DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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West Virginia Motor Speedway cancels rest of 2022 schedule, Donny Schatz making USAC midget debut | Daily 7-22-2022
Today we've got Thursday results, news from Donny Schatz and West Virginia Motor Speedway, and a slight Kyle Larson rant. Let's go!
It's Friday, July 22nd, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
We'll start today off with results from Thursday night. At I-80 Speedway for the opening of the Silver Dollar Nationals weekend, it was all Chris Madden. He kept his incredible 2022 season rolling with a flag-to-flag win in the Dirt Track Bank Go 50. He started on the front row and was able to keep names like Kyle Bronson, Jonathan Davenport, Mike Marlar, and Bobby Pierce at bay. Pierce had a nice 20th to third charge after transferring in from a B-Main. Bronson was fast before a blown left rear tire took him out of the event. Last night's feature did pay points, but there wasn't a ton of movement with Brandon Sheppard finishing fifth, Ricky Thornton Jr. sixth, and series points leader Tim McCreadie in seventh. Looking ahead to tonight, the competitors will run dual heat races with passing and finishing points being awarded. Afterwards, the top 18 in points will be locked into the Saturday feature, with everyone else headed to a B-Main. The 80 lap Silver Dollar Nationals main event pays $53,000 to win and $5300 to start. The dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula is sticking with McCreadie. I'll go Davenport for Saturday. He looked good last night and those guys have been strong all season, even if JD's recent history at I-80 isn't great. The Silver Dollar Nationals are live all weekend over on FloRacing.
Before we move on to other results from last night, I approved the first two DIRTRACKR t-shirt designs ever last night. Hopefully those will be for sale in the next few weeks. I'm going to wait until I have them in hand before I put them on sale. They aren't just generic DIRTRACKR logo'd shirts. I wanted to do something a little more fun, so stay tuned. Also, had to support the racing community with this first foray into apparel, so Kahne Screen Print is doing these for me. There are a lot of print on demand services for shirts that I looked into, but I've heard the quality isn't great, so I wanted to use a legit shirt printer so we get good stuff. Costing me a little bit more, but that's okay. I'm thinking $30 a shirt, which will include shipping and taxes. So 30 bucks out the door, just makes it easy for everyone. I might even go ahead and setup a real store website as well. Exciting stuff coming friends.
At Butler Motor Speedway last night, Billy Moyer Jr. led all 40 laps to take his 10th career Hell Tour win, but first since 2017. BMJ has scaled back to a part time racing schedule, and had made 13 Summer Nationals starts this season before last night. He topped Chad Finley and Dona Marcoullier. And on the modified side, with Nick Hoffman running a late model this week, Kevin Reeve bagged his first career series win, topping Chad Bauer and Todd Sherman. The Summer Nationals continue through the weekend with stops at Tri-City Motor Speedway, Merritt, and back to Thunderbird on Sunday.
With the Short Track Super Series on Thursday, Matt Sheppard got by Stewart Friesen with 20 to go and held on for the win in the Richie Evans Remembered 61. Friesen and Rocky Warner completed the podium. Sheppard will extend his north region points lead over Mat Williamson. The Short Track Super Series is back in action this coming Tuesday, with a south region show at Bridgeport.
The opening night of ASCS Speedweek from Tulsa Speedway was lost last night because of rain. They have rescheduled that race to Tuesday, July 26th. The National Tour moves to Batesville tonight for what will now be the opener, with I-30 coming up on Saturday.
In some news items from yesterday, Donny Schatz will make his USAC National Midget debut coming up at the Dirt Track at Indy for the BC39. He'll drive a Spike Chassis with Sage Fruit on the side, just like we've seen him do at the Chili Bowl recently. Schatz joins an evergrowing list of midget entries for that event, which includes the series regulars, plus plenty of other dirt and NASCAR stars. The BC39 takes place August 3rd and 4th.
Also, some not so great news from West Virginia Motor Speedway. After all the work they did to get that facility back into shape in 2020, they have decided to cancel their remaining schedule for 2022 and look towards next year. They cited quote "low car counts, lack of sanction support, reduced fan attendance, and now a devastatingly low attended concert" unquote as reasons for the move. The big 5/8 mile facility has held several events over the past year or so, but a track that size is a tough sell for competitors. You need big power to go fast, and that's expensive, and when you crash on a big track, it hurts more, which is also expensive. Hopefully though, they are able to find a way forward after all they put into that place to make it raceable again.
Around the country this week, besides the racing I've already mentioned, we've got the Outlaws at Williams Grove, the All Stars at Lake Ozark, and Indiana Sprint Week gets underway for USAC. At the Grove tonight, David Gravel, Carson Macedo, and Sheldon Haudenschild will try and gain more ground on Outlaw points leader Brad Sweet. Over the last 27 Outlaw races at the Grove, Sweet has no wins and an average finish of 9.63. These guys can't afford to not take advantage of that this weekend. We've had one race at the Grove already this season, with Brent Marks winning back on May 14th. Marks was fourth on Wednesday at Port Royal and will be looking to repeat that success from May. In 2021, Macedo won twice at the Grove, with Kyle Larson, Marks, Sheldon, and Aaron Reutzel all also picking up wins. Larson is expected to be in attendance, for both nights, and he's the favorite from the win prediction formula. I'm gonna go Macedo though. I think he'll be motivated to bounce back and win after that DQ from last time that has set him back in the points standings. Both of these nights will be live on DIRTVision.
The All Stars had a few weeks off, and are back in action this weekend with two nights at Lake Ozark in Missouri. The weekend is a co-sanction with the new POWRi winged 410 series, and the non-wing WAR Sprint Cars are also on the card. Roger Crockett leads the POWRi winged points, while Kory Schudy is the WAR points leader. With the All Stars, we'll see the championship battle between Tyler Courtney and Justin Peck continue, with Sunshine currently leading by 74 points. Christopher Bell and Cap Henry were Lake Ozark winners a season ago. The formula likes Cap for tonight, because of that win and he finished second to Bell in the other race. Cap also has three straight top tens entering this weekend. I'm going to go Sunshine tonight. Finishes of third and fourth last year at Lake Ozark, and seven straight top tens right now. He can use this weekend to put some more space between he and Peck. The All Stars will be live on Flo.
For the non-wing fans, it's Christmas in Summer with Indiana Sprint Week kicking off tonight at Gas City. Features will be $6000 to win all week and the points champion will get $10k and the famous rocker. Kevin Thomaws Jr. is the defending sprint week champion, and he's back in a car, sans the wing, to try and go back to back. KTJ could be the first repeat sprint week champion since Levi Jones did it in 08 and 09. Logan Seavey is pretty good at Gas City in a sprint car, having won two of the last three races there. Justin Grant was also a winner in 2020. The formula likes Brady Bacon tonight, I'll go JG. Following tonight, they head to Kokomo on Saturday, Lawrenceburg on Sunday, and Circle City on Monday before a break on Tuesday. If you aren't nearby, all of these shows will be streamed on Flo.
Drop me a comment, let me know where you're headed this weekend or what you'll be watching on the streaming services.
Before we shut it down for the week, I have a few thoughts about Kyle Larson. So we know he's in Pennsylvania this week, he ran Port Royal Wednesday, will be at the Grove on Friday and Saturday, and he's got Cup at Pocono on Sunday. Last night he got offered a micro ride at Linda's Speedway, which was hosting Hyper Racing 600 Speedweek, and he went out and won it, bagging $2000. And you should see the comments on that one. Larson stealing money from local racers, can't believe he's cherry picking, and on and on. According to the Speedweek Twitter account, Larson was not paid an appearance fee to be at the event. And he gave the $2000 winners check to the car owner. I also saw someone mention there were 87 entries last night, and 44 were from out of state, so this wasn't Larson beating up on local 12 year olds. The outrage is beyond ridiculous for this situation, and let me remind you that some of the best guys to ever sit in the seat of a race car have gone and run with other series, even during the heights of their careers. I tweeted these out earlier, but Steve Kinser ran with the USAC Western States Midgets and ASCS regional shows, Dale Earnhardt had no problem running with ASA, ARCA, and the Southwest Tour. Mario Andretti won at Kyalami in 1971 in Formula One, and also made three Silver Crown starts that year. And this doesn't include a whole host of other drivers that have done the exact same thing through their careers. It's not a bad thing that Larson was at Linda's last night. It was a good thing. He brought attention to the event and the track. Those fans and racers in attendance got to see and race against him, which they will talk about forever. Larson worships at the church of racing, and he's just out spreading the gospel. Stop being so mad about everything, all the time. Let's just enjoy a racer doing racing things.
You'll have plenty of choices on the streaming services this weekend if you aren't headed out to the race track. We are north of 100 races between today and Sunday from DIRTVision, FloRacing, RacinDirt, Speed Sport, XR, The Cushion, and more. That includes the Outlaws, All Stars, Lucas, USAC, ASCS and lots of other local and regional racing. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
That's it for the show today, enjoy the dirt racing weekend. 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!