DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Reacting to Donny Schatz's emotional Knoxville Nationals victory | Daily 8-15-2022
Today we'll react to the 61st Knoxville Nationals and why the win meant so much for Donny Schatz. We'll also talk other stories from Knoxville, another crown jewel for Jonathan Davenport, wins for Daison Pursley, and sprint car racing today in Canada Eh! Let's go!
It's Monday, August 15th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
I'm sure we could probably say this about a lot of these big events in dirt racing, but I felt like the past week at Knoxville was a perfect microcosm for why we love sprint car racing, and the sport of dirt racing as a whole. Entering the Nationals, there were a bunch of guys that could have won, there were high profile rookies, and by the time it was complete, we have no lack of topics to get into. We had controversy, we had heartbreak, we had the elation of drivers making the main event and we had tears from the winner. And we'll start there, with Donny Schatz and him scoring his 11th career Knoxville Nationals win. In the past 36 hours or so, you've heard and seen all the headlines. Donny's 11th. Brings him to within one of Steve Kinser with 12. The references to Donny Knoxville and Schatzville. Those were terms that got coined when Schatz was dominating the Sprint Car Capital of the World from 2006 to 2017. In 12 years, Schatz was only beat twice, in 2010 by Tim Shaffer, and 2016 by Jason Johnson. Schatz was second in both of those races. You saw the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, tweet congratulations to Donny for the win, and of course mentioning the Ford power, which has been an ongoing topic of conversation around the TSR sprint car program. And you saw how emotional Donny and his group were in victory lane. It hasn't been an easy few seasons for the 10 time series champion, and things were made even more difficult this year with the loss of Donny's father Danny to cancer. This one meant something a little different, and for a lot of reasons. Nevermind the fact that at the half way break, Donny was running sixth and not happy with how his car was performing or how he was driving it. But after some adjustments from Scuba and the guys, and a fresh set of driving gloves, Donny was a different driver over the final 25 laps. Cautions for Austin McCarl and James McFadden aided Donny's cause, and he was to second approaching 10 laps to go. And then as laps started to wind down, it became increasingly clear that the 15 was coming, and that David Gravel was fading. Donny officially grabbed the lead on lap 46 and Gravel couldn't do anything but watch the white Carquest 15 drive away. Schatz hadn't won the Nationals since 2017, and he hasn't won the Outlaw championship since 2018. In the time since we've seen the rise of Brad Sweet and David Gravel and Sheldon Haudenschild and Carson Macedo and Logan Schuchart, and also the incredible moonlighting of the headline stealing Kyle Larson. But on Saturday night we were once again reminded of how good Donny is behind the wheel of a 410 sprint car, and why he's one of the best to ever do it. I don't know about you, but I used to look at Donny Schatz like I looked at the New York Yankees or the New England Patriots. Always dominating, always winning everything, ho hum. But it was hard not to be excited for him and that team and to not get caught up in the emotion of that moment.
Elsewhere down through the finishing order, we had Gravel and Schuchart grabbing podiums. Schuchart went 17th to third and just nipped Tyler Courtney late in the going after transferring in from the B Main. Both Shark cars were in the top five, with Jacob Allen ending up fifth. Kyle Larson recovered to finish sixth after an early exploded right rear tire took him out of contention. Brent Marks showed speed but was never really a factor for the win, ending up seventh. Sheldon Haudenschild hard charged from 23rd to 8th after earning a feature starting spot in the Friday Hard Knox program. Series points leader Brad Sweet was ninth, and Daryn Pittman had a very nice top ten in a rare sprint car start this year driving the Heffner 27. Buddy Kofoid was rookie of the year with an 11th place finish and Aaron Reutzel's 14th earned him the two week long Mr. Sprint Car award. After starting on the pole and leading the first lap, Austin McCarl's day was ruined by a flat tire, as was Carson Macedo's. James McFadden, Brian Brown and Justin Sanders were out early with issues, and Gio Scelzi, JJ Hickle, and Parker Price-Miller all had big crashes. Gio and Hickle were fine, but PPM was transferred to a Des Moines hospital and diagnosed with fractures to his C7 and T5. His mom tweeted surgery isn't needed and he is able to move everything. He'll head back to Indy and heal and rest up.
Other things we'll remember from the week are Tasker Phillips getting into the main event. Not bad for an Iowa farmer. I also think the up and down week for young Corey Day will vault him to a lot of future success in this event. We saw him completely dejected in the work area on Friday after tipping the Jason Meyers 14 over, only to bounce back to a seventh place finish in that very same feature. His Saturday didn't go well either, but he showed a lot of pace this week and things are just getting going for him. Looking ahead this week, there won't be any rest for the sprint car community. Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet's High Limit Racing series debuts tomorrow night for a special one off race at Lincoln Park Speedway. The show is $22,022 to win and $1000 to start. I've been asked about Outlaw teams at that show, and I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. From what I know and understand, teams have not been given clearance to race with the series and in this event. If something changes by tomorrow, I'll let you know. The Outlaw teams though are headed straight to Minnesota this week for the Jackson Nationals that start on Thursday. And the full time All Star teams begin a very busy stretch starting Friday at Outlaw Speedway in New York. They will race 13 times from August 19th through September 10th, culminating in the Tuscarora 50 at Port Royal. Drop me a comment on YouTube or social media, let me know your own thoughts on the Knoxville Nationals.
The other big dirt racing show from the weekend was the North/South 100 from Florence Speedway for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. The crown jewels in dirt late model racing this season have been dominated by just a few guys, and that didn't change on Saturday night. Jonathan Davenport and Chris Madden have been the two leading money winners so far this year, and they started together on the front row. Madden may have been the only car in the field with a realistic chance of beating JD, but we'll never know because Madden was out of the race before we even had a lap complete. He went for a ride after hitting a bump on the opening circuit and was left with some broken pieces and a 25th place finish. Out front, incredibly, Davenport led all 100 laps and topped Brandon Overton and Dale McDowell. The two other Georgia drivers kept Superman honest through lap traffic but could never make a real bid for the top spot. The $75,000 win for JD pushed his season earnings over $1.6 million. Vinny Guliani, who is an engineer for Davenport, and a past DIRTRACKR Conversations guest, tweeted afterwards they were away from the house for 38 days, had seven wins, three of which were crown jewels. Not a bad month long road trip for the Lance Landers owned car. The three crown jewels were the Silver Dollar Nationals at I-80, Davenport led the final seven laps. He also led all 100 laps at the USA Nationals at Cedar Lake, and then Saturday night's North/South 100 win. And those guys might not be done just yet, as the $50,000 to win Topless 100 is coming up later this week at Batesville. In the race for the Lucas championship, it was not a good night for Brandon Sheppard. Both he and points leader Tim McCreadie were down the order for much of the race, but TMac was able to move forward late in the race and salvage a top ten after starting 20th. Sheppard ended up 15th and is now 200 points adrift of the 39 team. I tweeted this out yesterday from the DIRTRACKR account, but two of the longest top ten streaks in the country did come to an end on Friday, with both McCreadie and Mike Marlar finishing outside the top ten in the prelim night features at Florence. McCreadie had gone 21 straight races in the top ten, and Marlar was 13 straight. The Topless 100 weekend starts on Friday night.
I mentioned last week that Daison Pursley was set to get back behind the wheel with some micro stuff at Coles County, and what a first weekend back it was. Over two nights he won seven of the eight features he was entered in, which is incredible given it's been less than a year since that devastating midget crash at Arizona Speedway that left him with a spinal cord injury. Hopefully this is just the beginning for Daison and Keith Kunz Motorsports.
Before we move on to other weekend winners and racing tonight, one quick schedule note for you, the NARC 410 series out in California has cancelled their August 27th race at the Stockton Dirt Track because of the ongoing tire shortages. For more details, head over to narc410.com.
With the USMTS over the weekend, Tanner Mullens took down the $20,000 Grant Junghans Memorial on Friday night at Lakeside Speedway. On Saturday at I-70, multi-time series champion Rodney Sanders busted a winless streak that goes back to May of 2021. He topped Lucas Schott and Dereck Ramirez to bag $10,000. Leaving the weekend, Dustin Sorensen's points lead is just 57 over Mullens.
Other weekend sprint car winners included Jake Swanson with the MSCS at Terre Haute, Matt Westfall was a winner at Gas City, Kalib Montgomery took the Placerville win, and Kory Schudy was a WAR winner at Valley Speedway.
Other weekend late model winners included Tanner English at Paducah, Spencer Diercks and Tony Jackson Jr. were MLRA winners, Ashton Winger and Sam Seawright were Iron-Man winners, and Jason Feger won the Saturday night MARS show at Shadyhill.
If you want some sprint car racing to watch tonight, check out the Canadian Sprint Car Nationals from Ohsweken. They've got 360s racing for $10k to win, and the field will include Stewart Friesen and Christopher Bell among others. And the cool part is you can watch it for free over on YouTube. Go find the GForceTV channel and tune in later tonight.
Speaking of watching dirt racing online...
There are three shows on the streaming schedule today. The Super DIRTcar Series is on DIRTVision from Weedsport, there is racing from Coos Bay on Speed Sport, and there 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 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!