DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Brandon Sheppard switches to Longhorn, High Limit Sprint Car schedule complete | Daily 12-16-2022

After all of our speculation and investigative foolery, Brandon Sheppard to Longhorn is confirmed. We'll talk about it, plus dive into the High Limit schedule, and Brad Sweet and David Gravel's livestream. Let's go!

It's Friday, December 16th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

So I mentioned late in the show yesterday that there would be some late model news breaking, maybe even possibly before my show finished uploading, and that ended up being true. We've talked about it on several occasions here, trying to piece together the little bits of evidence from various sources, but we finally got confirmation that Brandon Sheppard is indeed switching to Longhorn Chassis for 2023. Starting with the Wild West Shootout at Vado coming up in a few weeks, the team will utilize Longhorns for their entire slate of 2023 races. This is all notable, because Sheppard has spent the last several years as THE Rocket Chassis driver, piloting Mark Richards' famous Valvoline 1 machines. But for next season, Sheppard decided to depart Rocket Racing, and is partnering with team owner Scott Riggs to fly the Sheppard Riggs Racing flag. It's interesting for Riggs as well, because they had also campaigned Rockets with driver Tanner English. But now they'll join the Longhorn squad, beside high profile drivers like Jonathan Davenport, Brandon Overton, Kyle Larson with Rumley, Lucas champ Tim McCreadie, and others. This feels like a solid coup for Steve Arpin and the Longhorn guys to bring Sheppy into the mix, but we'll have to see if this will be a spring board for the B5 in 2023. I know Sheppard won 14 times last season, and finished second in Lucas points, certainly nothing to sneeze at. But that group just wasn't as dominant as we'd see them be in previous years. I do think that Sheppard will feel like he has something to prove now that he's back out on his own. The one thing we are still waiting on with Sheppard is his choice of national tour for next season, and it sounds like maybe we'll know something on that front very soon.

The other news from yesterday was the final three High Limit races being released, so now we have the full schedule for their first year of competition. As we knew previously, 12 races, all of which pay at least $23,000 to win. There are also two $50,000 to win races. The first event of the season at the Thunderbowl Raceway in Tulare, California is non-points, and then things will kick off for real at Lakeside Speedway on April 11th. The other ten tracks with dates are 34 Raceway, Kokomo, Wayne County in Ohio, Tri-City, Eagle, Grandview, Huset's, Lernerville, Bridgeport, and Lincoln Park. For the context on where these fit in with the World of Outlaws schedule, Tulare is in between Magnolia and Devil's Bowl. I don't honestly see any midwest or east based teams participating in that one. It's in between NARC shows at Chico on March 18th and at Stockton on April 1st, so I'm sure that one will be mostly California guys. It would be a tough sell to get any teams to travel all that way for just one show. And clearly they know that, which is why it's non-points. I am surprised a California show got on the schedule, after Brad told me during our interview that they wouldn't schedule out there. He did say they chose Tulare because Kyle likes that track and they wanted Tulare to have a big show in 2023. From there, Lakeside is after 81 and before Pevely. The 34 race on April 25th is after Knoxville and before Granite City. Kokomo fits in between Haubstadt and Eldora, May 16th at Wayne County is the Tuesday after the Morgan Cup at Williams Grove, Attica is the next Outlaw race after. Tri-City is after Lawrenceburg on that Wednesday, Eagle is in between Ogilvie and Knoxville, Grandview is after the Summer Nationals at the Grove, Huset's is in between the Knoxville Nationals and the Jackson Nationals, the Lernerville show will lead into the National Open, Bridgeport is then the week after, and the final show at Lincoln Park will be on the drive from Port Royal to 81 Speedway. I know some of you saw the tweet from Robert Ballou about a possible High Limit date on the dirt track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and I had heard also that was being discussed. I know they tried non-wing sprints on that track at some point, and I think 20+ wing cars would have been a challenge. It would have been interesting though if they could have made it through the process with the big track. I kinda thought maybe we'd get a big splash race some where on this schedule, something crazy, and Indy would have been that. There was also a different track scheduled to be the finale, but that got changed late in the process. It's a solid group of events, and I think we could have probably guessed several of these would be involved. So now we'll see how this all goes with full time Outlaw guys, which drivers choose to chase High Limit points, and if this model is sustainable for the series and the tracks they schedule at. I think if you're a Brent Marks, or a Rico Abreu, Brian Brown, Buddy Kofoid, Cory Eliason, some of the All Star guys like Justin Peck or Hunter Schuerenberg, this will be a solid chance at a championship and some extra money. The drivers who decide to sign on with the Outlaws will obviously not be at all of these shows, and we'll have to see where Kyle Larson slots into this, I would assume he's going to plan on racing all of them. If you are part of a 410 sprint car team in 2023, there will certainly be no lack of options each week. Outlaws, All Stars, local, High Limit, regional stuff like IRA and NARC, etc. I hope the ecosystem can support all of these options, between fans and teams. We need to be careful not to get too saturated, which I think you could make an argument for on the late model side.

Alright, final thing for today and the week. I watched the whole livestream from David Gravel with guest Brad Sweet and I wanted to react to a few things they talked about. I tweeted this morning that I need to keep finding topics for Gravel and his guests to be mad at me about, because we are two for two right now. Last week with Swank it was team costs, and this week with Brad it was purse money. We'll have to find something for next week. Brad did call me out, saying I'm biased towards WRG, and I see all the comments on my videos saying the same. That doesn't really bother me. I worked at WRG in the past, and I really like the Outlaw product. I know how difficult it's been in the past for all of the people that keep the Outlaws and WRG going, and their sacrifices get lost in the mix of all the hate for the big bad World Racing Group. WRG is by no means perfect, and I think a lot of things can be improved from both sides. But this show isn't the Associated Press. I have opinions, and I'm just not going to take one side's word on things, or do no research. I'm also not going to automatically think and assume the sanctioning bodies are wrong and terrible. If that makes me viewed as being biased, then I guess so be it.

I would hate to see us get to a point where guys like Brad, or David, or Sheldon, fall off the series. It would be a crime if the top sprint car drivers were not racing for the World of Outlaws championship. But I also understand if they feel like they can do better for themselves and their teams by running a different schedule. They absolutely must do what's best for their own situations and sponsors and team owners. If they want to chase other shows and have some extra weekends off through a season, I don't know how anyone can blame them for that. All any series can do is put up a compelling package and hope it's enough to attract good teams and drivers. Brad is about to experience that first hand with High Limit.

When talking about purses, Brad and David mentioned the Knoxville Nationals, and a big reason why so many teams show up, is that purse is nice from top to bottom. The Saturday A-Main pays to start what a normal Outlaw show pays to win. And it makes me wonder about what is the best purse structure. The to-win amounts, like the Eldora Million, get the attention, but would the sport be healthier if maybe the to-win amounts were less, and it paid better through the field? Do we want the money distribution to be more even, allowing for some of the smaller teams to actually want to show up to some of these other shows, or is it more important that the best performing teams benefit? I honestly don't the answer there.

It was also interesting that they talked about how aggressive the racing is right now. It's something I've mentioned on these shows before, and in conversations with other people. The success of Kyle Larson, who is aggressive, and the rise of some of these younger guys like Sheldon Haudenschild and Carson Macedo, seems to have ramped up the intensity. And Brad confirmed that. Combined with the parity, it's basically forced guys to make moves when they can if they want to run well.

And back to what we talked about yesterday with the Eldora Million, I said I don't think there is any way that the Outlaws keep their guys from running those nights, and I think they will find a way to not include them in the four and eight race restriction rules. And Brad talked about it. He said he asked Brian Carter specifically about the Eldora Million, and Carter said there are going to be some races that are exempt under that rule. That quote is around the one hour, 11 minute mark in Gravel's video. Certain races were allowed to be run outside the contract in the past, and I think the four races and eight races should be in addition to those. If some of those exemptions in the past are now viewed as drivers having to burn one of their freebies to race them, then this easing of the restrictions isn't that at all. If you haven't watched Gravel's video from the other night, I'll link to it in the description below. Again, a lot of good stuff in their conversation.

A few shows on the streaming schedule this weekend. Got some stuff down under on Clay-Per-View, the POWRi midgets are indoors on DIRTVision, and a few other things across the services. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

Alright, that's it for the show today. Have a good Thursday. We'll be back here tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily.