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Exploring Eldora Million contenders, full day of racing coming up Thursday | Daily 6-9-2022

A full day of racing is on tap today at Eldora as drivers chase the million, plus Indiana Midget Week is in action, and we've got Short Track Super Series results. Let's go!

Today is Thursday, June 9th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

So all that build up yesterday and for the days and weeks leading up ending up being for nothing. The first day of the Eldora Million and Dream weekend ended up being lost to rain. A couple of different lines of weather, including some tornados in the area shut down Eldora for the day. But it looks like we did get most cars through tech, and last night's rainout has setup what will hopefully be an epic day today. They still need to run the Wednesday night racing to get things setup for tonight's show, so a big day is on tap at Eldora. Gates are opening at 10AM eastern, with hot laps scheduled for 11. They will run the Wednesday racing into the afternoon, then turn things over for tonight's show where they will give over a million dollars to the feature winner. If you are at the track or headed that way, your Wednesday tickets are good for today's program, but the grandstands will be cleared ahead of the Thursday program. I haven't seen a final tally on car count for the racing today, but we shouldn't have a problem getting well over 100 cars. We'll obviously know a final total by the time hot laps are rolling at 11. As promised, I turned the Eldora special events area of the analytics section live yesterday afternoon. Right now we have data on 12 race nights, basically all the big shows from 2021 between the World and Dream. That includes info for 116 drivers, race results for each night, plus all the regular stats and analytics you've come to expect from DIRTRACKR. A lot of that is free to browse at dirtrackr.com/analytics. When you start getting into the actual numbers, Brandon Overton was clearly the king of Eldora last year. In eight features between the World and Dream, he never finished worse than 6th, had six wins, seven top fives, and an average finish of 1.875. That also included 201 laps led, five heat race wins, and a quick time. None of the other 115 drivers that participated were anywhere close to those numbers. Jonathan Davenport did have six top fives, and eight top tens to go with two victories. But his average finish is 4.625. Tim McCreadie was also incredibly respectable with a win and an average finish of 5.375. Because of the day job, I spend quite a lot of time in the car, so I used that time yesterday to listen to the Dirt on Dirt VideoCast previewing the Million and Dream, and a lot of the media roundtable contributors picked Dale McDowell to win this week. No wins a year ago, three top fives, seven top tens, and an average finish of 7.38. Certainly not a bad choice, given that and his past history at Eldora. I do want to point out one other name here though. Chris Ferguson. He's coming off that big win at the Show-Me 100, so we know he can win a crown jewel. Last year in these races, he had four top fives and seven top tens. I feel like he's a guy that could jump up and maybe steal this thing from the bigger names in the field. And a name I haven't heard anyone talking about is Gregg Satterlee. He had two prelim night wins a year ago, and has shown a bunch of speed this season, including a Lucas win at Port Royal, and several top five and top ten finishes with each of the national tours. If you are playing fantasy racing this weekend, like DirtDraft, and want to get an edge on your competition, you can find all these numbers and more at dirtrackr.com/analytics/eldora. As for the track conditions, a bunch of rain was probably not what the facility needed as they have been working day and night over the last week to get things in order. According to Dirt on Dirt's Kyle McFadden, Rob Platfoot and the Eldora track crew ended up removing about half of the 300 loads of clay they added to the speedway last fall. They started work on the removal Tuesday morning, and didn't finish until about 2AM on Wednesday. All of this work was in response to rough conditions they had for both the FloRacing Night in America Series event and the Johnny Appleseed Classic earlier this year. Hopefully they are headed in the right direction though even with the overnight rain, and we'll be in for a good day of racing. If you aren't ducking out of work today to get to Eldora, FloRacing will have live coverage all day. If you need a subscription, click the link below in the video description. I'm debating throwing up a live stream tonight following the big main event. Let me know if an Eldora Million aftershow is something you'd be interested in. Enjoy the full day of late model racing.

If you're not a late model guy, don't worry, there is other stuff to get into today. Indiana Midget Week was supposed to be back in action last night at Circle City Raceway in Indianapolis, but the USAC midget show was lost to weather. They had afternoon showers which halted the racing, but the good thing is the event hasn't been cancelled. They are pushing it back to Sunday, so it will now be the midget week finale. Tonight the racers head to Lincoln Park Speedway for what is now round four, and as we talked about yesterday, everyone is still chasing Buddy Kofoid. He leads both the year long standings and the midget week points after the first three rounds that included two wins and a second. Justin Grant and TMez are in pursuit for the midget week title. I have three shows in the dirtrackr.com analytics database for the midgets at Lincoln Park back through the 2020 season. Tanner Thorson was the winner a year ago, with Chris Windom and Kyle Larson splitting wins at the track the year before. I think with the lack of races at Circle City in the past, last night's show could have been a wild card during this week of racing and maybe Kofoid's win chances were a little less. That is not true tonight at Lincoln Park. No wins for Buddy, but in three appearances he has three top tens, including a third and a fourth in his past two races. That along with his current hot streak has Kofoid the favorite from the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula. And I can't seem to come up with a convincing argument right now against that. Both JG and TMez have average finishes outside the top ten in their previous three starts at Lincoln Park, and if you look at the other names that have been strong lately, I don't believe Mitchel Moles has any past starts there, Bryant Wiedeman was 14th a year ago in his only start, and Kaylee Bryson wasn't in the top ten in any of her three previous starts. The only other drivers I'd maybe look at for tonight are Cannon McIntosh and Kyle Cummins. The problem for Cannon, is he's coming of finishes of 23rd at the Burg and 19th at Haubstadt. Cummins has been strong lately, with three top tens during midget week, but his past at Lincoln Park isn't great either. All signs right now are pointing to more good for Kofoid. Hot laps are scheduled to start tonight at 6PM eastern, with non-wing sprint cars and mod lites also on the card. If you aren't headed out to the track, you can watch live tonight on FloRacing.

We did get some racing in last night, with the Short Track Super Series modifieds running at the Bloomsburg Fair Raceway. In the 50 lap main event, it was Anthony Perrego driving up from his ninth starting spot to capture the $7000 victory. It was Perrego's first Short Track Super Series win of the season, and second total big block win. He also has a victory this season in weekly competition at Orange County Fair Speedway. Behind him, Ryan Godown, Danny Bouc, Matt Sheppard, and Mike Gular completed the top five. Sheppard drove all the way up from 20th to bag a top five, but I wonder if him and Gular are friends today. There were a few occasions last night where Sheppard and Gular made contact. The series points standings haven't been updated yet this morning, but Godown will maintain the south region lead over Sheppard, but Danny Creeden has probably lost the north region lead. He finished 13th last night. The next stop for the Short Track Super Series is a north region event on June 19th at Devil's Bowl Speedway in Vermont. That is a $10,000 to win main event.

It's another solid day on the streaming services with seven shows coming up tonight. FloRacing has the Eldora Million all day, plus Indiana Midget Week from Lincoln Park, and Flo 24/7. Speed Sport has weekly and IMCA racing from Grand Rapids, Kossuth County, and Southwest, plus NOW600 micros from Creek 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!