DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Big dirt racing paydays for Sheldon Haudenschild, Tim McCreadie, Tyler Courtney | Daily 6-27-2022
Coming up we are talking a wild win for Sheldon Haudenschild, drama and female winners with the Xtreme Midgets, big paydays for Tim McCreadie and Tyler Courtney, and more. Let's go!
Today is Monday, June 27th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
I got home from Nashville at 4AM, so I'm rolling on energy drinks and a few hours of sleep, so let's get into it. There is so much stuff to talk about from the last three days, I'm not even sure where to really start. We'll bounce around though and hit on a bunch of topics. As an aside, I've been making a really conscious effort on these shows to be less recappy. I know you guys are watching a lot of these races just like I am, and it's not valuable for me to come on these shows and say "this happened, then this happened." My hope is to add to your experience, provide some context, add some color and some analysis, maybe some education where possible. Also, an opinion here and there. The easy thing to do is recaps, but that is much less interesting I think. I'd rather be more topic based, then race based in most cases. Just so you're aware of what I'm thinking.
I'll guess we'll start with the World of Outlaws at Huset's Speedway. $100 grand on the line on Saturday night, and track owner Tod Quiring isn't done yet. They announced during the weekend that the High Bank Nationals will pay a whopping $250,000 to win next year. That is a massive bump, and the move will make this race the richest winner's payout in sprint car history. According to the release, it will surpass the $200k to win Mopar Milliion, the $176,000 that was paid at the Knoxville Nationals, and the $175,000 to win Kings Royal. It seems like fans and drivers are always asking why there aren't more big money sprint car shows, but it seems like we've seen a pretty rapid escalation here lately. This is a big time commitment from Quiring and hopefully the sport will support his vision of creating a big time event. As for this year's version, Sheldon Haudenschild ending up winning in epic fashion. He was sixth with four laps to go, but absolutely ripped the top the final few laps, and got by both Buddy Kofoid and James McFadden in one set of corners to go from third to first. He somehow found that top line late and nobody noticed in time to stop his charge. It was his series best eighth win of the year, which matches his win total from all of last season, and that was a career best. So there is still plenty of time for him to push that win number a lot higher in 2022. Sheldon continues to show why he might be the most exciting driver in sprint car racing right now. He's full send all the time, no matter the consequences it seems. It was also nice to see James McFadden run well. He was second two of the three nights. And of course it was a solid weekend for Buddy Kofoid, picking up the Thursday win, and finishing third in the finale. Riley Goodno was impressive, bagging his first career podium on Friday night and leading laps. He's definitely an under the radar young guy who runs regularly at Knoxville. The weirdest situation of the weekend may have been the frontstretch gate problems on Saturday. Carson McCarl had it flatten a tire, David Gravel was a victim with a bent wheel and sounded like jacobs ladder, and Logan Schuchart ended up in the work area with a flat. Schuchart's night was really badly affected, because he had to restart at the rear, and was then involved in an incident that took him out of the race. That Outlaw officials didn't deem it necessary to give any positions back because of the gate problems, but Schuchart was not happy about that. He tweeted afterwards that they need to look at the rules and address this situation. Let me know where you stand on this issue. Should the Outlaws have given the spots back after time to fix their problems, or not? I think you could probably make arguments both ways. As for the points situation, Saturday didn't affect the championship, as it was show-up points only, but we did have movement because of the other three nights. Finishes of 14th and 11th on Thursday and Friday from Brad Sweet, both after crashes, have brought the entire top five right back to him. Sweet to Schuchart in fifth is only 54 points, Macedo is suddenly only 12 back, Sheldon is 24 behind, and Gravel is 46. Macedo has just about made up for the Williams Grove DQ. The Outlaw teams continue their season this weekend with two nights at Cedar Lake in Wisconsin.
Over the weekend with Lucas, we had Mike Marlar win both Firecracker 100 prelim nights at Lernerville, but on Saturday with $50,000 on the line, it was all Tim McCreadie. Incredibly, he led all 100 laps of the feature to score his second career victory in the event. Besides the $50k, McCreadie's third Lucas win of the year also tightened up this championship battle with Brandon Sheppard. Leaving the weekend, the gap between the two is only 25 points. Those top two continue to separate themselves from the rest of the field. The series has four race nights coming up this week, and depending on how things go, McCreadie could very easily leave Muskingum County on Sunday with the points lead. BShepp still hasn't won since East Bay, and has five finishes outside the top ten since his last victory. He hasn't finished on the podium since May 22nd at 34 Raceway. McCreadie has closed down pretty quickly, and the Rocket team seems a bit vulnerable right now. As for the Lucas rookie battle, all five drivers are still in the mix, with Ashton Winger the top driver right now. He's ahead of Garrett Alberson in the standings, with Daulton Wilson, Spencer Hughes, and Ross Robinson in tow. Winger and Alberson are the only two of the group with top five runs this year. The series has races this week at Florence, Portsmouth, and the aforementioned Muskingum County.
On the World of Outlaws late model side, Dennis Erb extended his championship lead over Max Blair by sweeping both nights at Pevely on Friday and Saturday, and bagging yet another top ten on Sunday at Jacksonville. It's now 148 back to Blair, with Tanner English third, 170 out. It was good to have Josh Richards racing again. He was in action all three nights, with a top ten run on Sunday. And even though it's been tough sledding lately on the Lucas side, Brandon Sheppard made history on Sunday night. Driving his family owned B5 Rocket chassis, he picked up career win 79 with the Outlaws, which now breaks the tie with Richards, and makes him the winningest driver in World of Outlaws Late Model history. It was pretty cool to see the reaction he got from the crowd, and for him to be surrounded by family and friends when he did it. Maybe this win will give him some momentum to bring to the Rocket house car later this week. The Outlaws are off now until July 15th.
Those two Pevely nights were also Summer Nationals nights, and after the two races, Bobby Pierce maintains the points lead over Ryan Unzicker and Brian Shirley. The series is off tonight, but starts week three tomorrow at Red Hill Raceway. On the modified side, Nick Hoffman's streak was busted on Friday by Rick Conoyer, who went to victory lane for just the second time in his career with the series. His last win came all the way back in 2018 at Pevely. On Saturday, Hoffman's losing streak continued when his car lost power very late in the going, and his troubles handed the win to Lucas Lee. Even with the issues though, Hoffman carries a 131 point advantage over Kyle Steffens into a new week.
Out at Skagit for the Dirt Cup, it was a big Saturday night for Tyler Courtney. He outdueled Dominic Scelzi, and picked up not only $50 grand for the win, but another $26,000 for leading 26 laps. Drivers got an additional $1000 for every lap they led, so it was a very nice payday for Sunshine, who was driving the Works Limited 57 for Kevin Kozlowski and Paul Silva. Even still pretty early in this winged transition for Courtney, he continues to prove himself as one of the top guys in the sport. I do hope we get to see him out with the Outlaws in the near future. Scelzi ultimately settled for third behind Kerry Madsen, but still pocketed $42 grand himself, thanks to 24 laps led. It wasn't a clean weekend at Skagit by any stretch of the imagination, as there were a bunch of crashes and issues, but I thought overall the racing was good and the facility was in top shape. I know there were some concerns with the surface on Friday night during Trey Starks' win, but it was still a good weekend. It wasn't a good weekend for track owner Kevin Rudeen and the two teams they brought for regular driver Cory Eliason and extra guy Zeb Wise. Was 23rd Friday and 17th Saturday after finishing 8th on Thursday. Eliason had results of 23rd, 21st, and 19th. And between the two there was a lot of torn up equipment. Definitely not the weekend they were hoping for.
On the midget side of dirt racing, we've had some drama pop up over the last few days, with the Xtreme Outlaw Series stripping Cannon McIntosh of his win at Millbridge from a few weeks ago. His right rear tire did not meet benchmarks after tire testing, so he's been stripped of the win, fined an additional $2000, must pay the $120 testing fee, and is suspended from the next two series events. He did race on Sunday night at Jacksonville, where he finished 4th. He was allowed to race, because the team is appealing the penalty. If eventually held up, the DQ will hand the Millbridge win to Taylor Reimer, which will make her the first female driver to win with Xtreme and with a national midget touring series. And just for good measure, 15 year old Jade Avedisian just went ahead and led all 30 laps on Sunday night in that Xtreme show to earn her first career series win and first with a big midget series. We've seen her run well with USAC, including top fives at Merced in 2021 and back at Bubba Raceway Park in February. It hasn't been easy at times with that Chad Boat team, but she definitely has the talent to compete at the highest level. Between Avedisian, Reimer, and names like Kaylee Bryson, Maria Cofer, and Mariah Ede, there is some pretty strong talent in the mix right now.
Elsewhere around the country, Robert Ballou was a USAC sprint car winner on Sunday at Angell Park after snagging the lead from Davey Ray on lap seven. It was win number three on the season for the Mad Man, and he was also the night's hard charger, going eighth to the win. He's now third in the USAC national standings, behind leader Justin Grant and Brady Bacon. In Pennsylvania Speedweek action, Anthony Macri is two-for-two to start the week, with wins at Williams Grove and Lincoln. The Sunday show at BAPS was lost to weather. They are headed back to Lincoln tonight to continue the week, and Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell are expected to join the fun. And with the ASCS on Saturday night, Wayne Johnson took advantage of Brian Brown's engine going south to grab the win at I-70 and extend his series points lead. Johnson now has three national tour wins on the year, and leads Blake Hahn and Garet Williamson in the standings. I was actually kind of shocked that Brownie left Huset's to go to I-70 to run the ASCS show. Brown finished second on Friday night to Carson Macedo, leading the most laps along the way, and was setup for a decent heat race start position for the big money show on Saturday. In fact, the drivers around him in the points after the two prelim nights were Robbie Price and Riley Goodno, and both made the Saturday night feature. The last time Brian Brown raced with the ASCS, was the 360 Knoxville Nationals last August.
There are three shows on the streaming schedule today. FloRacing has Pennsylvania Speedweek from Lincoln Speedway and Flo 24/7. There is also weekly IMCA racing from the Clay County Fair Speedway on Speed Sport. 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 Monday. 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!