DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Nick Hoffman back winning after crash, Jimmie Johnson getting in Alex Bowman's sprint car | Daily 9-27-2022

Today we are talking Nick Hoffman back in victory lane, the High Limit sprint cars at Wayne County, and this week is DIRTRACKR's third birthday. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, September 27th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

It was a little more than three weeks ago that modified racer Nick Hoffman along with his dad Darrell and crew guy Mason were involved in a highway incident that left all three hurt, including Hoffman with head injuries and his dad with a broken back. The crash with their toter home occurred in Kentucky as they were on their way to race three nights in Illinois at Farmer City, Fairbury, and Spoon River. The Hoffmans spent several days in the hospital, including some time in the ICU, but all three, including Mason have since returned home to heal. You figured as soon as he was able, Nick would be back behind the wheel, especially after he tweeted just a few days after the crash that he'd asked doctors if he could race the following weekend, and they told him no. Over this past weekend though, Hoffman did get back to racing, which was a victory in and of itself. He went to Peoria to take on the Mike Chasteen Memorial, and in true Nick Hoffman fashion, just went ahead and swept the night, going quick time in qualifying, winning his heat, and taking the $4000 to win feature over Allen Weisser. Hoffman posted to Instagram on Sunday some photos of the crashed truck and of his car after the win. He said he'll still need some work to get his jaw fixed, but that his head feels good and he doesn't have any concussion symptoms. It's pretty wild to see the photos of the toter and know how crazy things were there for a few days and think that Nick is already back to racing and to winning. And I'm sure he isn't done yet for the year. Hoffman is currently fourth in the UMP Modified National standings behind Mike Harrison, Derek Losh, and Tyler Nicely. He has an incredible 22 wins in 33 races.

Alright, I know we are getting a little bit later into the season, but there is still quite a bit of dirt racing happening this week, and things start tonight with the High Limit Sprint Car Series at Wayne County Speedway in Ohio. This second High Limit show was added just a few weeks back and they are calling this one Sheldon Haudenschild's High Limit Buckeye Brawl. The race was originally $22,000 to win, but it has been boosted to $32,000 to win by the Durst family. It also pays $1000 to start. If you aren't aware, the High Limit Series is owned by Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet and will be like the sprint car version of the FloRacing Night in America Late Model Series. Things will get going for real in 2023, but they are doing a few shows this year to get things rolling. They debuted back on August 16th at Lincoln Park Speedway where Buddy Kofoid was the winner over Justin Sanders and Cory Eliason. Just like tonight, big money, midweek shows will be the name of the game. It sounds like they will have a pretty big field tonight, maybe north of 40 cars in attendance. Remember that no Outlaw drivers will be allowed to run, but the field will still be stacked. Expect names like Kyle Larson, Tyler Courtney, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Ryan Timms, Aaron Reutzel, Justin Peck, Justin Sanders, Buddy Kofoid, Cole Macedo, Rico Abreu, Brian Brown, Gio Scelzi, Anthony Macri and a lot more. Wayne County is not a regular stop for the Outlaws, with just one race in the past six seasons. It is on the All Star schedule though, so we can get a good idea of who might be fast tonight. Justin Peck and Hunter Schuerenberg already have wins there this season. Other past winners include Kyle Larson, Cap Henry, Buddy Kofoid, and Aaron Reutzel. The top five drivers in average finish in those All Star shows are Larson, Rico, Cale Thomas, Henry, and Zeb Wise. If I remember correctly, the format should be similar to what the Outlaws use. They will qualify, then run heats lined straight up by qualifying. With 35 cars at Lincoln Park, they took five from heats to the feature, with the top two going to the dash. They then transferred four from the B-Main. If they get into the 40s tonight, they may also run a C-Main. If you are headed to the track, grandstands open today at 4PM, with hot laps scheduled for 6:15. It doesn't appear as though there is any support division tonight, so the program should move along. If you want to watch it live from the couch, you can do that over on FloRacing.

In some other sprint car shenanigans today, it appears as though Jimmie Johnson is getting some laps in Alex Bowman's sprint car. Jimmie announced this week he will not continue racing full time in 2023, instead going the Brent Marks/Jonathan Davenport pick and choose route. I'd guess maybe some sports car stuff, maybe the Indy 500, etc. Bowman posted a photo of Jimmie in the car at what appears to be Carolina Speedway here near Charlotte. It would be pretty cool to see Jimmie make some dirt racing starts. I actually waited to record today's show until the tweet dropped, just in case something crazy was happening like Jimmie running tonight at Wayne County.

Things got real reckless with the iRacing World of Outlaws Late Models last night at the virtual Volusia Speedway Park. We are in the final stretch, and Evan Seay is headed to the championship, but there are still some things to decide, including the relegation drivers and the race wins. Seay has been able to pull away from his teammate Blake Matjoulis in recent weeks, and Matjoulis was again playing catch up last night having to fight his way into the feature from a B-Main yet again. Seay started second and chased pole sitter Damian Kiefer in the early stages. Kendal Tucker started on row two and he got into the mix, and actually took the lead on lap 17. Things settled out for a while, but it got crazy late. Tucker and Seay battled pretty hard in the closing laps, there were sliders, some contact, but eventually Seay was able to get the lead. On the final lap, Tucker used Seay up on down the backstretch and got back out front. Seay didn't get wrecked, but Tucker had him crossed up quite a bit. Then in the final two corners, Seay went full send and wiped Tucker out coming to the checkered. A hard charging Matjoulis tried to steal the win, but Seay beat him back to the line by seven thousandths of a second. It was a wild sequence, and one I think probably deserved a second look from officials. I get that Seay was mad for being used up, but he didn't even try to hide his intent into the final corner. Either way, Seay will still win the title, and the series is headed to the Dirt Track at Charlotte next Monday night for the finale. You can watch it live at 9PM ET for free on YouTube and DIRTVision.

Before we shut it down for the day, I try and keep you guys updated periodically on the progress of this DIRTRACKR project as we go along. It was this week three years ago that I launched DIRTRACKR with just the website, in a smaller form than what we have today. This whole thing started out as my final project for a computer science class. At this point, with as strongly as the show has been growing, the website has almost become secondary. It does about 2000 visits a week, and is still my main resource for show research. The analytics section at dirtrackr.com continues to grow as we now track eight series, one special event, and one race track's special events. As of today there are 1,336 races in the database along with thousands of driver pages, and all the stats you can handle. And that includes the premium DIRTRACKR Plus service that has a bunch of subscribers, honestly more than I thought it would have. As for the shows, we are closing in on 9000 YouTube subscribers, and we've got probably another 2000 who subscribe to the podcast across platforms. We've now done 659 Daily episodes and another 64 Conversations shows. This month of September has blown any previous month's plays and views out of the water, and with several days still to go we are already at nearly 230,000 for the month. That's nearly 60,000 more than any previous month. We've had nearly 100,000 people tune into an episode over the past three plus weeks. Insane. We are also now at over 2.1 million total plays for the life of the show, with 1.2 million of those plays happening just this year. The growth just keeps on going and it's incredible to have all of you tuned in regularly. I had someone ask me recently if I accepted sponsors and partners for DIRTRACKR, and the answer is of course yes. I'm not actively pursuing anything like that, and I don't normally talk about this publicly, but if you or someone you know is interested in getting involved here, I'm certainly always open to talk. My DMs are open, and you can email me at info@dirtrackr.com. So three years in, hopefully many more to come. I appreciate everyone that has come along for the journey so far.

There are two items on the streaming schedule today, both of them on FloRacing. There is the aforementioned High Limit Series show at Wayne County, plus Flo 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. Please hit that like button, and subscribe to the show if you don't already.

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