DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Rocket Chassis sweeps East Bay podium, but... | Daily 2-7-2023

Knoxville adds big cash to the Nationals, Rocket finally wins a late model race, and we get sprint car racing tonight! Let's go!

It's Tuesday, February 7th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

We'll kick today off with the news from yesterday that Knoxville is pumping a bunch of cash into the Nationals purse for this year. In 2023, the Knoxville Nationals winner will take home $185,000, which is up $10 grand from a year ago. But the track and the event didn't stop there. They've added money down through the field, with the feature now paying $15,000 just to start. For comparison, in 2022, the full Saturday purse was $710,225 from a total event purse of $1,002,065. But for this year, that Saturday purse jumps to $866,625, from a total of $1,159,005. No changes to money for Wednesday through Friday, but an extra $156,000 and change is up for grabs on Saturday. Big kudos to track GM Jason Reed, race director John McCoy, the fair board, and everyone at Knoxville for making this happen. These deep purses are a big part of the reason why the Nationals has such a big car count every single year. Teams can come from all over the country, and have a chance to make very nice money all week. Even fifth place in the Saturday night E-Main pays $1000 as the first non-transfer car. Along with the Nationals purse, the track also showed off the 360 Nationals cash, with Saturday's feature paying $20,000 to win, with an extra $15,000 available in lap money. The total 360 Nats event purse is $225,020. You can see the full breakdown on the purses over on Knoxville's social media channels, @KnoxvilleRaceway. If you want more info on the track, or to snag some tickets to a Knoxville show this season, head over to knoxvilleraceway.com.

At East Bay last night, we got the first of six nights of the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. I mentioned yesterday that this opening stretch of speedweeks had some races that wouldn't count towards the points, and thanks to a couple of conversations yesterday, here are the details for how it all works. To start 2023, 10 of these races between Golden Isles, Bubba, All-Tech, and East Bay count for points. We lost a show at All-Tech, so 10 is now nine, and these first three nights at East Bay don't count as they are lower purses. The programs later this week, from Thursday through Saturday, will be part of that what was 10 races, and now nine to count. And of those races that count, drivers will take their five best finishes as their points earning results leaving speedweeks. So between the three nights at Golden Isles, two at Bubba, one at All-Tech, and the final three nights at East Bay, drivers will take the five highest points paying finishes and that's how the Lucas standings will be set leaving Florida. So because of this, last night's field was missing quite a few drivers. And the same could be true tonight and tomorrow as well. Comparing to Saturday night at All-Tech, I have eight feature starters who didn't race last night. They were Ricky Thornton Jr., Jonathan Davenport, Tim McCreadie, Max Blair, Shane Clanton, Payton Freeman, Jimmy Owens, and Kyle Strickler, who went to Volusia for the modified show. And Brandon Overton did race, but not in the Wells 76. He drove John Henderson's 2X. In Monday's main event, Kyle Bronson started on the pole and led the first two laps, but then second starting Tyler Erb got the elbows out and muscled his way to the front on lap three. He also had to make the Best Performance Rocket pretty wide later on to fight back a challenge from Ashton Winger. In the end though, he got away for the win, which was his first victory of the season, and the first for a Rocket Chassis. Hudson O'Neal finished second, and Tyler Millwood had an incredible high side run late that propelled him to third from 20th. It was his best ever Lucas finish, and Millwood's podium made it an all Rocket top three. We talked yesterday about Longhorn's dominance to start the year, and last week about Rocket's issues, and it took exactly four minutes last night from the time the race went checkered until I had the first comment from somebody on social media about Rocket winning. To be clear, I don't have a dog in this fight, I don't really care who wins. I'm just pointing out stats and facts about how things have gone. Longhorn going 14-0 to start the season isn't my opinion, it's what's happened. Also, and I'll leave this one up to you to decide on, but it is worth nothing that two of the top three in points were missing last night, and the other guy was in someone else's car. And other than Kyle Larson, Davenport was the only other driver with a Lucas win, and he was also absent. All four being Longhorn guys. Also, I've seen some stuff about how of course Longhorn is winning a bunch, they have more cars in the field so more chances. But last night's feature included, as best as I can tell, nine Rockets, eight Longhorns, and eight other drivers in various other chassis. So that's not really what's happening. Tonight at East Bay, they will line then up and do it all over again for $5000 to win. You can again watch live on FloRacing if you aren't nearby.

DIRTcar Nationals also got underway last night at Volusia, with UMP modified features and sprint car practice. The six modified features were won by Lucas Lee, Kyle Strickler, Tyler Nicely, NASCAR driver Justin Haley, Ethan Dotson, and David Stremme. As expected, we did cross into triple digits, with 102 modifieds on the property. If you're curious about Travis Pastrana, he ended up 14th of 17 cars in feature four after being involved in an incident. In between modified action, the sprint car teams had a chance to get on track with three practice sessions. It looked like we had 28 cars take part, and that number should grow tonight for actual racing, because we didn't have a few participate, including names like Carson Macedo and Donny Schatz. Cory Eliason was quick in session one, Hunter Schuerenberg led session two, and Brad Sweet topped the final round. Anthony Macri and his guys have some work to do to be ready to race tonight, as he crashed in that third group and tore up the 39 pretty good. The next two nights of All Star racing at Volusia are $6000 to win features, and are non-points. So teams don't have to be in attendance or declared just yet for an All Star title run. After what we saw last night, I'd guess we'll creep into the low 30's tonight for car count. Tonight and tomorrow are going to be annoying streaming nights if you want to watch all the Volusia racing. The UMP modifieds will be on DIRTVision, while the All Stars will be on FloRacing. So be prepared to flip back and forth if you want to watch both. That will change come Thursday when the racing becomes Outlaw sanctioned, and then everything will be live on DIRTVision.

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Solid Tuesday across the streaming services with six shows on tap. FloRacing has night two of Lucas from East Bay, the All Stars at Volusia, and Flo 24/7. DIRTVision has the UMP Modifieds from Volusia and DIRTVision Now. And Speed Sport has HART micros from Marion County. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

Have a good Tuesday out there, so you guys tomorrow!