DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Sprint car news from Spencer Bayston, KCP Racing, and Rudeen Racing; Shirley tops Hell Tour Tuesday | Daily 6-22-2022
Sprint car news today from Spencer Bayston, KCP Racing, and Rudeen Racing, plus we talk the Outlaws at Huset's, Summer Nationals results and more. Let's go!
Today is Wednesday, June 22nd, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
We'll kick today off with a few sprint car news items from the past 24 hours or so. First, it's been teased for a few days here now, but CJB Motorsports and Spencer Bayston announced a new title sponsor this morning, with camo brand TrueTimber signing with the team through 2023. The deal starts this weekend at Huset's Speedway with TrueTimber now on the blue and black number five sprint cars. Bayston currently sits seventh in the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series points standings with one win, ten top fives, and 19 top tens in his first full season on tour. With Kasey Kahne missing races and Noah Gass down the order, Bayston is all but guaranteed to be the rookie of the year for 2022.
In his weekly Top 50 over at SprintCarUnlimited.com, Jeremy Elliott is reporting that KCP Racing recently parted ways with crew chief Dylan Buswell. Adam Clark, who was the car chief, has been bumped up to head wrench. KCP and driver Gio Scelzi have two Outlaw wins this year in 22 appearances, along with three top fives and 14 top tens. They haven't won though since Bakersfield in March, and most recently picked up a pair of eighth place finishes at Beaver Dam. They've only made five All Star starts this season, with just a single top ten, a third place finish at East Bay back in February. We should see Scelzi and the KCP 18 at Huset's this week.
We had 35 cars at Skagit on Monday night for the Dirt Cup tune up, and the field should swell even further this weekend when the event kicks off. Rudeen Racing's owner Kevin Rudeen is a partner in the new ownership group at Skagit, and with the All Stars off for a bit, the Rudeen squad is headed west to race for the $50,000. Cory Eliason will be there in the 26, but they've added a second car for the weekend with Zeb Wise set to drive the 26R as a teammate to Eliason. Wise is currently fifth in the All Star standings with two wins and 15 top tens, while it's been a struggle for Eliason. He's currently eighth, with an average finish of nearly 12th for the season, and just 12 top tens in 27 races. Dirt Cup kicks off tomorrow night.
And speaking of sprint cars, the big High Bank Nationals weekend at Huset's Speedway in South Dakota kicks off tonight for the World of Outlaws. Tonight's race is the rescheduled program from earlier in the month that was pushed back because of wet weather. It will be $10,000 to win and the standard Outlaw format. For the rest of the weekend though, things will be different in terms of format and how the cars are lined up. Thursday and Friday are prelim programs where teams will qualify as usual. Heats will then have six car inverts, with drivers earning points through both heats and time trials. Top 20 in points will be locked into the main events. Those features pay $15k and $20k to win respectively. After Thursday and Friday, the top four in total points will be locked into the King of the Hill, with everyone else going to four qualifiers. The qualifier winners will also be in the King of the Hill, with second through fourth locked into the feature, and everyone else headed to the B and C Mains. The eight car King of the Hill will set the first four rows of the $3000 to start and $100,000 to win Saturday night main event. So a very different setup than we are used to with the Outlaws, but not surprising given the nature of the race. This setup is also very similar to the Jackson Nationals. In terms of the World of Outlaws championship, I'm awaiting confirmation on how points are being handled for the weekend. I don't know if it's full points, or if guys are just getting show up points. As soon as I hear back, I'll pass that information along. Over the past few years, I have five Huset's Outlaw shows in the dirtrackr.com analytics database. David Gravel has won twice, including most recently last August. Aaron Reutzel has a win, as does Kyle Larson and Sheldon Haudenschild. In average finish, Donny Schatz and Brad Sweet lead the way, both sitting at 4.6. Gravel is close though at 4.8. In qualifying, Kerry Madsen and Aaron Reutzel lead the way each with an average time trial position of second. We won't see Madsen though as he's out west at Dirt Cup. I'm guessing we will see Reutzel though with his TRD powered sprint car. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula favors Brad Sweet tonight, and 3/8 mile tracks are right in his wheelhouse, with 17 of his 56 wins coming at tracks this size. I'm gonna go David Gravel here. That team has been pretty good here lately, and Gravel will be extra motivated this weekend, as his car owner owns Huset's and he carries the track most weekends as his primary sponsor. Gravel will have a different look though this weekend, sporting Billion Auto as the sponsor on a mostly white race car. If you aren't headed to Huset's tonight, you can watch live over on DIRTVision.
The Summer Nationals opened week two last night at Springfield and at the end it was Brian Shirley picking up his second win of the season. He started fourth and was by early leader Payton Freeman after a lap 17 restart. He led the rest of the way, and survived a right rear tire going flat over the last few laps to bag the $5000 victory. Bobby Pierce and Max Blair completed the podium. It ended up being a frustrating night for both Jason Feger and Ryan Unzicker. Feger ended up with two flat tires, but raced back to ninth. And Unzicker started third and was pretty fast, but got caught up in two incidents, basically back-to-back, and had to fight his way back forward in the late stages. He ended up eighth, but gave up ground to Pierce he was second. So headed to Adams County today, the Smooth Operator leads Unzicker by 28, with Shirley third, 37 back. No Dennis Erb Jr. last night means he fell to fifth, and we are now down to seven drivers that have raced in every feature so far this year. No Modified Nationals last night at Springfield, so no changes on that side. They are joining back up tonight at Adams County though. Through these first seven races we've had four different winners. Chris Simpson, Pierce, and Shirley all have two, and Unzicker has one. Unzicker and Shirley are the only two drivers with top ten finishes every night out. So far we've had 98 different drivers contest a Summer Nationals event. If you aren't aware, Adams County is what used to be known as Quincy Raceways in Illinois. Tommy Sheppard Jr. was a MARS late model winner there back in May, and the last Summer Nationals show there was in 2019, when Mike Marlar was the winner. No shock here, Nick Hoffman is the most recent Modified Nationals winner at Adams County. As is the case for all Summer Nationals races, you can watch live tonight on DIRTVision.
I know it's been a while since we did one, but I dropped a new Conversations episode yesterday. DIRTVision's Chase Raudman hopped on with me to talk all things World of Outlaws in advance of the big weekend at Huset's coming up. We talked points, a bunch of different drivers, and more. You can find that episode on the YouTube channel or in the podcast feed.
And I do want to thank commenter J. Peterman for the $10 Super Thanks on the Chase Raudman episode yesterday. I really appreciate the support and you tuning in. If you aren't aware, underneath all the YouTube videos, where you would also click the like and share buttons, there is another option that says Thanks with a heart next to it. That is the Super Thanks button and is basically a way to tip me if you'd like to do that.
If you want other dirt racing audio this week, Winged Nation has Terry Gray, LoudPedal has Jacob Denney, Passing Points has Justin Peck, Forward Bite has Wil Herrington, QuickTime has JJ Riggins, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks has Shane Cockrum, and XR's All Gas No Brakes has me! There are also new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, the Dirt Nerds, and the XR Super Series podcast. Head over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts to check out the full list of shows and episodes.
The streaming schedule has five shows on it today. DIRTVision has the World of Outlaws from Huset's and the Summer Nationals from Adams County. FloRacing has the weekly program from Action Track USA and Flo 24/7. And Speed Sport has weekly racing from Buena Vista. 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!