DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Ryan Timms, Corey Day and Ayrton Gennetten show out at Knoxville, Huset's and against the Outlaws | Daily 8-29-2022
This past dirt racing weekend we had young sprint car drivers shining, Earl Pearson Jr's streak ended, we had first time winners, and a mini bulldozer at driver intros. Let's go!
It's Monday, August 29th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
It was a big weekend around the country for the young talent in sprint car racing, and after what we saw, the future is very bright if you're an open wheel fan. We'll start with the World of Outlaws up north and the series debut for Ryan Timms. Friday was his 16th birthday and he made his first ever Outlaw start at River Cities. On the Friday Daily show, a lot of you were pretty positive about what was possible for Timms against the Outlaws, but there were a few that weren't so bullish. I'd say though, that between Friday at River Cities and Saturday at Red River Valley, Timms showed the dirt racing world that he is a young driver not to be taken lightly. In his debut, he made the feature against a 35 car field, and promptly drove from 17th to 9th, grabbing a top ten in his first race and hard charger for the night. Things went even better on Saturday as he went seventh quick in qualifying, then third to second in his heat race to earn a spot in the dash. A fourth place finish in the dash led to a fourth place start in the feature, and except for a brief moment where he thought a red flag was thrown when it wasn't, the feature was nearly flawless. He was in the mix all night and ended up finishing second to Carson Macedo. So two races, two features made, two top tens, a dash appearance, a hard charger, and a podium. I think the two nights went just about as well as they could have hoped for. According to the series, Timms is now the youngest driver to ever finish on the podium with the Outlaws. In the Friday comments, Al asked about Gio Scelzi's record as the youngest Outlaw winner, and Timms has basically the next year to try and break that mark. When Gio won at Williams Grove in 2018, he was two months shy of his seventeenth birthday. So call it 16 years, ten months for Gio. As of today, Timms is 16 years, three days old, so a lot of future chances for him to get a win and set a new bar. Coming up, don't expect Timms to head west with the Outlaws. It sounds like he could be headed to Pennsylvania to take on the Posse and get some valuable laps on those tracks. As for the weekend World of Outlaws winners, Friday at River Cities it was Brad Sweet earning win number four on the year. He was to the lead by lap 11 and was basically unchallenged the rest of the way. David Gravel and Carson Macedo joined him on the podium. The Big Cat was also quick time on the night, and over the last 422 Outlaw features, 71 have been won by the night's fast qualifier. That's a little more than 17%. To extend that a little further and and show just how imporant qualifying is, 65% of series wins come from guys that qualify inside the top ten. On Saturday night at Red River Valley, Sweet again led a bunch of laps, but pole sitter Macedo slipped by him on lap 20 and drove away to the win. Timms and Sweet finished second and third. Robbie Price, driving the Sides 7S, had a career best finish in fifth. There wasn't a ton of passing on Saturday night, and that's evident by the hard charger. Kevin Ingle went 24th to 19th to earn the award, and Ingle's 19th place finish is the second lowest finish for a hard charger with the Outlaws since 2017. The lowest finish for a hard charger was Jason Sides going 23rd to 20th at Bristol earlier this season. So now the Outlaws are headed west and they will spend the next three weeks in Washington and California. Coming up this weekend is the Skagit Nationals which will pay $25,000 to win on Saturday night. Other tracks coming up include Grays Harbor, Silver Dollar, Hanford, and Placerville.
The other two young drivers I wanted to highlight today are 23 year old Ayrton Gennetten and 16 year old Corey Day. On Saturday night at Knoxville, Gennetten bagged his first ever 410 win there, topping Sam Hafertepe and Brian Brown. Day finished fifth in both the normal 410 race and the makeup feature as well. And to close out the weekend, all three were on top at Huset's. Day went on to the victory in his first ever 410 appearance at the South Dakota track. Ryan Timms tried to run him down late, but settled for second. And Gennetten rounded out the podium. So very good weekends for three young sprint car drivers, and again, the future is very bright.
And since I mentioned Knoxville, their track champions were crowned on Saturday night. Mike Mayberry won the pro sprint title, Terry McCarl is your 360 track champion, and Brian Brown made up enough ground on Aaron Reutzel to score the 410 title.
In the dirt late model world, we had both national tours in action and both had good racing and big cash paid out. At Port Royal on Saturday night, there wasn't a ton of movement in the standings. Tim McCreadie finished two spots behind Brandon Sheppard but still leads the championship by nearly 200 points. The big story on the night though was Earl Pearson Jr. Back in April at Port, EPJ started on the pole, but an incident with Kyle Larson took both drivers out of contention that night and Pearson was left wanting more after having a car capable of winning. Fast forward to Saturday night, and the four time series champion got his due. He drove up from fourth to take the lead from Ricky Thornton Jr. on lap 10 and was able to keep RTJ behind him down the stretch to earn the $50,000 win. Thornton tried to make a pass with five laps remaining, but couldn't clear the 46, and EPJ really hustled those last few laps to get the win. It was Pearson's first Lucas victory since July 10th of 2020 at Florence Speedway, a span of 113 races. EPJ switched over to the Jason Papich owned team late in 2021 and he's been dramatically improved since then. He's nearly doubled his top five and top ten finishes from a year ago, and his average finish is four positions better. It felt like it was only a matter of time before he got that elusive win. The Lucas season continues this coming weekend with stops at Portsmouth and Tyler County.
The World of Outlaws Late Models also had good money on the line with Saturday's main event winner at Davenport taking down $30,000. I picked Tanner English to win on Thursday night, which ended up being a miss, but I was correct in thinking that English was close to his first Outlaw victory. On Friday night, he started 18th and was into the top ten by half way. A caution with 15 to go for Billy Moyer brough English into the mix in the top five and he his march forward wasn't done just yet. Out front, Bobby Pierce and Devin Moran were battling it out, but as the laps wound down, English caught the top two. Pierce led at the white flag, and out of turn four English was able to roll the bottom and beat both the 32 and 9 machines back to the line to score the victory by just 2 tenths of a second. I have 165 races for the series in the dirtrackr.com analytics database back through the 2019 season, and English's 18th to 1st hard charge is the first time the night's hard charger was also the winner. English said afterwards that he thought wins would come easier after getting the first one, and he didn't have to wait long. On Saturday night, after somehow escaping an incident that also took about points leader Dennis Erb Jr., English got to the lead on lap 62 and again held off Bobby Pierce to earn the win. Shannon Babb had an incredible 25th to 3rd run to round out the podium. It was not a good night to be out front, as early leader Ashton Winger ended up over the track at one point and finished 15th. Ryan Gustin led the most laps on the night, but bowed out late with brake issues. And Devin Moran suffered a flat tire. The two wins for English, and the Saturday night DNF for Erb has brought the championship gap down to 98 points between the two. There are 12 race nights left in the season, but I still feel like this is Erb's title. 98 points is 49 positions, which means English still needs to beat Erb by four spots a night on average to the end. Not impossible, but still feels unlikely. The Outlaws head south this weekend for stops at Smoky Mountain and Lavonia.
Also at Davenport on Friday and Saturday was the Xtreme Outlaw Midget series. Friday night it was the Mounce Stout teammates of Chase McDermand and Jacob Denney who locked out the top two spots. Both drivers led laps, but it was McDermand getting the win. And Saturday night it was all Bryant Wiedeman out front. His win made it seven different winners in seven races so far for the new midget tour. A big bright spot on the weekend was Daison Pursley returning to midget competition less than a year after his devastating spinal cord injury at Arizona Speedway. Pursley was fourth on Friday night in his first race back, and eighth on Saturday. Zach Daum maintains the series points lead over Wiedeman. The Xtreme Sprint Cars are at Jacksonville and Spoon River in a few weeks, and the midgets return to racing on October 13th at Port City.
In Pennsylvania over the weekend, the All Stars closed out a busy stretch with four races in three nights between Williams Grove, Lincoln, and Bedford. Friday night at the Grove, Danny Dietrich swept both features, becoming just the fourth driver to do that during the Jack Gunn Memorial. He won the first race from the pole, they inverted six, and then he won the second race from sixth. The series only paid points for the first feature, which was good for Tyler Courtney, because he broke something in feature two and ended up 23rd. But the DNF did not hurt him the championship fight against Justin Peck. Saturday night at Lincoln, Peck stayed hot, leading all the laps and scoring his fourth win in six races with the series. He held off a challenge from Freddie Rahmer and bagged the Kramer Klash, wearing a Kramer Williamson tribute helmet. And Sunday at Bedford, Anthony Macri led all 30 laps driving the McGhee 11 and topped Courtney and Sye Lynch for the win. I told you guys that Macri would be a force in that 11 car, and he definitely was in the past week. In six starts, his worst finish was ninth, he had the win, and three podiums. With Sharon up next, the gap between Courtney and Peck is 112 points. Even with all the winning that Peck has done, he couldn't close up much because Sunshine just keeps racking up top fives. And that 23rd at Williams Grove, which was Courtney's worst finish of the season, won't hurt him because of that race not paying points. Going forward, things will start to look bleak for Peck. Ten race nights remain, but both the Tuscarora 50 at Port Royal and the Dirt Classic at Lincoln are show up points only, so Peck really only has eight races to erase that gap. The Sharon Nationals start Friday.
At Smackdown over the weekend, Kevin Thomas Jr. topped Jake Swanson and CJ Leary to win the second of two prelim nights. Justin Grant won the first on Thursday. Saturday night in the finale, Kyle Cummins picked up the biggest win of his career, leading flag to flag, and beating CJ Leary and Brady Bacon for the Smackdown victory. Cummins earned $15,000 for the win, and an additional $20,000 for leading all the laps. In just 15 national sprint car events in 2022, Cummins has 12 top tens, 10 top fives, and two wins. He doesn't race often, but when he does, he is really fast. With 11 race nights left for the USAC sprint cars, Justin Grant's points lead is 112 over Brady Bacon. JG now has 18 straight top ten finishes. One final highlight of the Smackdown weekend for you, was Robert Ballou rolling to driver intros on a mini bulldozer.
Before we close out today, happy trails and happy retirement to the McMahan brothers. Both Paul and Bobby called it a career on Saturday night at Placerville Speedway. Bobby was a fixture in California, while Paul was an Outlaw regular for so many years. Paul is 23rd all time in Outlaw wins with 27. Shane Golobic was the feature winner on Saturday night, topping Colby Copeland and Michael Pombo.
It's a quiet day on the streaming services with only FloRacing 24/7 on the schedule. 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. Make sure to like, subscribe, and comment.
Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!