DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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The Eldora Million starts tonight! Entries, purse, who to watch, and track conditions updates | Daily 6-8-2022

The Eldora Million gets underway tonight, and we'll run you through everything you need to know. Plus what's next for Indiana Midget Week, more sprint car tire news and plenty more. Let's go!

Today is Wednesday, June 8th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

Today is the day folks. The Eldora Million kicks off at Eldora Speedway, with tonight being the event's prelim night, and tomorrow being the big show. We'll then follow that up with the 28th Dirt Late Model Dream Friday and Saturday. Both prelim nights will feature dual programs, with main events paying $12,000 to win. Tomorrow we'll get heat races, consolation events, and the $1,002,022 to win feature. Saturday night's Dream feature is just a measly $128,000 to win. Thursday's feature will pay $5022 to start, and Saturday will pay $5028 to start. All of this adds up to a total four day purse of $1.9 million dollars. Brandon Overton is the defending winner of the Dream, having won both Dreams a year ago. Donnie Moran famously is the only winner of the previous Eldora Million, that happened back on June 9th, 2001. As of this morning we are currently sitting at 119 entries for the weekend, and the list includes all the names you'd expect for a big super late model event, and some maybe you wouldn't. I'm not going to run through the entire list, because you can just find it yourself on the Million event page over at eldoraspeedway.com. You'll get all the favorites, including Jonathan Davenport, Brandon Overton, Tim McCreadie, Scott Bloomquist, Chris Madden, Bobby Pierce, Tyler Erb, Brandon Sheppard, etc, etc, etc. I do want to point out a few others though. First, there will be no Kyle Larson this weekend. The Cup cars are in Sonoma Saturday and Sunday, and Larson has previously said he won't be there because of a friend's wedding. He's actually the best man for California sprint car driver Colby Copeland. But some other drivers to keep an eye on include ten time World of Outlaws champion Donny Schatz. He's there in his own Rocket Chassis. Chris Ferguson is fresh off that Show-Me 100 win, and he'll be looking for more big cash. Nick Hoffman is back in a late model, this time for Barry Wright. He's had some good runs over the last year or so, but that was driving for Bloomquist. We'll see Billy Moyer back in the seat, plus Hunt the Front's Joseph Joiner. Tyler Courtney is entered in a Longhorn for Cup Series crew chief Jeremy Bullins. Sunshine was very respectable when the Flo series came to Eldora a while back. And Chase Briscoe continues his extracurricular dirt races, driving a late model for Kent Robinson. Beyond those names, there are a lot more coming, and the field is stacked no matter how you slice it. Whoever comes out on top this week will have definitely earned it. We'll get more into some stats on tomorrow's show, but I am building out an Eldora late model special events section at dirtrackr.com, and right now I've got results in for the World events from 2021. Those are obviously the most recent big super late model races at Eldora, and we can start to get an idea of who to pay attention to this weekend. And the names won't surprise you. Tim McCreadie, Brandon Overton, and Jonathan Davenport all with a bunch of top fives. Add in Fergie and Dale McDowell in top tens. Throw in Hudson O'Neal, Jimmy Owens, and Bobby Pierce in average finish. Those are just a few names to look at tonight in prelim action. I've got day job stuff to take care of this morning, and then my plan is to spend the afternoon getting a bunch more race results dumped in and the pages built out for that Eldora analytics section. I should be able to share it on the site later today. We'll even do some win predictions for the weekend. And if all of this wasn't enough, we've got this weird subplot that's developed in the last few days of the track conditions. Remember it was just a few short days ago that Josh Richards was injured at Eldora because of a heavy and rough surface, and track owner Tony Stewart and his staff have decided at the last minute to make changes. It appears as though they are taking off the top layer of dirt that they recently put down and completely reworking the track. A lot of photos have been floating around over the last 24 hours of heavy equipment at the track as work is ongoing. How the surface will play into all of this will be something to watch closely over the next four days. So big money, big field, and track question marks should lead to a lot of intrigue. I'll have more stuff through the next few days on this show and across the dirtrackr social channels, so stayed for that. If you want to watch the racing this weekend and aren't going to Eldora, FloRacing has the livestream. If you don't have a Flo subscription, and need one, click the link below in the YouTube video description, or the Flo links over at dirtrackr.com. You can grab your pass through those links, and it helps me out at no extra cost to you. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts on what you think will happen tonight and this weekend and your own win picks.

While a big focus of the dirt racing world will be on Eldora and the first night of the Million tonight, Indiana Midget Week is back in action after two days off. They head to Circle City tonight in Indianapolis with three nights in the books. Buddy Kofoid continues to lead both the season long standings and the midget week points following two wins in three nights over the weekend, and a second place finish on Sunday at Haubstadt. We talked on Monday's show about the slide or die culture that has taken hold of midget racing right now, and we'll see tonight if cooler heads will prevail, or if things are still pretty amped up. Thomas Meseraull's win on Sunday night was the first time a driver not named Buddy Kofoid or Justin Grant had won a USAC midget feature since Logan Seavey won at Turkey Night back in November of 2021. Grant started the year with three straight, then it was Kofoid going four straight. Over the last five and ten race stretches, Kofoid has average finishes of better than second, 1.2 and 1.8 respectively. He's got 13 straight top tens as well. JG seems like the only driver in the series right now who has both the speed and the consistency to try and match Kofoid's pace. I definitely think we'll see plenty of other drivers win this season and get good finishes, but I have a hard time believing anyone will be able to match Kofoid in stringing together enough good finishes to keep up with him night in and night out. Grant is the best possibility, but he's already 52 points back, and if you go to third, Mitchel Moles is 159 back. So things got out of reach really fast. The USAC midgets have made just one stop at Circle City, and it was last year during midget week. California driver Corey Day picked up his first career national midget win that night, driving for Clauson Marshall. He topped Kevin Thomas Jr., and Brady Bacon that night. In an interesting side note here, our top three midget week contenders right now in Buddy, Grant and TMez, all finished 19th or worse in that race. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula favors Kyle Cummins tonight. He had a sixth place finish at Circle City last year, and so far during midget week has runs of third, ninth, and fifth. I'm gonna go with the hot hand and pick Kofoid again. I'll probably jinx him in saying this, but he hasn't finished worse than fifth since the first night at Placerville back on November 18th. The midgets will be live tonight over on FloRacing if you cannot get out to the track.

And as I mentioned on yesterday's show, the Short Track Super Series race at Bloomsburg Fair that was supposed to happen on Tuesday night was pushed to today. This is a dual north and south region race with a 50 lap feature for $7000 to win. Danny Creeden is currently the north region points leader, with Ryan Godown leading the south. Matt Sheppard is second in both regions at the moment. Other names we should see tonight include Mike Gular, Bobby Hackel, Andy Bachetti, Billy Pauch Jr., Mike Mahaney, Mat Williamson and more. Crate 602 sportsman are also on the card, with hot laps at 6 and racing at 7. Those are eastern times. Just like the midgets, this show will be live on FloRacing.

Around the country, the shortage of dirt racing tires continues to plague tracks and series, and two sprint car organizations made some rules changes yesterday in response. First, NARC out west is opening up their tire rule to include any Hoosier tire this weekend at Ocean and Placerville. The 410 series says it will make weekly decisions on the tire rules based on what is available in inventory for racers. And in the midwest, the MOWA sprint car series is changing how it awards points because of the tire shortages. Starting with this weekend's races at Jacksonville and Fairbury, teams will basically just be awarded show up points for participating in events. No heat race points, passing points, or finish position points will be given out. I've also seen some complaints here and there about teams testing or getting in practice nights and where they are getting tires for those sessions. Sprint car team owner and crew chief for Kyle Larson had an interesting reply when he was pressed about a recent test at Knoxville. He tweeted quote "We don't have special access to tires at all. We just try hard to stay on the front side of the tire shortage. Racing is our business/income so it’s our job to try and always have supplies to race" unquote. Makes pretty good sense to me. And if you know anything about Paul Silva, he is incredibly frugal when it comes to his operation, often running used tires on his cars. The tire supply feels like it will continue to be a moving target as the summer progresses.

Every Wednesday we spotlight other dirt raacing podcast episodes, and there is a bunch of new stuff this week. Winged Nation has a bunch of new shows in their feed, including live stuff from the Weikert Memorial. LoudPedal has Tyler Roahrig, there is a new Dirt on Dirt VideoCast for the Eldora Million, Forward Bite has Donnie Moran, QuickTime has Ty Williams, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks has Paul May, the XR Super Series podcast has Chris Ferguson, All Gas No Brakes has Scott Bloomquist and Joey Coulter, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Nerds, and the Dirt From Knoxville. To see the full list of shows and episodes, hit up dirtrackr.com/podcasts.

There are seven shows on the streaming schedule today. FloRacing has the Eldora Million, Indiana Midget Week from Circle City, the Short Track Super Series from Bloomsburg Fair, weekly racing from Action Track USA and Flo 24/7. Speed Sport has IMCA racing from McLean County and NOW600 micros from Caney Valley. 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!