DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Eyes on the prize: Lucas championship battle tightens | Daily 7-5-2022

What are Tim McCreadie's and Ricky Thornton Jr's chances against Brandon Sheppard for the Lucas title? We'll look at the numbers today, plus talk Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet pouring beers and Monday's results. Let's go!

Today is Tuesday, July 5th, two thousand and twenty two. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.

The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series kicks off another four race night week starting tomorrow at Davenport, followed by three nights at Deer Creek through Saturday. We're coming off a very strong weekend for really our entire top three in the standings, with Brandon Sheppard picking up wins, Ricky Thornton Jr. doing the same, and Tim McCreadie bagging four top tens and three top fives. I wanted to dive into things a little bit today, since we are in bit of a brief lull this week, and see where things stand with these three currently. As I mentioned yesterday, Sheppard leads McCreadie by 55 points following Muskingum County, while RTJ is 210 behind BShepp in third. I feel like at this moment that Tyler Erb is probably a little too far back to try and make this a four way fight. He's got four straight top tens, including a prelim feature win at Muskingum County, but before that had four finishes outside the top ten in four of his past five races. He's more than two spots off Sheppard in average finish for the year, and I'm not convinced he has the consistency to be in this. And while RTJ is quite a ways back, he absolutely can climb his way towards the top. He's actually got the same amount of top tens on the year as Sheppard. And I think getting that first win of the year out of the way could open that team up for more. If you've watched or listened to this show for any length of time, you know that average finish is the closest stat we have in terms of correlation to winning a championship. If you end the season with the best average finish, you will win the title. And that is regardless of series. In 2020, Jimmy Owens won the Lucas title with an average finish of 6.89. Last year McCreadie did it with a 6.11, and as of this moment, Sheppard is at 5.93. Behind the Rocket squad, McCreadie is at 6.63 for the year with RTJ at 7.5. The biggest different right now between Thornton and the others, is his missteps early in the year were much bigger. Of his five races that he didn't finish in the top ten, four are results of 16th or worse, with two of them being 26th place finishes. But the reason I like Thornton right now in this battle, is since finishing 26th at Port Royal on April 10th, he's got 14 top tens in 15 races, with his worst finish being 11th at Lernerville. His average finish over that span is a very good 4.73. In that same stretch of races, McCreadie's average finish is 6.07, while Sheppard is 6.27. McCreadie though has the third longest current active top ten streak in country at 12 straight, sitting behind Buddy Kofoid at 15 and Justin Grant at 14 with the USAC National Midgets. I also like that both TMac and RTJ are near the top in stats like feature plus/minus and hard chargers. They are moving forward regularly come feature time, and that's a big deal when you're trying to compete for a title. It also looks good that Thornton leads the series in top ten efficiency, sitting on a perfect 17 top ten finishes in 17 top ten starts. He does trail the other two though in top five efficiency, which is definitely an area for improvement for the remainder of the year. Just based on past experience, BShepp and TMac are the two big favorites here, and neither will be rattled down the stretch as they go head to head. But I do think that RTJ trailing right now could be a bit of an advantage for them. They don't really have anything to lose here, so no need to points race or be conservative. Remember that the Lucas points are about five per position for most of the field, with the top four separated by 10. So right now McCreadie trails Sheppard by 11 spots or less, while RTJ is about 42 feature spots behind, or less depending on results. With so many points available on a normal night, things can change quickly, but remember that not every Lucas race night pays points. A lot of these prelim nights won't change the standings. This is definitely a battle we'll continue to follow as the season progresses.

We did have some racing last night that I wanted to briefly talk about. At Silver Dollar Speedway we had 360 sprint cars in action, and if you were there for Happy Hour, you may have had Brad Sweet or Kyle Larson pour your beer. As part of the promotion group that is new for the track this season, both drivers were on hand working the night's event. Sweet was there after extending his World of Outlaws points lead over the weekend at Cedar Lake, and Larson hustled out there following a third place finish on Sunday at Road America in the Cup race. California driver Colby Copeland is the third in the SLC trio running the track now. In the 360 feature, Casey Schmitz picked up his first career win at Silver Dollar, driving the famous Clyde Lamar 3C. Tony Gomes took a shot at Schmitz late, but missed and that let the 3C get away for the victory. Gomes ended up second with Brad Bumgarner in third. Schmitz is a name you may not have heard in the past, as he's pretty new to driving sprint cars. The 25 year old driver is a multi time track champion at Cycleland Speedway in Outlaw Kart action and clearly has some pace as he adjusts to full size sprint cars.

A few hours away at Placerville last night, Justin Sanders bagged the feature win in 360 competition, topping Blake Carrick and Michael Pombo. Chase Johnson looked like he maybe had the pace to challenge Sanders, but got over the banking in turns one and two and that took him out of contention.

There was also some super late model action from Monday night, with the Southern All Stars at Beckley Motor Speedway for the Beckley USA 100. Max Blair looked like he was maybe the car to beat, but two flats sent him to the pits, and that handed the lead to Jacob Hawkins. Through the rest of the main event, Hawkins held off challenges from both Carson Ferguson and Zack Dohm, and kept a charging Blair behind him on a late restart to bag the $20,000 win. It was the biggest payday yet for Hawkins. Blair battled all the way back to finish second, with Zack Dohm also on the podium. They had a nice field of 36 cars, with names like Eddie Carrier Jr., Ross Bailes, Kyle Strickler, Tyler Erb, Matt Cosner, and Joseph Joiner also in attendance. The Southern All Stars are back racing again later this week at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Tennessee.

Before we close out, some quick sprint car ride news for you. Ian Madsen linked up with TKS Motorsports over the weekend at Knoxville in the 2KS, and the plan is for Madsen to continue racing at Knoxville going forward. This move comes after the team split with Ryan Giles a few weeks ago, while Tasker Phillips has also made starts in that car this year. Also, it appears as though Scott Bogucki has parted ways with Snow Racing. We haven't seen the Australian driver out with the All Stars since a hard crash at Attica on June 10th. He posted to Facebook that he'll be back in his own car going forward. That means Snow has now lost both Bogucki and Kevin Thomas Jr. who started the year as full time All Star drivers with the team. Carson Short had replaced KTJ in that Snow ride and he ran all of Ohio Sprint Speedweek. We'll see if that partnership continues going forward.

The only thing on the streaming schedule today is FloRacing 24/7. 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 Tuesday. 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!