DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Has Rudeen Racing improved with Zeb Wise instead of Cory Eliason? | Daily 8-30-2022

Coming up, is the Rudeen 26 better with Zeb Wise in the seat? We'll get into the numbers, plus another young driver is set to make his World of Outlaws debut and we'll talk Monday iRacing results and the win prediction formula. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, August 30th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

I've had a few different questions in recent days about Rudeen Racing and the switch from Cory Eliason to Zeb Wise with the All Stars, so I thought we'd dive into that today. I know I've talked about doing a mailbag episode, so I probably need to stop using some of these questions as show topics, but this one feels like it needs a little bit of space and we can go a little more in depth. Rudeen and it's struggles in 2022 have been show topics a few times this season. We talked about this on the Daily back on June 7th and what it would take to climb out of their hole, but by June 30th the team announced it had released driver Cory Eliason after more than three seasons together. It was about a week later, on July 6th, that the 26 team dropped the news that they were hiring Zeb Wise to replace Eliason. The new partnership got off to a solid start with a seventh place finish at the Brad Doty Classic, but the Kings Royal after that was a struggle, with only one feature appearance, a 20th place finish in the daytime show before the Royal. Zeb made his first All Star starts for the team at Lake Ozark on July 22nd and 23rd, finishing 3rd and 6th, both very solid results. Since then though, things have been very up and down. The team has only added four more top tens, and has three finishes of 20th or worse, plus they missed the feature at Knoxville on July 30th. So with 12 All Star races together so far, is the Rudeen car better with Zeb Wise behind the wheel? The short answer would seem to be no. This season, Cory Eliason had 27 All Star races in the 26 with 12 top tens and five top fives. They also won at East Bay early in the season. So a top ten percentage of 44.4%, a top five percentage of 18.5% and an average finish of 11.96. Through 12 races with Zeb, they have six top tens, one top five, and no wins. That's a 50% top ten percentage (a little better), an 8% top five percentage (that's worse), and their average finish is 11.91. The caveat on the average finish though, is that they missed the feature at Knoxville, so that average finish, while it looks about the same as Eliason, is actually a little bit worse with that B-Main finish. If you're curious about Zeb before the 26 in his own car, his average finish was nearly two spots better at 10th. He also had two wins, 18 top tens, and 12 top fives. So where has this team gone wrong? Without knowing the inner workings, it's tough to say. And I would even go so far as to say the team isn't sure either. If they knew what the problem was, they would fix it. They use Maxim chassis, Speedway Engines, FK Shocks. All of which we've seen plenty of other drivers and teams have success with. So there doesn't seem to be an equipment or funding problem here. Somewhere along the way, between personnel changes and driver swaps, they've gotten off and they are struggling to get back to when they were fast and right in the mix for All Star titles. That blue 26 is a staple in sprint car racing and it sucks to see them down right now. I think a lot of us hoped that Zeb would bring some fresh energy to this team and they would get back going in the right direction, but that hasn't been the case so far. Hopefully Kevin Rudeen has some patience with the situation and allows these guys some time to figure it out. The All Star season continues later this week at Sharon Speedway.

The World of Outlaws Sprint Car teams are headed west this week to begin a three week stretch on the west coast starting with this weekend's Skagit Nationals at Skagit Speedway in Washington. Yesterday, two drivers announced their intentions to challenge the full timers, with one making his series debut. First, California driver Joel Myers Jr. will run most of the Outlaw shows coming up in the next few weeks, with this weekend at Skagit being his series debut. The teenager has made a bunch of 360 and 410 appearances this season, including starts with both NARC and the Sprint Car Challenge Tour. He is still seeking a win in 2022, but does have top five and top ten finishes. Leighton Crouch, who is Brenham Crouch's father, has kicked in extra support for Myers with his Hi-Plains Building Division. The Crouch family has also fielded that number 11 sprint car this season that we've seen Buddy Kofoid in a bunch. The plan is for Myers to race at Skagit, Chico, Hanford and Placerville. The other driver we'll see coming up is JJ Hickle. He's partnering with Dave Smith Motorsports to run this weekend at Skagit and two nights at Grays Harbor, Sunday and Monday. The Sunday show is 360s, while Monday is the Outlaw race. Hickle is from Washington, but has raced in the midwest this season with Brandon Ikenberry, appearing 13 times with the Outlaws already, plus a bunch of weekly appearances at Knoxville. Hickle was one of three rookies to make the Knoxville Nationals A-Main a few weeks ago. Also, I said on yesterday's show that Ryan Timms was likely headed to Pennsylvania next, but that might be in question now. I was told late last week that PA was quote "probably" next, but Timms mentioned heading west after the Sunday race at Huset's, so maybe they decided to chase the Outlaws after all. We'll see what happens coming up. I'll have more on the Outlaw weekend at Skagit on Thursday.

Last night was round number six of the iRacing World of Outlaws Late Model championship, and it's becoming increasingly clear that this title will come down to the two teammates in Evan Seay and Blake Matjoulis. The two drivers work together under the Chris Ferguson eSports banner and their Matjoulis-Seay Speedshop. They entered the night 1-2 in the standings, and they left 1-2 in the standings. They also finished 1-2 in the race, with Matjoulis earning his third win of the year. He started on the pole and battled early with outside front row starter Zack McSwain, but it didn't take long for the 127 to settle in out front and go the distance. Seay started fourth and eventually finished second. Matjoulis only gained three points on his teammate with the victory, but he's still got four races left to make a move. The two drivers have combined to win five of the six races, with Hayden Cardwell the only other winner. Matjoulis now leads the series with three victories, but Seay hasn't finished worse than second yet this season. The other battle to keep an eye on if you are tuning into these races is for that 15th position in the points. Kind of like soccer, these pro series have relegation, so if you finish inside the top 15 in the points at year's end, you are guaranteed into the next season of racing. If you are outside, you must go back through the qualification process. So right now, Matthew Selby has the final locked in spot, while Justin Norwood and multi-time sprint car series champion Alex Bergeron are on the outside looking in. The series goes quiet for the next week, but they will return to racing on September 12th at Knoxville. These races are always live streamed on DIRTVision and on YouTube and you can watch for free.

As you guys know, I pretty regularly do win picks for the bigger series, and that means a selection from me and a selection from the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula. The formula is something I put together a few years ago now, and it uses the data available from the nearly 1300 races that are now in the database. The formula takes into account past finishes at the specific race track, past finishes at race tracks similar in size, and a driver's last five races period. Sprinkle in a little randomness, and you've got the formula. This season I've been tracking the picks, and as of today, I'm 47 for 209, which is about 22.5% percent, while the formula is 25 for 209, or about 12%. It's an interesting thought experiment, and even when the picks are wrong, it gives us an idea of who could be fast. Last week, I had a comment from Matthew basically saying that he thinks that past results can't predict the future and that more intangible things are what leads to race wins. And on some level, I agree with him. Just like anything else, sports results, the stock market, etc, past results don't really mean much. But as I just said, I think they can give us an idea who is good at certain tracks and who has momentum. This past weekend was a perfect example with Tanner English. He's a driver with the World of Outlaws Late Models who has been good as of late, and it felt like his first win wasn't far off. I picked him to win Thursday, and he ended up winning Friday, which then led to the formula picking him for Saturday, which he also won. There is no way to have a math equation be accurate enough to pick every winner, but I do think there is value in the numbers. I built the analytics section over at dirtrackr.com because that information wasn't easily available other places, and it's allowed us to spot trends with drivers, make win picks, and come up with correlations and theories about the way races play out, the difficulty of running various series, and more. If you've really paid attention the last two years, things that have come up on this show because of numbers then often percolate up in other places afterwards. When you can take the race results apart and really get into what's happening by the numbers, you often spot things before the media and series do. So am I or the formula ever going to be 100% accurate picking winners? Absolutely not. If it were that easy, we wouldn't need to run the races. Plus, half the time, we don't even know to 100% certainty who's even going to race any given night. But I do think there is a lot to learn from the numbers and I'm going to keep sharing as we go.

A quick schedule note for you. The Short Track Super Series was supposed to be at Georgetown Speedway tonight, but that event has been pushed to tomorrow because of evening thunderstorms incoming. So they will now race on Wednesday, and then it will be a quick turnaround with $25,000 on the line on Sunday at Utica-Rome. For more info, head over to shorttracksuperseries.com.

There are just two shows on today's streaming schedule. There is action from Lernerville over on Speed Sport and 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. Make sure to like, subscribe, and comment.

Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!