DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Cory Eliason's 2022 All Star Circuit of Champions season going sideways | Daily 6-7-2022
Coming up we'll dive deep into the analytics section to see just where Cory Eliason's All Star season has gone wrong so far. Let's go!
Today is Tuesday, June 7th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Over at dirtrackr.com, one of the main parts of the site that takes up quite a bit of my time is the analytics section. I feel like you can't fully understand what's happening in racing without at least some basic numbers, but I went well beyond that. Numbers don't tell the whole story, but they can help paint the picture, and when you get questions about specific situations or drivers, we can dig in and see where things either went well, or in this case, have gone badly. I've been loving the All Star Circuit of Champions season so far, as we've gotten some great racing, and I think we could have a tight points battle through the summer. The All Stars don't get enough attention and conversation nationally, but if you aren't watching these races, you are missing out.
Benny asked in the YouTube comments yesterday if I could dig into Cory Eliason's All Star season so far, as he's been struggling a bit. So let's dive in today and look at some numbers to see if we can figure out where that 26 team has gone wrong this season. The Rudeen squad has been full time with the All Stars since 2019, and in that first year they finished third in the standings behind Aaron Reutzel and Dale Blaney. They were then second in 2020 to Reutzel, and I thought for 2021 they would be the team to beat with Reutzel off to run the Outlaws full time with Roth Motorsports. But in the end it was Tyler Courtney bagging the championship in his rookie season, and Eliason was again left to finish second. For 2022, I said back in April that I thought he and Justin Peck would be Sunshine's main competition for the season, but so far that's only been 50% correct. Courtney currently leads Peck, Hunter Schuerenberg, and Parker Price-Miller in the standings, while Eliason has been a complete non-factor and is way down the order in eighth. They are 196 points adrift of the Clauson Marshall team. So that's 98 positions with 34 race nights still left on the schedule. Eliason would have to average beating Courtney by nearly 3 spots per race to get back to the top. Through 18 All Star races so far, Eliason has one win, three top fives, and eight top tens, with an average finish of 12.17. Just for some comparison, Sunshine is averaging just a tick under a fifth place finish for the season at 4.94. And unfortunately for Eliason, their one win they do have came at East Bay, which wasn't a points paying event. In the 16 races since things started counting for real at Attica in April, Eliason has just two top fives and nine finishes outside the top ten. 2020 has really been their best season so far, and since then it's been kind of downhill. That year they had three wins and an average finish of 8.3, but in 2021 it was two wins and that finish dropped to 9.9. And now this year, they are down even further. The trouble for them appears to be right out of the gates with qualifying. Versus last season, Eliason is time trialing on average more than four positions worse. That's a big hole to put yourself in to start the night. And things aren't getting better in heat races. Through these first 18 events, Eliason is actually negative for the year in heat race plus/minus at minus 9. That's one of the worst heat race plus minuses in the series. So qualifying worse, then going backwards in heats is not a recipe for success. That has lead to feature starts that are about two and half spots further back than a year ago. He's also not really going anywhere come feature time, with a total feature plus minus of just plus two. Following those two opening nights at Attica, the team got themselves in a hole with a five race stretch between Bloomsburg Fair and Sharon where their best finish was 11th, and they had two races outside the top 20. It looked like maybe they had figured something out starting at I-96, because they then ripped off five straight top tens, but the Weikert weekend at Port Royal was tough, with results of 18th and 15th. They bounced back at Attica, leading laps and ending up second behind Zeb Wise, but Saturday at Atomic, they were way off the pace come feature time, and I think just pulled off late. They were credited with 24th. Unfortunately for them, I think the All Stars as a series is better and deeper than it was a year ago, so it will be tough to climb out of the hole they are in so early on. Courtney continues to be really consistent with 16 top tens in those 18 races, Justin Peck and Hunter Schuerenberg continue to get better, and PPM has emerged as a legit nightly contender. Throw in plenty of other guys that can win, including names like Cap Henry and Bill Balog, and you can see easily why this could be a tough summer for the 26 team. We know this group is capable of winning races and competing at the front, but something has definitely changed over the last 24 races. Since night two of the Tusky 50 at Port last year, they have 13 finishes outside the top ten with just the one win and four top fives. They will have plenty of races coming up to try and find some speed, as Ohio Sprint Speedweek starts Friday night at Attica. If you want to dive into these numbers for yourself, head over to dirtrackr.com/analytics. And get even more advanced analytics and stat tools with a subscription to DIRTRACKR Plus for $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year.
Speaking of Ohio Sprint Speedweek, Stephanie Linder is again organizing ways to help teams out during the week. If you want to get involved with donations, or quarters, or snacks, or whatever, go find @stephlinder312 on Twitter. She's got all kinds of ways that folks can get involved to help the teams.
The Short Track Super Series was supposed to be in action tonight at the Bloomsburg Fair Raceway in Pennsylvania, but weather has pushed that racing to tomorrow. The event is both a north region and south region race, with the 50 lap feature paying $7000 to win. Danny Creeden currently has a slight two point advantage over Matt Sheppard in the north region standings, and Ryan Godown leads Sheppard by five points in the south region. I wanted to mention this today, because there is a reasonable chance this show gets lost in the mix with the Million at Eldora starting tomorrow night.
Also, there were supposed to be 410 sprint cars at Big Diamond Speedway tonight for $5000 to win, but that show has been cancelled as well because of weather. So it's a quiet dirt racing day around the country.
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 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!