DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Sides bringing on Robbie Price; Are some dirt races too long? Plus other format thoughts | Daily 5-19-2022
Wins last night for Hudson O'Neal and Matt Sheppard, news from Sides and Reinbold Underwood, plus a preview of tonight's Outlaw show at Bloomsburg all coming up today. Let's go!
Today is Thursday, May 19th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
We are going to jump around to a bunch of different stuff today, including some news items, some race results, and some thoughts about formats. Let's kick things off with the news...
Actually, before we do that, I've made a few upgrades to my equipment this week, including a new microphone and some other bits that will allow for more images and screen sharing during these shows. Let me know what you think.
Now to the news...
First up, we did get that announcement from Sides Motorsports about their driver for the remainder of the 2022 season, and I'm not sure any of us saw this one coming. Washington driver Robbie Price will get behind the wheel of that car starting Friday at Attica while Jason heals up from a hip injury he's been dealing with in recent years. Sides is hoping to get things fixed up later in 2022 and hopefully be back for Volusia in 2023. He told Jeremy Elliott that they talked to several drivers, but went with Price because he was quote "the only one who could bring something to the table, other than a couple of Australians" unquote. Price was the 2017 Skagit track champion, and ran last week out in California with the NARC series at Tulare and Hanford. He hasn't appeared with the Outlaws since Eldora in September of last year. I've got 29 races with the series since 2017, with a best finish of 13th at Silver Dollar last season. It's a great opportunity for Price to get some more starts with the Outlaws, but with his limited experience and past results, I wouldn't expect this team to run a whole lot different than it has with Jason in the seat.
In other World of Outlaws news, the Gold Cup Race of Champions at Silver Dollar is getting bigger this season under the new promotion group of Brad Sweet, Kyle Larson, and Colby Copeland. The event is moving back to three days, with drivers accumulating points over the first two nights to setup action on the final night. They will then race for $25,000 to win and $2000 to start. With these three taking over the track, you figured it was only a matter of time before changes like this came. The Gold Cup is part of the fall west coast swing for the Outlaws, and the new dates are September 8th through the 10th. We'll now have three races during that stretch that pay more than $20,000 to win, joining the Tarlton Classic and Skagit finale. For more on the event, head over to worldofoutlaws.com.
We've talked over the past few days about Tanner Thorson leaving Reinbold/Underwood Motorsports, and that team announced yesterday that Calfornia driver Mitchel Moles will pilot their non-wing car this weekend with USAC at Terre Haute. Moles is running a midget this season for Chad Boat and has relocated east as he chases more racing. He's currently third in the national midget standings, and this will be his series debut with the national sprint cars. He's definitely a talented driver, and I like the team taking a chance on a young gun here.
Over to some racing stuff...
At Marshalltown last night for the FloRacing Night in America Late Model Series, we got a fun show with Hudson O'Neal eventually coming out on top for his first late model win of 2022. He used a slider on race long leader Ryan Gustin to grab the top spot on lap 30 and held on over the final 20 circuits to bag the victory. Series points leader Brandon Sheppard finished second, Mike Marlar was third, Gustin slipped to fourth at the end, and Tyler Erb was fifth. We had a wild moment part way through the feature when Ricky Thornton Jr. slipped over the high side of the race track in turn one and ended up rolling out of the ballpark and ending up on his lid. He was alright, but that team will likely have some work to do to get the 20RT ready for this weekend's Lucas shows. After the home track race for Gustin, he then had to beat feet to Pennsylvania, as he's a full time Outlaw driver and they race tonight at Bloomsburg Fair Raceway to start a three race Pennsylvania swing. Gustin is currently fifth in the Outlaw standings and still looking for his first career win with the series. The Flo late models go quiet now for a few weeks. They will return to racing on June 1st at Tri-City Speedway, before basically going on hiatus for the rest of June and July. They don't pick back up again until August 2nd at 34 Raceway.
And since we are talking late models, let's take a look at tonight's World of Outlaws show at Bloomsburg. It will be the series' first trip to the track and Dennis Erb Jr. comes into the weekend with a 98 point lead over Max Blair for the championship. Tanner English is 128 back in third, and Tyler Bruening is 134 back in fourth. Those four remain the only drivers really within a reasonable margin of the lead. Blair has a ton of laps around these Pennsylvania race tracks, having spent so much time racing with the ULMS series, and he has past victories at Bloomsburg. I really think he needs to take advantage of these three stops this weekend to close the gap on Erb for the title. If he isn't able to make up significant ground on the 28 over these three nights, it could be a long summer for the 111V. Of the full time series drivers, Ryan Gustin has the best average finish over the previous five races, but Erb leads that category over the past 10 races. Erb has had some slip-ups in recent weeks, including three finishes outside the top ten. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula doesn't seem to be able to make heads or tails about who to choose for tonight. Rick Eckert leads the way, so we'll write that down, but the numbers are close all the way down the list. I'm going to go with Blair, just because of his experience. The Outlaw show tonight will be live on DIRTVision.
With the Super DIRTcar Series last night at Can-Am Speedway, it was a dominant performance from eigh time and defending series champion Matt Sheppard. He started on the pole and led all 75 laps in a non-stop affair. He cleared fellow front row starter Jimmy Phelps right away, and was never challenged again. Stewart Friesen drove up from eighth to finish second, Tim Fuller was third, Max McLaughlin went 18th to fourth, and Mat Williamson completed the top five. Two points races are now complete for the year and Friesen leads McLaughlin and Williamson in the points standings. Sheppard is seventh after suffering a DNF in the points opener back at Bridgeport. Next up for the Super DIRTcar Series is the Heroes Remembered 100 at Weedsport on May 29th.
While watching that big block show last night, I got to thinking about the length of some of these races. On the sprint car side, we are good with sometimes 25, or 30 or 40 lap features, but on the late model and modified side, mainly northeast modifieds, we sometimes get 75 or 100 lap shows. Do we really need these races to be that long? I know the traditionalists will come at me for asking this question, but why do we think we get our money's worth with far fewer laps on the sprint car side, but need 75 or 100 lappers on the late model side and modified side? I feel like you could keep these races to 50 laps and still end up with great shows. We got lucky last night with no cautions, but some of these 75 or 100 lappers take forever if we get into cautions, or tire issues. Let me know your thoughts on this one.
And while we're on the topic of formats, I had a message and saw some complaints about the larger field format from a week ago for the Outlaws. We had 55 cars at Lincoln last Wednesday, but after qualifying, only 40 are guaranteed into heat races. The other 15 were put into a non-qualifier race, with the top four then tagging the back of heats, and the rest of the cars to the night's C-Main. The message I got, and some of the suggestions on social media say that the Outlaws should just run six heats and get everyone into one, with the thought being that the non-qualifier race means guys get far fewer laps. It's actually not a huge difference though. If you run the non-qualifier, guys get two hot laps, two qualifying laps, run an eight lap non-qualifier, and a 10 lap C-main. That's 22 laps of on track action. If you run the heat and a B, then you get two hot laps, two qualifying laps, a ten lap heat, and a 12 lap B-Main. That's 26 total laps. So really only an extra four laps of competition. I'm wondering if maybe folks were forgetting that those non-qualifiers that miss heats then also go to the C. They aren't done for the night. I don't feel like I have a strong opinion here either way. It's not a significant difference in terms of the amount of racing guys get, and none of the non-qualifiers really advanced all that far. Tim Wagaman and Matt Campbell both made the night's B-Main after moving forward a bit in their heats, but Campbell missed the B transfer by three positions. I don't feel like those results would be all that different with two more heats. I feel like dirt racing fans spend a lot of time bemoaning format setups, but my only position here is that they need to be as simple as possible. Make it easy for folks to understand why certain cars are in which races. From there, the cream is always going to rise to the top anyway, regardless of how you line them up early in the night.
There are four shows on the streaming schedule today. DIRTVision has the World of Outlaws late models from Bloomsburg Fair. FloRacing has big block modifieds from Georgetown and Flo 24/7. And Speed Sport has weekly IMCA racing from Kossuth County. 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!