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Rico Abreu doesn't give a sh*t anymore | Daily 6-29-2022

Rico Abreu strikes during PA Speedweek, and we'll talk about his recent struggles, plus Summer Nationals results, news from DIRTVision, and what exactly is TOTHRacing. Let's go!

Today is Wednesday, June 29th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

At Grandview Speedway last night, Pennsylvania Speedweek continued, and the feature turned into a dominant performance from Rico Abreu. He started on the pole and was able to keep Christopher Bell, Anthony Macri and Brent Marks at bay for the duration. The $10,000 score was Abreu's first victory of the year, and first with crew chief Ricky Warner. Macri ended up second and extended his points lead to 84 over Marks, who rounded out the podium. Justin Peck is still third after finishing seventh. CBell ended up fifth, and Kyle Larson was out before half way when something broke on his 57 machine and he tipped over. Speedweek continues tonight at Port Royal, with stops at Hagerstown, Williams Grove, Port, and Selinsgrove still to come through the weekend.

Back to Rico. He's a driver we've seen have a ton of success in the past around the country, including earning both Outlaw and All Star wins, plus victories at Knoxville, in the Chili Bowl, and elsewhere. But things have been tough in recent seasons in the sprint car, and I think he hoped that hiring Ricky Warner this season would turn those difficulties around quickly. But so far, it hasn't been easy going. Rico's only two All Star appearances were at Port Royal in May, where he didn't transfer from the B on the first night, and ended up 25th on the second night after starting on the pole. In Outlaw competition, he's made 24 starts, and hasn't been terrible. He's got four top fives, with good runs at Tulare, Bristol, and the Grove. But over his last nine races, he has just two top ten finishes. His average finish for the season in features is 10.54, which again, not terrible, but Rico is a driver that I think in past iterations could have competed regularly in the top five with the Outlaws. But as I said before, it's been a tough few years. Rico hasn't won an official Outlaw show since Gold Cup in 2018, and hasn't led laps either. He had a Knoxville prelim win in 2021, but those races don't count as official Outlaw events. On the flip side though, I have six seasons worth of Outlaw races in the dirtrackr.com analytics database for Rico, and these 24 shows this season are by far the best he's done, even without winning. His average time trial position is much improved, and his average finish is better. He's only been in a single B Main, has made every feature, has more heat race wins than any previous year, and been in some dashes. So even though it might not be super evident, Warner appears to have made Rico better. After the victory last night, Rico mentioned his tough week at Huset's, where his best finish was an 11th on Thursday, and said he and Warner talked a lot on the drive from South Dakota to Pennsylvania. He said that halfway through their season, they are starting over. And in the post race piece at Sprintcarunlimited.com, Abreu said quote "I don’t give a shit anymore. I’m just going to go as hard as I can, and I’m not worrying about anything else or any other driver" unquote. That mindset certainly paid off on Tuesday. As a fan of Rico's and as a sprint car fan, I hope this kick starts his 2022. I believe that with Rico's personality, his driving style, and his accumen when it comes to marketing and promotion, that sprint car racing is just in a better place when he's running well and picking up wins.

Elsewhere last night, the Summer Nationals and Modified Nationals took on Red Hill Raceway for the first time in nearly 18 years. In the late model feature, it was all Tyler Erb out front. He led all 30 laps, and held off Brian Shirley right at the line to score his fourth career series win and $5000. Points leader Bobby Pierce ended the night 13th and with a DNF when the engine on his 32 machine expired in dramatic fashion on lap 16, while he was running second no less. It didn't hurt Pierce in the standings though, as we were missing Ryan Unzicker, and the gap back to Shirley now is 72 points. At this moment, we are down to just five drivers that have made every Summer Nationals feature. They are Pierce, Shirley, Jason Feger, Payton Freeman, and Joe Godsey. Besides Unzicker, there was no Logan Martin last night as well. In the modified main event, Nick Hoffman busted his two race losing streak, leading all but one lap to take his eighth win of the season. He continues to lead that championship by 136 over Kyle Steffens. Tonight, both series are headed to Benton Speedway in Missouri. In some Summer Nationals schedule news, officials announced yesterday that the July 5th racing at Charleston Speedway has been cancelled due to quote "unforeseen circumstances" unquote. Next week's racing will now kick off on July 6th at Fayette County.

And sticking with the World Racing Group theme, your DIRTVision fast pass got just a little bit better yesterday with the addition of the USA Nationals at Cedar Lake to the monthly plan. Previously, you could only watch the World of Outlaws late model event at Cedar Lake on a yearly fast pass, or if you paid for it separately. That leaves now just two events you can't watch for the year on a monthly plan. They are the 360 and 410 Knoxville Nationals. Those races will be available to you though if you have a yearly pass. And I know you guys in the comments are going to tell me, just like folks try and tell DIRTVision, that not including those races doesn't make sense. But actually, when you look at the numbers, it makes a lot of sense. A yearly pass for DIRTVision is $299.99. A monthly pass is $39.99. So if you do an entire year with monthly billing, you'll actually spend a lot more, $479.88 to be exact. So why then, would you get less for more money? The answer is that a lot of monthly subscribers to these services come and go. They do not average 12 months in a year on those plans, so it's actually more lucrative for the streamers to have you on a yearly plan with guaranteed revenue, versus a monthly with a higher price, but much less chance of you staying. So the way the math works out, the yearly is more valuable, and a bigger revenue driver, so they can give you more, versus a more expensive monthly. This gets into the territory of things like monthly recurring revenue, subscriber lifetime value and revenue per, and churn. But even if you don't care about any of that, the good news is, more racing to watch on DIRTVision.

Before we close out, I wanted to address an email I had yesterday regarding Grandview Speedway and their social media accounts, namely Twitter. This emailer referenced my recent rant about tracks not doing enough to help themselves, and mentioned that the Grandview Twitter account hadn't been updated since 2019. This person had gone to the account looking for PA Speedweek details for their show last night, and found none. And they are correct, the track Twitter account is old, and the website is broken. There is a Grandview Facebook page that is active, but it appears to be controlled by fans. So here's where this gets a little weird and nuanced. A lot of the racing at Grandview is promoted by Bob Miller and his Thunder on the Hill series, and that entity has it's own social media accounts and websites. So there were updates and info last night coming out of Grandview, but they were happening on Twitter @TOTHRacing. But the account doesn't come up when you search Grandview, because the only mention of Grandview in the account's Twitter bio, is a link to Grandview's Twitter account, which is @Gviewspeedway. No actual mention of the track's full name. So on the positive side, they do have a website and active accounts, but they are hard to find unless you know how Grandview works. And obviously that's bad. Just one of the many examples of the weirdness and nuance and issues that surround these tracks promoting themselves, and where they need to be better.

In other dirt racing shows this week, you can hear Logan Seavey on LoudPedal, Rees Moran on Passing Points, Brandon Wimmer on the Dirt from Knoxville, JJ Riggins for part two on Quicktime, Dale Jr. on All Gas No Brakes, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, the Dirt Nerds, and Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks. If you'd like to check out these shows and more, head over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts.

Nine shows on the streaming schedule today across the services. DIRTVision has micros from Millbridge and the Summer Nationals. FloRacing has PA Speedweek from Port Royal and 410s from Atomic, plus Flo 24/7. The Cushion also has those 410s from Atomic. Dirt Track Digest has racing from Can-Am, and there are two shows 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 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!