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks has Thomas Meseraull, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, and the Dirt Nerds. To see the full list of shows and episodes, head over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts.

There are four items on the streaming schedule for today. DIRTVision has the Outlaws from Lincoln, FloRacing has their late models from Spoon River and Flo 24/7, and XR+ has the XR Super Series from Charlotte. 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 Wednesday. 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!