DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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A look at how much money the top earners in dirt racing have made in 2022 | Daily 11-10-2022
How much have the top guys made in dirt racing in 2022? I've got some numbers to share, plus a track tarping their surface, James McFadden and Brad Sweet down under, and more. Let's go!
It's Thursday, November 10th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Hurricane Nicole, now downgraded to Tropical Storm Nicole, is impacting the southeast over the next few days. It's over Florida now, and will trek north over the coming days. That means it will affect this weekend's FloRacing Night in America season finale at Senoia Raceway in Georgia. The Peach State Classic is scheduled to pay $20,000 to win on Friday for the super late models, and $53,000 to win on Saturday. They were supposed to have action tonight, but as of this morning, that is cancelled, and the track is going to work towards getting things ready to run on Friday and Saturday with the storm approaching. And they are taking a page out of the baseball playbook, and are planning to cover the racing surface in tarps. Obviously the hope is that they can keep some of that rain out of the track, and then be ready to go with a full program on Friday when the storm has cleared. I certainly applaud the effort to try and get the weekend in, and kudos to them for having enough tarps available to cover the track. Hopefully it works out for them and they are able to get a full weekend of racing done for the fans and competitors. The Pollard family has done a bunch of work to improve Senoia and to be able put on big shows like this. The forecast for Saturday does look pretty good once the storm clears out, 65 degrees and no rain. The track is located south and a little bit west of Atlanta off highway 16. If you can't be there this weekend, FloRacing will have live streaming coverage.
Across the country out in Las Vegas tonight, the XR Super Series begins three nights of racing for the Duel in the Desert. Tonight and Friday are $20,000 to win, while Saturday is $40,000 to win. The late models are joined on the card by stock cars, modifieds, and northern sport mods. The Saturday stock car feature pays a very strong $25,000 to win. That should be a wild one. On top of the big money for the late model teams, Saturday is also part of the XR Triple Double. 13 teams will earn double prize money on Saturday for perfect attendance between the Colossal 100, Kokomo Dirt Nationals, and this weekend at Vegas. They are Ricky Weiss, Ross Robinson, Kyle Strickler, Brendan Smith, Daulton Wilson, Jimmy Owens, Shane Clanton, Tim McCreadie, Chris Madden, Jonathan Davenport, Jeff Smith, Brandon Overton, and the Viper Motorsports car. So if one of them wins on Saturday, they'd get $80,000. They had open practice last night at the track and it looked like pretty close to 30 late models participated. I don't know how many sessions they got in, but Tanner English was quickest in one of them driving in that Viper car. If you aren't nearby, you can watch all weekend on XR Plus. Racing gets going tonight around 5PM Pacific time.
And while we are on the topic of dirt late model racing, it was announced this morning that hall of famer Jimmy Mars is retiring from his driving career effective immediately. His famous 28 machine will continue running though, with Dustin Sorensen taking over as driver. Sorensen is fresh off his championship season with the USMTS modifieds, where he picked up five wins in 38 starts and the $100,000 champions check. This new pairing will debut during the Wild West Shootout in January. Mars ends his career with victories across dirt late model racing, including with Lucas, the Outlaws, the Summer Nationals, and more. His big scores include the USA Nationals, the Dirt Late Model Dream, the Topless 100, the North South 100, the Prairie Dirt Classic, the Firecracker 100, and the Dirt Track World Championship among others. Mars plans to stay heavily involved in the sport though as he continues to work with brother Chris on their house car program with Sorensen, and their MB Customs chassis customers in late model and modified racing. You can find more on the announcement at jimmymarsracing.com.
Payouts and money are always an ongoing topic of conversation around dirt racing, and my guy Jared sent me a big spreadsheet breakdown this morning of some key drivers around the sport and how much they've made so far in 2022. Because of a lack of accurate information, he says a few races in the hundreds he included are educated guesses, but these should be pretty damn close, and they are current as of last night at Rocket Raceway Park. His leaderboard includes Jonathan Davenport, Chris Madden, Matt Sheppard, Tim McCreadie, Brent Marks, Brad Sweet, and Dennis Erb Jr. So here is his top list ranked by total winnings. No surprise to see Davenport at the top with that Eldora Million victory and a total number of $1,886,979. I like the column here as well with money per race. Matt Sheppard's number of $711,440 is completely bonkers, but he did win basically every big northeast modified race this season. His race count of 96 is also nuts. I believe this is week 45 of 2022, so that means Sheppard averages more than two starts a week. Brent Marks' numbers are obviously pumped up by those two big Eldora wins, and Sweet's tally is interesting because in the end he won the title, but only five Outlaw races. And several of these are not final numbers, as guys still have some shows left on their calendars. Thanks for the breakdown Jared, keep up the hard work!
The sprint car season here in the US is now basically done, but our friends in Australia and New Zealand are just getting started. The Grand Annual Sprint Car Classic at Premier Speedway is coming up later in January, and there will be a pair of World of Outlaws drivers present, both driving NAPA Auto Parts cars. Champion Brad Sweet will pilot a NAPA car for Landrigan Motorsport with his usual number 49 on the wing. And James McFadden will drive a NAPA car in partnership with Hodges Motorsport, with that ownership group also including broadcaster Gerard Whateley, footballer Jack Riewoldt, and IndyCar driver Scott McLaughlin. If you aren't aware, the Classic is like the Australian Knoxville Nationals. If you want to watch racing from down under, the best place to do it right now is on Clay Per View. You can check them out at clayperview.com. I will probably work towards adding them to the streaming schedule as well.
Last night at Rocket Raceway Park, the Short Track Super Series modifieds were able to get their racing completed to open the Cajun Swing. The Tuesday race was fogged out, so they ran both features last night. In the first show, Ryan Godown went on to the win when his nearest challenger in Andy Bachetti lost a right rear tire late. Bachetti had led laps, but was second at the time. Jack Lehner and Erick Rudolph rounded out the podium. Matt Sheppard ended up out of the race after mechanical issues, leading to his third straight DNF, which included two at World Finals. He had problems again in feature two, but bounced back to finish fifth. In that second main event, things were sorta flipped between Bachetti and Godown. Godown was leading late when he suffered a flat right rear, which gave the top spot to Bachetti who drove on to the win. David Schilling and Koty Adams rounded out that podium. The Cajun Swing continues tonight with a stop at Ark-La-Tex Speedway in Louisiana for $4000 to win, before they move over to Boothill Speedway on Friday and Saturday.
By the way, I always try and spotlight other podcasts and episodes on my Wednesday shows. Yesterday, Shawn was very upset at me in the comments that I did not mention that Scott Bloomquist was on the Dale Jr. Download this week. I didn't mention it because Dale Jr.'s show isn't a dirt racing show, so it's not part of my podcast page at dirtrackr.com. And that's where I get the episode info from. But if you are so inclined, and hadn't heard already, you can find show information over at dirtymomedia.com. As for Shawn, thanks for watching my quote "copy and paste podcast." I also appreciated that he referred to me as Gen Z. I'm glad that my 39 year old face looks so young that you thought I was born in the late 1990s.
There are five items on the streaming schedule today. FloRacing has the Short Track Super Series from Ark-La-Tex, racing from down under at Greenstone Park, plus Flo 24/7. The XR Super Series is live on XR Plus from Las Vegas. And Fast Four has outlaw karts from Roseburg. 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 Thursday. 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!