DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Devin Moran to Double Down official; plus comparing Moran and Hudson O'Neal as prospects | Daily 10-25-2022
Devin Moran has a new ride for 2023, and we've got the details. Plus, we'll compare Moran and Hudson O'Neal as prospects, and I've got a few other dirt racing odds and ends for you today. Let's go!
It's Tuesday, October 25th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
It was on this show exactly one week ago that we were talking about Devin Moran parting ways with car owner Tye Twarog, and today we are talking about Moran's new team. As many expected, it was announced last night that Moran will join Double Down Motorsports for 2023, and fill the void left by the departing Hudson O'Neal. The team will run full time with the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series next season, where they finished fourth in the standings this year with O'Neal. It means that Moran is back on a national tour full time for the first time since 2020. That year he ended up eighth in the standings with Lucas. Moran was also a World of Outlaws full timer in 2017 and 2018. The team will switch from Rocket chassis to Longhorns to accomodate Moran's preference, and they will relocate from their shop in Tennessee, to the Moran's in Ohio. The car will also most likely switch from the number 71 to the 99m. The release says they are still working on some details, including who will crew chief the car, but they've got some time to figure that out. Moran and Double Down will debut their new partnership at Speedweeks in early 2023. A few other interesting notes from the release are that team owner Roger Sellers is going to lease his Tennessee shop to Earl Pearson Jr. and the Papich team. Also, Sellers considered shutting down the team completely, but took some time to evaluate and decided to keep going with Moran in the seat.
So there's the news item and the details, but let's dive into this a little bit more. If you are a super late model car owner, are you picking Hudson O'Neal right now, like Mark Richards did for the Rocket house car, or Devin Moran? They two young drivers are an interesting comparison, because they have so much in common. Both have hall of fame fathers and have been around the sport their entire lives. Both have won a bunch of races, and both have big futures ahead of them. We know they can both compete on the national stage and for championships. O'Neal was second with Lucas last year, and fourth this season. And I mentioned Moran's top five points finishes with the Outlaws. If you want to look at big race wins, they each have a few. Moran's resume includes the Prairie Dirt Classic victory in 2018 and a $25,000 score with the Outlaws at Bristol in 2021. O'Neal picked up the Pittsburgher 100, the Show-Me 100, and the Topless 100, all in 2021. I have three years worth of Lucas race data in the dirtrackr.com analtyics database, and even though Moran hasn't run full time as much as O'Neal has, it's the closest comparison we can make head-to-head. In 139 starts, O'Neal has 12 wins, 39 top fives, and 76 top tens. In 97 appearances, Moran has five wins, 34 top fives, and 56 top tens. The edge in win percentage goes to O'Neal, while top five and top ten percentage is in Moran's favor. Moran's average feature finish of 9.73 edges out O'Neal's 10.16. This season, Moran was at about half the Lucas races, and had an average finish of 6.85. If he would have been able to maintain that pace over the full season, he would have finished a very close third to Brandon Sheppard in the standings. The one big difference between the two drivers is age. Moran is still very young at 28, but O'Neal is even younger at just 22. So Moran's experience is probably deeper, but O'Neal might have more upside with so much success already in his career. If I were making this decision, I think I might lean O'Neal just because of the age. He's probably going to have some bad nights and make a few mistakes, but I'll take the lumps with the chances to win big. I'm definitely a fan of both guys though, and this one feels like six one and half dozen the other. Moran is actually a past guest of mine on DIRTRACKR Conversations. He jumped on with me in early 2021 and I just asked a bunch of stupid, basic questions about driving dirt late models. If you want to check that one out, I'll put a link to it in the video description below.
A quick break before we move on. If you like what I'm doing here and want to support the project and get some cool stuff in the process, head over to shop.dirtrackr.com. I've got DIRTRACKR hats, shirts, and decals for sale right now. Sprint cars, late models, logo stuff, a little bit of everything. Kasey Kahne and Brad Sweet's Kahne Screen Print made the shirts and hats, so you know that stuff is quality. If you are in the US, the price you see on an item is the price you pay at checkout. I'll cover shipping and taxes. So for example, a five dollar decal is five dollars. Not five, plus 38 cents for taxes, and another six dollars to ship it. I know money is tight right now, and I want things to be affordable and transparent for you guys if you want to grab something. So shop.dirtrackr.com, or click the link below. If not, that's cool too. I still heart you guys.
I've got one other dirt late model team note for you, according to Dirt on Dirt, Ashton Winger has departed the Big Frog Motorsports team and is joining up with Florida driver and car owner Jeff Mathews. The new pairing finished 9th last weekend at All-Tech behind Joseph Joiner's win, and they are looking at a pick and choose schedule for 2023. Before joining Big Frog, Winger had started the season with GR Smith as a rookie out with Lucas.
Chassis selection is always a topic of conversation in dirt late model racing, and last night, Derek Kessinger, also known as Suave, tweeted out some win stats for this season. He says that counting all national series races, including the Flo series and XR, Rocket leads the way with 58 wins. Longhorn has 51, Bloomquist has seven, Pierce five, and Capital five. I'm not going to wade into who's the best, or why the numbers look the way they do, just sharing some food for thought for you today.
I've been asked a few times lately about what's going on with Tanner Thorson. We saw him a few weeks ago helping out during the final Xtreme Outlaw Midget weekend in Oklahoma. If you watched on DIRTVision, you saw him during a red flag period at Port City coaching up young driver Chelby Hinton. He was also involved in getting that Chad Boat backup car ready for eventual champion Zach Daum. Thorson told me last night he's trying to put together some stuff to run a midget out west in the coming weeks. USAC will be in California for stops at Bakersfield, Placerville, Merced, and Ventura from November 15th through the 26th.
The Gateway Dirt Nationals are coming up in early December, and the event released the rundown of entries and their prelim nights yesterday. If you don't know about this event, think Chili Bowl, but with late models. They build a track inside the Dome in St. Louis that used to house the St. Louis Rams before they moved to Los Angeles. Right now there are 146 cars on the list they released, and it includes names like Bobby Pierce, Brandon Sheppard, Gordy Gundaker, Jason Feger, Ricky Thornton Jr., Ryan Unzicker, Shannon Babb, Tanner English, Devin Moran, Garrett Alberson, Hudson O'Neal, Mason Zeigler, Scott Bloomquist, defending winner Tyler Carpenter, and Tyler Erb among many others. The event runs from December 1st through the 3rd and you can find event info at gatewaydirt.com.
Two shows on today's streaming schedule. DIRTVision has weekly Outlaw karts from Millbridge 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. 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!