DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Reaction: Sheldon Haudenschild talks Outlaws, High Limit, money. Plus why I think they could leave | Daily 11-28-2022

Today we'll get into Turkey Night at Ventura, plus Sheldon Haudenschild talks money, High Limit and more. Let's go!

It's Monday, November 28th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

Hope you had a good Thanksgiving weekend! After a few days off I've got a ton of stuff to get to today, so we'll just dive right in.

We'll start first with USAC out in California. Going back to Merced last Wednesday night, Buddy Kofoid got by race long leader Spencer Bayston with five to go, and drove off to his 13th win of the season. The moment of the night though was probably Michael Pickens' flip in qualifying, where he went over, landed on all four wheels and just kept driving. Not something you see very often, especially with how easily parts break when that much force is applied to them. Pickens is a wheelman though, and it's not surprising that it was him behind the wheel. The night's sprint car feature was entertaining as well, with Chase Randall eventually coming out on top over Justin Sanders. We had a fun batttle for the lead between Dominic Scelzi and Carson Macedo in that one, but both had issues and ended up out of contention. After having Thursday off, the teams moved over to Ventura Raceway on Friday to begin Turkey Night prep. If you were around on social media over the two days, there were quite a few complaints about the track at Ventura and how narrow it's now become. Lots of drivers and other folks were pining for things to return to the glory days of the facility, but honestly, I thought the midget show was pretty good. I don't have a long personal history with Ventura, so maybe it was better in past years, but five lead changes among five different drivers in the main event and a lot of action is tough to complain about. It definitely didn't pay to be out front in the midget feature, as three of those five drivers ended up finishing 19th or worse. Buddy Kofoid led the first 44 laps, but he went for a tumble down the backstretch with 31 laps to go when Tanner Thorson got crossed up on the cushion and Buddy had no where to go. Cannon McIntosh and Carson Macedo also led laps, but were both victims of that same cushion while leading. And Thorson led briefly as well, but was involved in a few incidents, including a late spin. In the end, it was Justin Grant who survived to bag the Turkey Night victory over a hard charging Kyle Larson and Bryant Wiedeman. Larson was a late entrant to the event in a Chad Boat car, and drove up to second after starting 22nd. He drew the ire of Kevin Thomas Jr. after the checkered flag, as KTJ was not pleased with a late move from Yung Money that included contact and shuffled the 5T down the order. Solid end to the season though for the USAC National Midgets, and again Buddy Kofoid the series champion for the second straight year. If you are a midget fan, they are not part of racing at the Dome this season, but they will be indoors at Du Quoin coming up later in December with POWRi.

If you want some DIRTRACKR merch at a discount, today is the final day to take advantage of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. Everything in the shop is marked down, including the hats, shirts and decals. Some stuff is as much as 50% off, and I am still covering sales tax and shipping for those of you in the US. I am down to just a few pieces in stock on some items, so it's possible we could have some of them sell out today. Head over to shop.dirtrackr.com to grab something now before the day is over.

As we continue to wait and see how things will play out with the World of Outlaws, their schedule, the platinum agreement, and what teams will do in 2023, we had more public comments over the weekend to dive into. Toby Bellbowen and Sprint Car Hub on YouTube posted an interview with Sheldon Haudenschild and they covered a lot of these topics, including money, the High Limit Series, and more. I tweeted yesterday about it a little bit, because Toby used the term "guaranteed money" in his thumbnail as it was something Sheldon mentioned in their chat. The idea that there is no guaranteed money in sprint car racing, as, for the most part, pay is performance based. The idea of guaranteed money is sort of true and sort of not true. When you sign up as a full time member of a national tour, you will get things like tow money and the points fund, so on some level, the team is guaranteed something. The idea of guaranteed money though in dirt racing is an interesting topic, which is why I tweeted about it. Guarantees are a big deal right now in sports, with athletes wanting more and more guaranteed money, and that's a big reason why we've seen the split in the golf world between the PGA Tour and LIV. LIV is offering those guys big cash, regardless of how they play, whereas the PGA Tour is much more performance based. In dirt racing though, I'm not sure how guaranteed money could even work, as the series and the teams are completely separate entities. Drivers are not employees of the series, whereas with sports leagues, the leagues are owned by the team owners. It's an interesting thought experiment. I think though, that maybe Sheldon took offense to my tweet, because he replied saying that he was not asking for guaranteed money, only pointing out that it doesn't exist. And he's correct, he did not ask for it. And I didn't say that he did, but it's not a huge leap to make that as soon as it starts entering conversations, that the ask isn't far away. On some level though, I hope dirt racing stays performance based. Run well, get paid well. Don't run well, get paid less. Simple and effective. There were quite a few other points in there to talk about as well. Sheldon was very non-committal about the team's plans for next season, saying they were going to wait on the World of Outlaws schedule and the agreement before deciding. If there are going to be teams defecting from the series, I believe that the NOS 17 squad is one of the more likely teams to split. They have solid backing from NOS Energy Drink, the team is well supported by it's owners, and Sheldon's merch sales are substantial and can continue to support his career. They would be giving up a substantial amount of money to do so, between the points fund and tow and bonus money, but they could absorb the blow, and Sheldon will still win a lot of races regardless of where they are. For some context when it comes to money, the series posted that the 17 car made $504,525 during the 2022 season. $65,000 of that was the points payout, and another about $370,000 was race winnings. So that leaves about another $68,000 from tow and bonus money. If Sheldon is getting 40% or 50% of winnings, we can figure he was somewhere around $200,000 in earnings for 2022 from the racing itself. When asked about an ideal scenario for the series schedule, he mentioned a 90 race slate, with races paying at minimum $20,000 to win would be incredibly enticing. And I'm sure that's true. But even as WRG continues to add money to the series, I wouldn't hold my breath thinking that to-win amounts would double over night. Toby also asked Sheldon about racing elsewhere as a full time Outlaw driver, and he compared it to NASCAR allowing their drivers to run other stuff. I certainly see his point, but it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. When Larson, or Kyle Busch, or Alex Bowman, or whoever else go run other events, they are not running Cup cars for a competing series or event. A dirt race, or a pavement late model race don't affect NASCAR's business. The Outlaws don't view things that way in this case. I'm also curious about the numbers they believe to be true for streaming. In a lot of these conversations, we keep hearing that things don't add up. I know it won't happen, but it would be great to hear what the drivers and teams think is happening with streaming. You have the drivers incinuating that a lot of money is being made, and then Brian Carter saying it's not as much as they think. And that's an important point as well. As we hear publicly from both sides, they each have their own agendas. Remember that the real truth probably lies somewhere in between. If you want to check out the Sheldon interview, and I would encourage you to do so, go find Sprint Car Hub on YouTube, and I'll link to it in the description below.

If you're a gamer or a fan of the iRacing pro series, the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars are back tonight for another season. They will kick off their year at 9PM ET live on DIRTVision and YouTube. Competitors have spent the last few weeks working their way through the qualifying series, and the championship run begins tonight with racing at Volusia Speedway Park. Don't forget these races are free to watch.

On tomorrow's show, I've got a bunch of news tidbits to talk about, including some stuff that has already broken today. So if there is something I haven't gotten to, odds are it will be on tomorrow's daily.

There are three items on the streaming schedule for this Monday. DIRTVision has the iRacing World of Outlaws and DIRTVision Now. There is also 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 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!