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Sheldon Haudenschild, Carson Macedo going in opposite directions with the World of Outlaws | Daily 5-31-2022
A wild night at Lawrenceburg for the Outlaws including Sheldon Haudenschild and Carson Macedo going in different directions. Plus Monday wins for Jimmy Owens, LJ Lombardo and Dustin Sorensen. Let's go!
Today is Tuesday, May 31st, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Lawrenceburg Speedway and the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars put on one hell of a show last night, I hope you had a chance to tune in. If not, go find either the highlights on the Outlaw YouTube channel, or the replay in the DIRTVision vault. We had a little bit of everything last night with 43 cars in attendance, including a hard charging Kyle Larson, huge freakin sliders, drama for a points contender, and a green-white-checkered finish. It's been a pretty quiet season for Brock Zearfoss so far with just four top ten finishes in 22 races entering last night, but he sat on the pole and was out front very early on. Unfortunately for him, the finish in the box score ended up looking a lot like the rest of his season. He caught the outside wall in turns one and two on lap four and cut down the right rear tire and did some suspension damage. His guys did a great job to get him back in the race, and he ended up 12th. There was actually a lot of great stuff in the work area last night. I know it's something we mention perodically, but I love some good work area coverage with the Outlaws. Chase Raudman in the mix calling out what's happening, crew guys crawling all over sprint cars, I love it. We had teams changing flat tires, Kasey Kahne's nine car had a front end put in it, and there was a mad thrash on Kraig Kinser's 11K after a flip. At one point, I counted crew members from seven different teams working on Kraig's car, including Kraig himself. They eventually ran out of time, but I love how everyone helps. Once the race got going again, Logan Schuchart inherited the lead on lap four, but fifth starting Sheldon Haudenschild was after him. Schuchart was only out front for seven laps before Sheldon tracked him down in lap traffic and grabbed the lead on lap 11. The 1S and the 17 had a nice slider fest for a few laps, and things stayed wild down the stretch with David Gravel and Kyle Larson getting into the mix. Yung Money started 16th and got to second with two laps to go. On the white flag lap he made a move for the lead and looked like was maybe gonna have it, but a caution for a slowing Parker Price Miller erased it. On the final restart, Schuchart threw a massive slide job at Larson for second and that let Sheldon get away for the win. The victory was the third win for the NOS 17 team over the last four races, and they now have a series best five total for the season. And since finishing 21st at Lincoln, they have five straight top four finishes. Larson ended up second with Schuchart third. With Sheldon, Schuchart, and Gravel all finishing ahead of Brad Sweet, the standings remain tight, with only 80 points separating the top five. Unfortunately for Carson Macedo though, he gave up more ground with a 13th place finish last night. The JJR 41 was in the work area twice for right rear tire issues, and has dropped to 66 points behind Sweet, sitting fourth currently. The last couple of weeks have been brutal for Macedo and the 41. They won back to back at Pevely and Haubstadt, then had finishes of 4th, 7th, and 3rd coming into May. Following that Wednesday show at Lincoln Speedway, Macedo was second in the standings, just eight points back. Since then, he's gotten DQ'd at Williams Grove for being light at the scales after the feature. He was then 13th at Bridgeport, had a nice second at Attica, but then was 12th at Atomic and 13th last night. Without the Grove DQ, he would have left Central PA with the points lead, but is now 4th, and trails by 33 feature positions. Back to Sheldon and the Stenhouse Jr. Marshall team. You might start hearing championship rumblings again, but there is work to be done for that team. They've had a nice few weeks, but the consistency questions remain. 18 top tens in 23 starts still trails Brad Sweet, and they have been in three B-mains to Sweet's zero. They are probably about a full position off in average finish for where they need to be to win a title, and the 17 has nine double digit finishes on the year, compared to just four for Sweet. Sheldon has gained 34 points on Sweet since Bristol, but we haven't seen a super great KKR 49 yet this year. Only one win, and it's been 12 races since that happened. If we can get the Sheldon that went 18 straight top ten finishes back in 2020, we might have a battle. Until we start seeing them rip off good finishes consistently, I'm going to remain skeptical. The Outlaws are back on Friday at River Cities in North Dakota.
Before we move on to other things, I just wanted to spotlight the week ahead at Tri-City Speedway in Illinois. This isn't a sponsored mention or anything, I just think there is some great racing on tap there this week. They've got the FloRacing late models tomorrow, USAC midgets on Thursday, and World of Outlaws late models and MOWA sprint cars on Friday. If you're in the St. Louis area over the next few days, maybe for NASCAR, get over to that track.
Elsewhere last night we had Jimmy Owens bagging $10,000 with the Iron-Man Series at 411 Motor Speedway. He took over the top spot on lap 40 from pole sitter Dale McDowell, and earned his third late model win of the season. According to Dirt on Dirt, the win broke a 23 race drought for the Newport Nightmare. McDowell and Mack McCarter were the rest of the podium in a race that also included names like Ricky Weiss and Mike Marlar. Marlar confirmed in a tweet yesterday that he does have some confirmed injuries from that incident over the weekend at Wheatland, but that he's going to try and keep racing as his body allows.
And Josh Richards does have a quote "shattered nose and some broken teeth" according to his Facebook page, after getting hit with that dirt clod on Sunday at Eldora. They are still trying to figure out his recovery and right now we don't know any sort of timeline on his return to the seat.
At Lebanon Valley for the Super DIRTcar Series, local favorite LJ Lombardo outlasted several contenders last night to earn his first ever SDS victory. He topped Marc Johnson and Billy Decker to earn the $13,500 pay day and earn a guaranteed starting spot into the Super DIRT Week main event later this year. Names like Stewart Friesen, Andy Bachetti, and Peter Britten all ended up down the order after issues. With four races complete, Friesen holds a very slight four point advantage over Mat Williamson for the championship. The big blocks are back on June 24th at Albany Saratoga.
And yesterday at Mason City Motor Speedway, points leader Dustin Sorensen closed out the USMTS modified weekend with a victory to extend his series points lead. He topped defending champion Dereck Ramirez and Zack VanderBeek en route to his third win of 2022. This busy stretch of racing for the USMTS continues this week with three more shows, starting Thursday night at Dallas County.
Before we close out today, I wanted to briefly talk about the car counts for NARC out west over the weekend. The series traveled to Oregon and Washington, which is outside of their usual base in California and they had fields of 18, 16, and 13 over the three nights. A few of you brought this up in the comments on yesterday's video, but I think it's important to remember that we are looking at a lot of different factors. 410 racing on the west coast has been pretty beaten down in recent years, and with the current state of parts and shortages, guys just don't have spare 410s lying around to bolt into their cars. We know that Peter Murphy and Kevin Rudeen and Brad Sweet and others are working to rebuild 410 racing out there, but it's going to take time. The Dirt Cup at Skagit is now a 410 event, and its coming up at Skagit in a few weeks. I wouldn't expect a huge car count that weekend, but with $50,000 going to the winner, teams will fight and scrape to make that event happen. There are some bright spots out there, so let's be patient and allow things to build over the next few years.
There are three shows on today's streaming schedule. DIRTVision has outlaw karts from Millbridge, back on their regular schedule of weekly racing. Speed Sport has action tonight from Lernerville, and there 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 Tuesday. 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!