DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
Dirt racing news, results, discussion, analytics. Sprint cars, late models, modifieds, you name it. From national series, to top local shows. Brought to you five days a week. Email the show at info@dirtrackr.com.
They crashed while lining up for the B-Main? Plus Garrett Smith's crown jewel, Outlaw points update | Daily 10-17-2022
Garrett Smith is a 19 year old crown jewel winner, the Outlaw points battle tightened, sort of. Rico Abreu swept in California, and we had a sprint car crash before a race even started. Let's go.
It's Monday, October 17th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series season closed out over the weekend with the Dirt Track World Championship at Portsmouth Raceway Park. Tim McCreadie was crowned series champion for the second straight year. Six wins, 28 top fives, and 45 top tens in 54 races was more than enough to take down the title, with the final points margin back to Brandon Sheppard being 265. The last three seasons, if you can get your average finish with the series into the sixes, you'll have a shot. McCreadie was 6.1 last year, 6.2 this season, and Jimmy Owens was 6.8 in 2020. After McCreadie blew his engine at Knoxville back on September 18th and finished 25th, the door was maybe slightly open for Sheppard, but TMac closed strong over the final five nights. Two wins, four top fives, and a sixth got the job done. Congrats to McCreadie and his Paylor Motorsports team. Garrett Alberson was the rookie of the year, topping Daulton Wilson, Spencer Hughes, and Ross Robinson. As for Saturday night's race, we will all obviously remember the first win for 19 year old Garrett Smith, but outside of that, this one was really notable for anything else. The entire race was locked down on the bottom, with passing difficult. And as you could have guessed early on, tires became a problem late in the race. A bunch of guys had tire issues, some even with multiple flats. Smith was able to survive and save enough tire to get to the end. McCreadie and Mike Marlar rounded out the podium. In his previous 25 Lucas appearances, Smith's best finish was a 6th at Huset's back in July. He did lead laps and finish second with the Outlaws at World Finals in 2021. With passing tough all weekend, that quick time on Friday night ended up being super important. Definitely a win I did not see coming, and I'm not sure anyone else did either. And this is one of those races where the numbers don't really paint the picture. We had 90 total position changes, with Jonathan Davenport going 20th to sixth to earn hard charger, but all the passing was really because of the tire problems. Definitely a ho-hum way to end the year for Lucas. Behind McCreadie and Sheppard in the standings, Ricky Thornton Jr. ended up third, Hudson O'Neal fourth, and Earl Pearson Jr. was fifth. With Lucas done now, we've still got a few Outlaw shows left, including World Finals. There are also some Flo and XR races left, among a few other bigger late model regional shows.
Moving over to the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series, the gap between the top two in the standings got smaller for the second straight week, with David Gravel winning Friday night at I-80 and finishing a spot ahead of leader Brad Sweet on Saturday at Lakeside. With the postponed National Open and three nights at World Finals still to go, the gap is now 54, down from 66 before the weekend, and down from 94 before Port Royal. I told you back on Friday that Gravel needed to average beating Sweet by five and a half spots per night the rest of the way to pull even, and while he did make up ground, it wasn't enough. The narrative you'll continue to hear is that things are tighter, and they are, but it gets harder as the nights tick off. So taking 12 points out of the lead was good, but his task is actually tougher now. 54 points is 27 spots, but over four races that means he now has to top Sweet by 6.75 positions per night. Gravel is good at the Grove, but that place isn't such a problem for Sweet anymore. And Gravel has won five times in recent seasons at Charlotte, but the Big Cat has 11 top tens in 14 races. This is still very much in Sweet's control, and it will probably take a crazy run to the end for Gravel to really have a shot. Looking at this past weekend specifically, Gravel did win Friday at I-80 in the final ever World of Outlaws race there. There was a weird situation before the B-Main where we had cars wrecked while they were lining up for the race. Tim Estenson checked up in front of Matt Juhl and Zack Hampton, and Hampton ended up going for a tumble. Juhl was also out of the race with a busted up front end. You don't see guys crash during that run back to the pace truck very often, but with the way things go sometimes, it's probably a miracle it doesn't happen more. On Saturday night a Lakeside, we had great racing between Gio Scelzi and Logan Schuchart, but James McFadden got to the lead with 11 to go and bagged his first Outlaw win of 2022. It was the 99th series win for Roth Motorsports, and McFadden is the 15th Roth driver to win an Outlaw show. You've got to wonder if Roth sacking Kerry Madsen earlier in the week was maybe a little extra motivation for JMac. Saturday was also the Dennis Roth Classic out in California. I had several comments on Friday's show about McFadden's future in that car, so hopefully this takes a little of that pressure off. The Outlaws are at the Grove on Saturday this week for the $75,000 National Open.
Speaking of California, great racing Friday and Saturday out there with the NARC 410s. Friday at Hanford we had Rico Abreu, Dominic Scelzi, Justin Sanders and Corey Day all in the mix. Guys were throwing sliders and really battling all the way to the end. Rico ended up coming out on top. And the fun continued Saturday at Tulare. Dominic Scelzi was out front for most of the race while Day and Rico battled behind him, but Rico got by Scelzi late to sweep the weekend. We hadn't seen Rico win a NARC show since 2019. And even though he didn't get a win, it was a good weekend for Scelzi. He extended his points lead over Willie Croft, and there are only two races left in the season.
The other big money on the line over the weekend was with the Short Track Super Series at Port Royal. $50,000 to win on Saturday night, and with the season he's had so far, Stewart Friesen really needed that one. The problem though, was he ran into a white hot Matt Sheppard. Both drivers started way down the order, with Sheppard from 11th and Friesen from 24th. The Halmar 44 was in control late in the 75 lapper, but his tires started to fade and Sheppard was there. The 9S took the lead on the white flag lap and drove on to the win. So Super Dirt Week and Port Royal in back-to-back weeks, just adds to Sheppard's incredible year that will see him win all three Short Track Super Series championships and the Super DIRTcar Series title. The Short Track Super Series is back this coming Friday night at Orange County Fair Speedway.
The inaugural season for the Xtreme Outlaw Midgets is over now and Zach Daum was able to lock down the first ever series championship. It turned out to be an adventure though. He won last Thursday night at Port City, but when things moved over to I-44 Riverside, bad luck almost ruined it. They had engine issues on Friday, with Daum eventually finishing 12th after a trip to the work area. For Saturday, his teammate Ethan Mitchell jumped in a Dave Mac Dalby car, because they took the engine out of Mitchell's car and put it in Daum's after the Friday problems. That team famously runs Honda power which has been unreliable at times. In the Saturday show, Daum was running away with the win in his heat when his engine let go in a big way on the final lap. From there, it was a mad scramble to get a car ready for him, as the Bundy Built team was out of bullets. Chad Boat rolled one of his backup cars out of the trailer, and guys from several teams, including CBI, Dave Mac, and others thrashed to get it put together in time for the feature. Daum took a provisional and needed to finish 14th or better to guarantee the title, and he ended up doing just that. A ninth place finish locked down the championship, topping Bryant Wiedeman and Brenham Crouch. Crouch wrapped up the POWRi National Midget championship. As for the race winners, Cannon McIntosh made it nine winners in nine races on Friday night, while Jade Avedisian became the first repeat winner of the season, topping the field on Saturday. She nearly threw it away with late contact with the wall, but kept it together and fought off a challenge on the final lap from Wiedeman. And kudos to Wiedeman for racing her hard but clean in a situation where he absolutely needed the win to try and get the title. The Xtreme Sprint Car Series closes out their year in a few weeks at Devil's Bowl.
Other weekend open wheel winners included Shane Cockrum in the Bettenhausen 100 for the Silver Crown Series. Kaylee Bryson made history in that one by being the first woman driver to ever start on the front row of a Silver Crown race, and the first woman to ever lead laps in a Silver Crown show. She eventually led 72 of the 100 circuits, but had to settle for fifth at the end. Headed to the finale this week at IRP, Logan Seavey has just three points on Kody Swanson for the Silver Crown championship. Blake Hahn swept the ASCS weekend at Devil's Bowl and will roll to his second straight series title with just two race nights remaining. Justin Whittall won at Port Royal on Friday, Danny Dietrich was the winner at Lincoln, and Robert Ballou won the Kokomo Klash.
Other weekend late model winners included Trevor Gundaker and Logan Martin with the MLRA at Tri-City, Carson Ferguson won the $10,000 Southern Nationals race at Swainsboro, and Mark Whitener was a $10,000 crate winner at Golden Isles.
The streaming schedule is quiet today with just FloRacing 24/7 playing. 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. 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!