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What's up with Rocket Chassis right now? | Daily 1-26-2023
What's up with Rocket Chassis right now? We'll talk about their rough start to 2023, plus talk Lucas full timers, the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic and more. Let's go!
It's Thursday, January 26th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
The 2023 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series season gets underway tonight at Golden Isles in Georgia, but before we get into that, I wanted to talk for a second about Rocket Chassis. Underlying a lot of what happens in dirt late model racing is the ongoing chassis wars, and right now the fight has come down to Longhorns vs. Rockets, with Longhorns very much the talk of the town right now. We've seen high profile defections, including Brandon Sheppard, and Longhorn has dominated so far to start 2023. Looking down through the schedule page at dirtondirt.com, I don't believe we've seen a Rocket win a decent sized late model race yet this year. The Wild West Shootout was a Longhorn party. The Sunshine Nationals nights at Volusia were both won by Devin Moran, in a Longhorn. Ray Cook won at Talladega in a Capital, Billy Moyer's Central Arizona win was in a Longhorn, and Ricky Weiss has his Snipers. So unless Bricen James is in a Rocket, we are looking at an Ofer to begin the season. And that's on top of a very ho-hum opening weekend at Volusia for Hudson O'Neal in the Rocket house car. Ninth on Thursday was respectable, but Friday was not good. 19th of 24 in their qualifying group, backed up in the heat race, and missed the feature transfer in a B by one spot. For comparison, over his previous 149 Outlaw starts in the Rocket car, Sheppard was only in eight total B-Mains, and appeared in every feature. Along the way, I'm sure a few Outlaw provisionals aided in that, but still, that's less than 5% of the time BShepp was in a B. They may have been trying something on that second night, but if that lack of speed continues into this weekend, it could be a tough start to the year for Rocket. It won't matter as much this season, because of the new chase championship format with Lucas, but there is clearly work to be done for Mark Richards and Rocket. Motorsports are very cyclical, one team or builder figures something out, they pull ahead, then a rival does the same, and back and forth we go. And clearly right now, Longhorn has something figured out that Rocket does not. It's a storyline to watch as speedweeks play out over the next month.
This Lucas season that kicks off tonight could be an intriguing one, since we are looking at a new championship format and a very stout field of full timers. If you remember back to the announcement at PRI, Lucas will begin eliminating teams from championship contention through the summer, until we get to a final four, who will battle it out for the title at the Dirt Track World Championship. There is also quite a bit more money being pumped into the system by the series, which is part of the reason why you've seen some guys, like Jonathan Davenport, commit to full runs. According to Kevin Kovac, that full timers list right now includes 14 drivers, and does have a pair of rookies committed, which is good after what we talked about last month. No surprises on the list as of yet, with Tim McCreadie back to defend, along with Jonathan Davenport, Ricky Thornton Jr., Devin Moran, Hudson O'Neal, Tyler Erb, Garrett Alberson, Earl Pearson Jr., Ross Robinson, Daulton Wilson, Spencer Hughes and Kyle Bronson, with Wil Herrington and Garrett Smith joining up as the two first timers. Based on this list, Bronson is the only one who is effectively declared with both series right now. We'll see if that changes in the coming weeks. And I don't know Smith's plans, but originally Herrington was coming to speedweeks to race, and then seeing how things went from there. His season with Lucas may very well depend on how Georgia and Florida play out.
As expected, last night's open practice at Golden Isles was rained out, but the rest of the weekend is on as scheduled. We did get a bunch of rain in the southeast yesterday, so things could be a tad heavy tonight. It will be chilly when the sun goes down, but we should be good to go over the next three days. Tonight is $10,000 to win, Friday is $12,000 to win, and Saturday is $25,000 to win. Nice money being put up by Golden Isles and Kyle Bronson. A year ago, Brandon Overton won two of three nights here, with Moran the other winner. In 2020, McCreadie, Jimmy Owens, Bronson, and Josh Richards picked up victories at Brunswick. I'd guess we'll be in the mid 30's to low 40's for car count through the weekend, with all the Lucas regulars, plus several of the Outlaws, and others like Brandon Overton. Remember, if you can't be at Golden Isles, the full Lucas season is streaming on FloRacing. If you need a Flo subscription to tune in, click the link below in the video description, or the Flo links at dirtrackr.com. That gets you a whole heap of racing, and helps out DIRTRACKR in the process.
Down under this weekend is the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic at Premier Speedway, and the first of three nights gets started tonight, around 1AM ET in the states. The common comparison you'll hear about this event, is it's Australia's equivalent to the Knoxville Nationals. Looking at the entry list, we are well across 100 cars for the weekend, and unlike the past few seasons, the American drivers have made the trip to challenge the locals. Scrolling the entries, you'll see names like Justin Sanders, Kerry Madsen, Ian Madsen, James McFadden, V8 Supercar driver Cam Waters, Lachlan McHugh, Chase Randall, Cole Macedo, Carson Macedo, Brock Zearfoss, Corey McCullagh, Brooke Tatnell, Tyler Courtney, Jock Goodyer, Sheldon Haudenschild, Cory Eliason, Brad Sweet, Jamie Veal, and a lot more. $250,000 will be paid out over the three days, with the feature winner on the final night earning a cool $50 grand. Lachlan McHugh is the defending event winner, James McFadden has won it twice, Kerry Madsen has a trio of victories, and locals like Veal, McCullagh, and Robbie Farr have won it as well. If you aren't down that way and want to watch, you've got a few options. Clay-Per-View has action all week, as does DIRTVision, so check it out if you are having sprint car withdrawals right now.
A couple of news items for you today as well. Matt Westfall announced he'll be full time with the USAC National Sprint Cars this season, driving the Ray Marshall 33M. He's got just a single sprint car win in his career, at Eldora in 2006, but he is a regular with the series, making 83 starts over the past three years. In that span, he's picked up three top five and 19 top ten finishes. The USAC Sprint Car season starts at Volusia February 13th and 14th with a pair of non-points shows, before moving to Bubba Raceway Park later that week.
Also on the USAC side, Bryant Wiedeman is moving from Keith Kunz to Chad Boat for the 2023 midget season. Wiedeman was the POWRi champion in 2021, and has 70 USAC midget appearances since 2020. He's still looking for that first national victory, but does have ten top fives and 27 top tens. That KKM lineup will be very different this year, with Buddy Kofoid moving on, as is Kaylee Bryson, and now Wiedeman out. They have added Ryan Timms, and we should see Taylor Reimer and Brenham Crouch among others.
And finally, when we talked last week about the World of Outlaws Late Model Series signing up more than 20 drivers as series regulars to start the season, I mentioned the difficulties for those new and rookie teams who will try and make a go of it. If you are further down the order, the money gets light pretty quick. But as of yesterday, the series is trying to help with that, by expanding their Winner Circle program from 12 drivers to 15. So if you stay within the top 15 in the standings, you'll earn $2500 a month, on top of regular purse money and the points fund. We'll see if this entices a few more teams to try and stick around for the full run to World Finals.
There are eight shows across the streaming services today, althought it's actually seven, because one program is being streamed by two different providers. DIRTVision has night one of the Grand Annual Sprintcar Classic at Premier and DIRTVision Now. Clay Per View also has the Classic, along with sedans from Kingaroy. FloRacing has the opening night of Lucas, plus WinterNationals from East Bay and Flo 24/7. IMCA action continues on Speed Sport from Central Arizona as well. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Alright, that's it for the show today. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We'll be back here tomorrow for more DIRTRACKR Daily.