DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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The story of Ricky Weiss' World 100 DQ, and more from a crown jewel dirt racing weekend | Daily 9-12-2022
Big weekend crown jewel wins for Jonathan Davenport, Anthony Macri, and Jacob Allen, plus Ricky Weiss says you gotta jack it up slower. Let's go!
It's Monday, September 12th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
It was a crown jewel kinda weekend around dirt racing and we'll kick this Monday show off with the World 100 at Eldora. Two guys have basically dominated the big shows at the house that Earl built over the last few seasons, and Saturday night's main event was no different. Both Jonathan Davenport and Brandon Overton led laps in the 52nd running of the World 100, but on a restart following a lap 54 caution for Garrett Smith, Davenport slid up in front of the 76 and never gave up the lead from there. It was hard to tell if there was contact between the two as JD tried to clear Big Sexy, but JD made sure to address the move in his post race interview on the stage, saying he thought he left enough room. Either way though, the 49 was definitely the fastest car yet again, and Overton had nothing for him in the closing stages. Behind Davenport at the end, Overton finished second, Chris Madden third, Tim McCreadie fourth, and Ricky Thornton Jr. was fifth. The $55,000 win was Davenport's fifth overall victory in the World 100, which leaves him just one shy of Billy Moyer's record six globe trophies. A couple of other stats for you following Saturday's show. Tim McCreadie now has 12 straight top ten finishes in Eldora prelims and main events. He trails only Overton and Davenport in average feature finish. Also, there was a Nick Hoffman tweet over the weekend about heat race winners always starting up front. After Saturday night, here is what the numbers tell us about heat races. Over the last 23 programs, there have been 106 heat races. 69 have been won from the front row, that's 65%. 103 of 106 have been won from the first two rows, so 97%. We've also had three wins from sixth, with two coming from Saturday night. Jimmy Owens went sixth to the win in heat five, and Davenport did the same in heat six. Brian Shirley made the same charge in a Dream prelim show back in June this year. So as you probably could have already guessed, it's pretty damn important to start up front in your heat at Eldora.
Another topic from the World 100 weekend was Ricky Weiss getting the DQ from the feature win on Friday night. He started third, and led the final 10 laps to score the victory. He cleared the scales, and went to the stage and celebrated. And then afterwards, his car failed tech after being outside the tolerance for the droop check. The DQ then gave the win to Bobby Pierce, who had finished second at the checkered. Weiss told Kevin Kovac that he felt like they got robbed, and his team decided to not race at all on Saturday. They were pretty far down the points list and scheduled to start 14th in heat four. That's a pretty sizeable hole to dig out of in a short heat race and B-Main. Some were critical though of Weiss deciding to call it quits for the weekend. Kenny Kenneda, who is the Outlaws' tech director was in charge of the inspection, and he said they measured Weiss' car four times, and moved the car around a bit to try and help, but each time it was over an inch outside the tolerance. Your opinion about the situation is probably going to be different depending on where your loyalties lie, but Weiss took to social media to complain further. His argument was that the officials basically jacked the car up too quickly during the check, and that if they would have jacked it slower, it would have been legal. That feels like a pretty thin excuse to me. If your car is only legal when you softly massage the jack handle, maybe you need to do a better job next time. I don't remember seeing anywhere in the rule that officials agreed to only jack the car up at a certain speed. On the flip side, I don't like that they waited until after the victory lane stage to do the check. Roll the car across the scales, then droop check before all the winner stuff. Allow the fans to celebrate the actual winner, and don't give them a check with someone else's name crossed out. Looking ahead, the Outlaws are off for another week, while Lucas is headed to Knoxville for the Late Model Nationals. Another $50 grand is up for grabs later this week.
The other big payday up for grabs this weekend was the $60,000 Tuscarora 50 for the All Stars at Port Royal. After winning earlier in the week on Thursday, Anthony Macri hard charged through the field on Saturday night to score his first ever Tusky 50 win. Macri tangled with Brian Brown during his heat race and had to fall back on his guaranteed feature starting position. He rolled off 19th, but by the fuel stop, he was already seventh. Danny Dietrich led through half way, but then Logan Wagner took over out front. Macri was still on the move though, and he was to second by lap 12, and to the lead with 10 to go. He led the rest of the way to score the big victory. I have nearly four years worth of All Star races in the dirtrackr.com analytics database, and Macri's 19th to the win charge is the biggest for any All Star winner in that span. Brent Marks and Dietrich rounded out the night's podium. It was a crazy ass weekend though with crashes and wild stuff happening. Mike Wagner went for a big ride on Friday and took out part of the wall in turn one and two. Saturday, Trent Sheaffer went over the front stretch infield wall and ended up lightly hitting the victory lane stage. At the fuel stop, Logan Wagner's team had to remove a shock from his top wing cap that was stabbed in from someone's car. And there was also a massive crash and fire for Dylan Cisney. Cisney tangled with Freddie Rahmer and Zeb Wise and his car caught fire in the process. The safety crew was there pretty quickly, but it was actually Danny Dietrich and Logan Wagner who got out of their cars and ran into the situation to help put Cisney out from the flames. It was a wild scene, but Cisney was okay. He posted to social media that he's banged up and sore, but doesn't have any burns. A couple of other notes from the weekend, we probably won't see Parker Price Miller back behind the wheel this season. He told Tyler Burnett and FloRacing that he needs more time to heal, and that maybe World Finals could be in play, but most likely not. In the meantime, Cory Eliason was back in the McGhee 11. And Macri went to victory lane this weekend with a different crew chief on the wrenches. We know Bernie Stuebgen had been helping, but at Port Royal it was Ryan Hand leading the way. The series is sticking around Pennsylvania this week with a Friday stop at Williams Grove, and the Dirt Classic at Lincoln happening Saturday.
Out in California at the Gold Cup, Jacob Allen continued his incredible 2022 season with the biggest score yet of his career. He led laps and ended up finishing second on Friday night to Carson Macedo, but a Saturday night dash win put him on the pole for the $25,000 to win Gold Cup finale. Once green, he was almost untouchable out front. Late in the race though, his teammate Logan Schuchart ran him down and the race was on at the white flag. Out of turn four coming to the finish, the leaders had lap cars in front, and Allen actually hit the front stretch wall. But he was able to maintain just enough speed to beat Schuchart by five hundredths of a second at the line. In his victory lane interview, he told Chase Raudman that he had to wait for race director Mike Hess to announce the winner over the driver radio because he didn't know if he'd won or not. It was an incredible scene though, with Jacob scoring his biggest win and his teammate in Schuchart joining him for the celebrations. It was Allen's fifth win of the year, and fourth full Outlaw show win. The other being his Knoxville prelim night. The Shark Racing driver just continues to show that he's a different guy this year, and he's now capable of winning any night out. Only Carson Macedo, Brad Sweet, Sheldon Haudenschild, and David Gravel have led more laps this season than he has. At the end of Saturday's feature, Macedo, Sheldon, and Sweet completed the top five. Leaving the weekend there were no changes in the Outlaw standings. Thursday and Friday were split fields, so no points were available, and Saturday was show-up points only. The series does have one more week in California, with the Tom Tarlton Classic at Hanford coming up Friday. They were supposed to also race on Saturday at Placerville, but that event has been cancelled. The facility is being used for local firefighting operations, so no racing on Saturday night.
In non-wing action, we had both the USAC midgets and Xtreme Outlaw sprint cars racing. The USAC midgets took on Sweet Springs Motorsports Complex for two nights. Friday Brenham Crouch led the first 11 laps from the pole, but then it was all Cannon McIntosh from there. He topped Crouch and Zach Daum at the end of a feature that went caution free. It actually is possible for a midget race to not have cautions! On Saturday night, we had four different leaders in Cade Lewis, Zach Daum, Daison Pursley, and Buddy Kofoid. We had the classic high/low battle late in the race, with Buddy up top and Daum down low. Buddy prevailed late though and grabbed his ninth win of the season and third in four races. Pursley and Daum completed the podium. The championship lead for Buddy is now 132 over Justin Grant.
The Xtreme Sprint Cars had weekend stops at Jacksonville and Spoon River and it was a Jake Swanson weekend sweep. He got by Alex Bright late in the race on Friday night to score the victory, and Saturday at Spoon River he took control on lap four and nobody could catch him from there. Swanson has actually now won three straight with the series. We've had six drivers run every race so far in 2022, and Shane Cockrum is the points leader right now over Alex Bright. Swanson, Matt Westfall, Mario Clouser, and Wesley Smith are the rest of that top six. There were previously only two race nights left in the season for this series, but they did add two nights at Devil's Bowl to the calendar, so the season will end on October 29th in Texas.
Other weekend late model winners included Don Shaw bagging $9200 in WISSOTA action at River Cities, Jason Covert was a super late model winner at Port Royal, Alex Ferree bagged $5 grand at Raceway 7 in Ohio, and Logan Roberson won the RUSH show at Canandaigua. Don't forget also this week, the FloRacing Night in America Series is back after their summer break. They take on Fairbury tomorrow night for $22,000 to win.
Other weekend open wheel winners included Trey Marcham and Kyle Jones in POWRi West Midget action, Seth Bergman was an ASCS winner at Caney Valley, and British driver Ryan Harrison won the USCS sprint car show at Travelers Rest.
There are two items on the streaming schedule today. DIRTVision and YouTube have the iRacing World of Outlaws late models at 9PM ET. You can watch those free. There is also 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.
Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!