DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Dam project threatens future of Perris Auto Speedway | Daily 9-6-2022
Did you know that Carson Macedo only had a 7% chance of winning the Outlaw show last night? We'll discuss that, plus we've got Silver Crown and ARCA results and we'll get you up to speed on the situation at Perris Auto Speedway in California. Let's go!
It's Tuesday, September 6th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
I know a lot of you are back to the real world today after having Monday off for Labor Day. Hopefully those hangovers aren't too bad today as you get through the work day.
We'll start with the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars at Grays Harbor last night. Carson Macedo ended up dominating the feature from the pole, leading all 30 laps and scoring his series best 11th win on the season. He's also got 28 total career Outlaw wins, which is good enough right now for 23rd all time. Not bad for a 26 year old driver. When you look at the box score for last night's racing, you see Macedo wins, led all 30 laps from the pole, seems a bit ho-hum. But actually, the win last night for the JJR 41 was incredibly improbable. If you read the post race release from the series, they mentioned that Macedo was just the second driver on the season to win a feature after starting in the third row of his heat race, and he's just the third driver in 2022 to win after qualifying outside the top ten. If you are a member of DIRTRACKR Plus over at dirtrackr.com, you have access to this information all the time, but this falls under the "wins by qualifying spot" stat. World of Outlaws heat races start straight up by qualifying, so getting in a fast lap during time trials is vital to success if you want to run up front. You hear the drivers talk about it, I've talked about, but here are some numbers to really quantify how important it is to be fast in qualifying. Over the last 426 Outlaw races, 65% of them have been won by drivers qualifying in the top five. If you push it out to the top ten, 88% of wins are accounted for. Macedo went 13th fastest last night in time trials, so that means he had about a 7% chance of winning the feature, based on past results. If this was Las Vegas, you could have probably gotten pretty good odds that Macedo wasn't going to win. But that's why we run the races. A fifth to first run in his heat race flipped the night for Macedo, and he goes on to the win. Both he and David Gravel made ground on points leader Brad Sweet, but not a lot. Macedo earned the win, Gravel was second, Jacob Allen was third, but Sweet ended up fourth. So headed to Silver Dollar and the Gold Cup later this week, it's 72 back to Gravel and 98 to Macedo. Sheldon Haudenschild had his nine race top streak busted last night with mechanical problems that left him with a 23rd place result. Logan Schuchart's up and down year continued last night as well. Engine issues forced the 1S out early and he ended up 22nd. So three nights at Gold Cup start Thursday. Sounds like a big field is coming, and Saturday pays $25,000 to win.
In other open wheel racing from Monday, Logan Seavey capitalized on issues for leaders Shane Cockrum and CJ Leary to earn the Ted Horn 100 victory at Du Quoin with the USAC Silver Crown Series. Cockrum ran out fuel with 13 laps to go, and then Leary's car broke a driveline while leading with seven to go. That promoted Seavey to the lead, and he paced the field for the final seven laps to score his second win of the year. Only seven of the 30 cars were running at the end, and Cockrum battled back to finish second, although he was nearly a full lap behind Seavey. Just three events remain on the Silver Crown calendar for 2022, two dirt races, at Eldora and Springfield, and the finale at Lucas Oil Raceway Park on the pavement in October. Kody Swanson maintains a pretty sizeable points lead.
Also at Du Quoin yesterday was the ARCA race which ended up being shortened because of rain. At the end, it was late model driver Ryan Unzicker holding off Jesse Love to score the win. It was Unzicker's second career ARCA win on the dirt, and with his car owner getting ready to close up shop at the end of the season, it sounded like it may be the last time we see Unzicker race with the series.
At Boone Speedway last night, Cory Dumpert topped the late model feature for the IMCA Super Nationals. Dumpert took the lead from Dean Abbey with ten laps left and bagged the $3000 win. The IMCA Super Nationals continue all week at Boone with a bunch of the IMCA divisions competing.
We've been talking about race tracks a lot lately on this show because of the pending sale of Grandview and the things we discovered about Copart and auto salvage businesses buying race track property. I don't know how locked in you guys are to the California dirt racing scene, but there has been an ongoing situation around the Perris Auto Speedway and I thought we'd dive in a bit today to get you guys up to speed. A lot of the west coast racing social media accounts, including those for the track and some of the USAC series have been posting #saveperris. In this case, the track itself isn't necessarily in danger of closing or being sold, but instead could be affected in the future by a massive construction project. Perris Auto Speedway is part of the Southern California Fair and Events Center, and the entire property is near the Perris Dam and the Lake Perris reservoir, that provides water for 27 million people in the state. The dam was built in the 1970s but has been undergoing retrofitting to strengthen the dam's foundation and infrastructure to make it less vulnerable to damage from earthquakes. The final phase of the project is scheduled to start soon and will include building an emergency release channel that will allow the water level of the dam to be lowered safely in a storm. Part of the channel will cut across the fairgrounds property, and owners of the race track, nearby events center, and concessions company are suing the California Department of Water Resources. They are concerned about the impacts on the facility, including parking and congestion from construction traffic. Besides the weekly racing at Perris, the facility also regularly hosts rodeos and live music events. All of those could be impacted by the project. The business operators of the events center and race track also alledge that local inspectors have been more difficult to please since they brought the suit, and have spent tens of thousands of dollars to resolve issues. All the way around, this sounds like a messy situation that could drag on for a while between the lawsuit and the construction project itself. Besides the weekly racing at Perris, they also host the World of Outlaws during their spring west coast swing, and USAC will be there in November for the Oval Nationals. If you want more information, you can find resources at perrisautospeedway.com
The streaming schedule has three shows on it today. The IMCA Super Nationals from Boone Speedway are on Speed Sport, Fast Four has outlaw karts from Cycleland Speedway, 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.
Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!