DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Why does nobody seem to be talking about the big northeast modified races coming up? | Daily 9-14-2022
Coming up we'll talk late models at Fairbury and stickmen complaints. We've got more droop rule news, and we'll talk about why things in the northeast seem so, I don't know, bleh. Let's go!
It's Wednesday, September 14th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Last night at Fairbury the FloRacing Night in America late models were back after an extended summer break. They ended up with 42 cars, which is a very nice field for a Tuesday night super late model race. Fairbury always provides good racing, and last night's feature was solid. It could have been awesome, but we'll get to that in a moment. Dennis Erb Jr. led the field to green from the pole, and he and Bobby Pierce battled early on, with the two trading the lead back and forth. Pierce was able to get away a bit on lap 13 in traffic and then he maintained the lead down the stretch. Towards the end, with Pierce on the bottom, Frank Heckenast Jr. got the topside rolling, and got all the way to second. He looked like he'd have a decent chance at a late move on Pierce, but coming to the white, the 32 flipped lanes, moving to the top, and it blocked Heckenast's progress. So Pierce got away for the $22,000 win, with Frank Jr. second, Shannon Babb third, and a big charge from Ricky Thornton Jr., who went 22nd to fourth. With four races still to go this season, Brandon Sheppard maintains the Flo series points lead by a fairly wide margin over Mike Marlar. Pierce, RTJ, and Hudson O'Neal complete the top five. The series is back in two weeks at Atomic Speedway in Ohio.
Now back to the finish being solid, but not great. Pierce ended up jumping to the high side late because of signals from his dad Bob. Stickmen and signaling is something we've talked about in the past on this show, and it definitely affected the outcome of last night's racing. There were a smattering of social media posts about it afterwards, and it's pretty clear that without the signal, we may have seen a different ending. Pierce may have won it anyway, but it would have been nice to see them fight it out to the end, instead of Pierce moving up thanks to the communication from his dad. On some level, I feel like it would be impossible to ban signaling or the communication completely. We'd have to have signal police. But is a shame when we are robbed of a good finish because of it. When we talked about this a little over a year ago, the reactions from my audience were pretty mixed on the subject, but I'm wondering if your opinion has changed. Do the tracks and series need to do more to squash it, or not? Let me know how you feel.
Before we move on, I know there have been some in my international audience who wanted to get some DIRTRACKR merch. I finally went down that rabbit hole and figured out all of the shipping stuff. So if you are in Canada, Australia, or New Zealand, you can now place orders at shop.dirtrackr.com for shirts and decals. I can't do free shipping like I do for US orders, but to help keep costs down as much as possible, I've added the cheapest shipping options available, as it can be pretty pricey to send things across borders. Also, I went ahead and ordered a very small round of hats, so I should have those in hand soon if you're interested. For everything else, you can order right now at shop.dirtrackr.com.
Also in action last night was the ASCS National Tour. They took on the Clay County Fair Speedway and in the main event it was all Tim Crawley. He started outside front row and led all 25 laps to score his third national tour win of the season. The track took rubber late and Crawley was able to keep Blake Hahn at bay in the final laps. The elder Crawley had been in the mix for the ASCS championship battle into the summer, but some tough finishes lately, including a 20th at Caney Valley and multiple other results outside the top ten have dropped him to fourth. With 10 race nights still to go, Blake Hahn is out front with an 88 point lead over Wayne Johnson. Everyone else is triple digits back. Barring some tough luck for Hahn towards the end, it feels like he's in a pretty good position to snag his second consecutive title. The ASCS teams are off today, but they start a big three race weekend tomorrow night at Lucas Oil Speedway for the Jesse Hockett/Daniel McMillin Memorial. Saturday's feature pays $10,000 to the winner, and the ASCS will be joined all three nights by the POWRi WAR Sprint Cars. All three nights are live on Flo, and if you're a sprint car fan, both winged and non-wing, this is always a fun weekend to check out.
If you want some big time late model racing tonight, the Iron-Man Series is headed for Volunteer Speedway in Tennessee. Michael Chilton is the Iron-Main points leader, and you can watch the action live over on XR Plus. And speaking of XR, the droop rule has been often talked about this season, but as of yesterday, the XR Super Series will no longer enforce said rule. The move is effective immediately, and will mean the next events at Kokomo, which take place early next week, will be the first races without the checks happening. Most of the major dirt late model racing series adopted the droop rule for 2022, and XR becomes one of, if not the first to drop it again. There are those in the fan base who swear the droop rule has hurt the racing this season, but I don't believe that's true, and we talked about it back on August 22nd. There are plenty of data points to back up my position, and the idea that there has been less passing is just not true. We'll see if it makes any real difference for these remaining XR nights, but I don't honestly care either way if there is a droop rule. If the officials say it helps safety, cool, but I don't expect the racing to change a whole lot without it.
One more topic for you today, and that is the current state of things around the big modified racing in the northeast. The Fonda 200 is this weekend for the Short Track Super Series, which pays $53,000 to win. And we've got Super Dirt Week at Oswego quickly approaching, with the track build beginning today. But there seems to be some question about the hype and excitement around these events, and the two series. There is even currently a thread in the forum over at Dirt Track Digest about the lack of excitement around the 50th Super Dirt Week approaching. Where do you stand on the northeast racing scene? It's obviously very regional, but streaming has made it much more accessible for people outside the northeast to watch the Super DIRTcar Series and Short Track Super Series. Are these shows you tune into regularly, or are you more interested in the big late model and sprint car shows? The two modified groups have been at odds for some time, and it's definitely created some splintering among tracks, the fans, and competitors. Are we just at a point where having two series up there is going to keep holding everything back? There are only so many fans, so many tracks, and so many drivers, so there will be plenty of weekends where events will suffer. Super Dirt Week is an interesting situation on it's own, with it having moved several years ago from the now demolished fairgrounds mile to Oswego, which is a temporary dirt track for that week. People hate change, and no matter where Super Dirt Week ended up, folks were going to complain. And I know the mile created some interesting shows, but I feel like a lot of those 200s at Syracuse were just complete snoozefests. World Racing Group was never going to have an easy time moving that event elsewhere, and some track issues at Oswego have not aided in their quest. I have more questions than answers about this specific topic, but to me and others I know, things feel off and a bit down right now, and I'm not sure how we make it better. Let me know your thoughts in the comments or on social media.
On the dirt racing podcast front, Winged Nation has Tyler Burnett this week, LoudPedal has Daison Pursley, Passing Points has Hank Davis, Quicktime has Jake Bubak, TJSlideways has Mike Shaw, and there are new episodes of the Dirt Reporters, the Dirt Nerds, and Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks. If you want to find these episodes and more, head over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
There are five shows on the streaming schedule today. DIRTVision has micros from Millbridge, Speed Sport has WISSOTA action from I-94 and IMCA racing from Clay County. XR Plus has the Iron-Man late models from Volunteer 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 Wednesday.
Thanks everybody for tuning in, I'll see you tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily!