DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Smackdown started early for Robert Ballou, Brady Bacon; Hunt the Front going race promoting again | Daily 8-23-2022

Brady Bacon and Robert Ballou are putting the smack in Smackdown, plus, does the Summer Nationals need a refresh, Hunt the Front is going promoting again, and we've got dreaded cartoon racing results. Let's go!

It's Monday, August 22nd, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

The Sprint Car Smackdown is coming to Kokomo Speedway this weekend for the USAC National Sprint Car Series, but the smack talk has already started this week. Robert Ballou and Brady Bacon have been having a bit of back and forth for a while now. They had a run-in at Gas City during Indiana Sprint Week, with Bacon ending up crashed. And then at Lincoln Park, right as Bacon was taking the lead from Mitchel Moles, Ballou tangled with Kevin Thomas Jr. which brought out a caution and erased Bacon's move. In his post race interview after finishing third, Bacon referred to the Mad Man as the Balloudozer. So fast forward to this week and in advance of the Smackdown, Ballou has released t-shirts featuring his number 12 sprint car with a bulldozer blade on the front that says pushin' thru the BS and headlined with The Ballou Dozer. And not to be outdone, Bacon dropped his Smackdown shirt yesterday which features his 69 machine appearing to make a pass on a yellow piece of equipment with Madman across the windshield and a number 12 on the side. There seems to be some discussion about the piece of equipment being a front end loader and not a bulldozer, which even Ballou himself has commented on, but the point has been made either way. I like the rivalry. I like the shirts. I like the talk. Now hopefully we'll get to see the two go wheel to wheel this coming weekend at Kokomo. That would pay this whole thing off nicely. Smackdown starts Thursday and we'll get more into it later in the week.

I thought about bringing up this next topic on the show yesterday, but we had a lot going on after the weekend, so I pushed it to today to give it a little space. I'm wondering if the Summer Nationals doesn't need some sort of refresh or format change or something to bring it back to the forefront a bit. This year things felt like they kind of limped to the end with rainouts, and neither champion ended up running the final few races because of other shows they were competing in. Bobby Pierce ended up the late model champion, and Nick Hoffman continued to dominate on the modified side. But as of today, there are still actually Summer Nationals events left on the schedule. They were supposed to run a makeup show at Thunderbird on Saturday night, but that race was again lost to weather and officials are now looking for another date. The Herald and Review 100 at Macon has been reset for September 1st, and officials had been trying to reschedule the July 15th race at Farmer City, but decided last week to nix it completely. We did see some good racing this year, car counts were solid, but it just felt like there was no buzz around the series. Dirt late model racing has become really crowded with things like the FloRacing series and the addition of the XR stuff, so it felt like the Summer Nationals shows kind of fell by the way side a bit. With so many options out there weekly, some other series were going to take a hit and it felt like this year it was the Summer Nationals. They tried to do some things different with the schedule the previous two years to be a little friendlier for the racers, but this year brought it back to the traditional Hell Tour setup, and I believe Joe Godsey and Payton Freeman were the only two drivers to run every event. On top of the extra competition, there were obviously other factors this year with fuel prices and tire and parts shortages affecting everyone. But even with that, where do you guys stand on the Summer Nationals right now? Did you tune into these races this season? What are your thoughts on what could be done differently? I know the race purses are always a point of contention, but the series tried to address that this year with tow money available and extra championship funds added depending on the number of races completed. Drop me a comment and let me know your thoughts on what could be changed or done differently to bring you back to this short series each summer. To me, the Summer Nationals feel like such a traditional thing, I'd hate for it to lose significance or go away completely, not that that seems to be a possibility right now. But let me know where you are on the Hell Tour.

I know a bunch of you out there are Hunt the Front fans and they had some news last week. Coming later this year in November, they will promote their second ever super late model show with a two day event at Deep South Speedway in Alabama. The Friday prelim show will pay $5000 to win and $500 to start, and the Saturday main event will pay $20,000 to win and $1000 to start. The dates are November 17th through the 19th and they will release more information in the coming weeks about rules, support divisions and more. If you might remember, the Hunt the Front guys put on the King of the Sandbox last year at Southern Raceway which Brandon Overton went on to win. If you don't know about them, Hunt the Front is the three Joiner brothers, Jonathan, Joseph, and Joshua plus their buddy Jesse. They started a YouTube channel back in 2019 following their dirt late model team and have since grown the channel to well north of 100,000 subscribers and over 40 million views. I believe they have the largest dirt racing channel on YouTube at the moment. Check them out if you haven't before, they have a pretty cool setup.

The iRacing World of Outlaws Late Model Series was in action last night for round number five of the ten race championship. I pretty regularly get comments from people telling me to stop talking about cartoon racing, but it's important to remember that this isn't just some video game. These guys are racing for real cash. The winner each week gets $300, and the champion at the end of the season takes home $10,000. That's not virtual money, that's real money. There are real divisions of racing that don't race for that kind of scratch during a season. It's not uncommon for these guys to have sponsors and even people like real life racer Chris Ferguson, and Swindell SpeedLab are involved with teams. Last night the series took on Pevely, which is a newer track on the iRacing service. Evan Seay entered the night as the points leader over Kendal Tucker and Blake Matjoulis, and Seay has been able to pull away a bit in recent weeks. In last night's feature, Seay again started on the front row, but it was his teammate Matjoulis on the pole. The 127 of Matjoulis was able to take control early and built up a pretty good lead at points in the main event. Late in the going though his car started to go away and Seay was able to track him down. The two were side by side inside ten to go, with Seay on the bottom and Matjoulis up top. Seay finally cleared the 127 with three to go, but Matjoulis jumped to the bottom and was able to get back to the lead with a couple of sliders and drive off to the win. Seay settled for second, with Barrett Bishop in third. With the season half way done now, Seay still leads the standings, with Matjoulis now up to second, 46 points behind. Tucker is back to third after finishing 14th last night. The series will take on Kokomo next Monday night at 9PM ET on YouTube and DIRTVision.

There are two shows on the streaming schedule today. DIRTVision has weekly outlaw kart action from Millbridge 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 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!