DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Another Ford powered sprint car shows up at DIRTcar Nationals | Daily 2-8-2023
Coming up today we'll talk about the Ford sprint car engine, and it showing up with a new team, plus Tuesday results from around Florida and more. Let's go!
It's Wednesday, February 8th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
The 2023 sprint car season is off and running with last night's All Star opener at Volusia complete. Brad Sweet was your winner over Logan Schuchart and David Gravel, and Sweet looked strong. He started second, and really just seemed to let the car and the track come to him. He raced by Gravel in lap traffic to lead lap 14 and drove away to the win. He said afterwards that the KKR 49 team is really focused this season on winning a lot of races. Both Schuchart and Gravel ended up leading laps as well, and should continue to be factors the rest of the week. We ended up with 35 cars, and that will probably be the peak car count. With as hard as Volusia is on engines and crashes can be big, we'll probably lose a few by the weekend. We already had some engine issues last night, with both Donny Schatz and Parker Price Miller losing power early in the night. What was interesting, was both those popped engines were Fords. Schatz has obviously been using Ford engines for a while under the TSR banner, but PPM was using a Ford engine purchased from TSR. Later this season, we'll see PPM driving the McCandless 29 sprint car, and the team's main backer is the McCandless Ford dealership in Mercer, PA. So I'm assuming the team has designs on maybe using Ford power all season because of that relationship. I don't know that we've heard of another team outside of TSR using the Ford 410 engines in recent seasons. It's been mainly an in-house deal between Ford, TSR, and the 14 and 15 teams. This might be something to keep an eye on going forward, to see if more of these Ford powerplants will be available for outside teams. We know that the engine development has been a joint deal between Ford, TSR, Andy Durham, with some Ron Shaver input as well. I would not read too much into what happened last night, in terms of reliability, as Volusia has always been brutal. It's a high speed track, and atmospheric conditions are always really good for high horsepower, which means more chances for parts failures. It is not uncommon for teams to come to Volusia with de-tuned engines just to survive the week.
And speaking of Schatz, he had an interesting situation last night. If you aren't aware, Donny is a pilot and flies himself to a lot of the sprint car races, and he ended up having to leave Volusia before the feature because of training in Orlando. The modified program ran later than expected, meaning Schatz would have missed his appointment. Jason Sides started the feature in the TSR 15, and pulled off early. I also got asked about Alex Bowman last night. He went quick time in qualifying, but ended up missing the feature after falling back in his heat race. You don't usually see that with the All Stars because of their format. The last time I could find that a driver went quick time and then missed the feature was in 2020 at Huset's when Kyle Larson junked his car in a heat race and didn't race the rest of the night. There are also a bunch of questions from people about the Outlaw drivers running these All Star nights and whether they will count towards the four and eight race restrictions. And the answer is they do not count. These opening nights at Volusia are technically before the Outlaw season starts, so historically they have been outside of the platinum agreement restrictions. It would also be a terrible look at a World Racing Group owned event if half the sprint car teams in the pit area didn't race. As for the rest of the season, we still don't know about how races like the Eldora Million will be handled. Drivers who didn't have a great night last night who will be looking for better today, include Ryan Timms, Zeb Wise, and Aaron Reutzel. All three were in B-Mains, and didn't transfer, which was a bit surprising.
Last night's modified winners at DIRTcar Nationals included Justin Haley, Tyler Nicely, Ethan Dotson, George Dixon, Mitch Thomas, and Drake Troutman. Today's show is a repeat of yesterday's with more modifieds and All Stars, and again a split on the streaming services. You can watch the sprint cars on Flo and the modifieds on DIRTVision. Yes, it continues to be a really lame situation on these nights, and no, I don't know why middle ground can't be reached.
Big shoutout today to another group of channel members who have joined recently. We are now at 49 total, with the addition of Matt, Clinton, The Ritz, Nick, and the 1X Team. Thank you guys so much for the added support, it's awesome that we are at nearly 50 to this point. If you want to join as well, it's $2.99 a month, you get a little member badge for chats and the comment section, special emojis to use, you get added to the show outro, 10% off DIRTRACKR merch all the time, plus a free decal. Click the join buttons on the videos and channel, or visit youtube.com/dirtrackr/join to check it out.
At East Bay last night, we had another $5000 to win show for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. The field was two cars bigger than the night before, and we did see Ricky Thornton Jr. and Tim McCreadie participate. Still no Davenport, and Overton was again in the Henderson 2X. RTJ's night was short lived though, as they had issues in qualifying, and did't really participate the rest of the night. McCreadie went 14th to eighth in the main event. In the feature, it was all Ashton Winger. He started on the pole and outside of the first lap, wasn't really challenged out front. He led all 30 laps to pick up his first ever Lucas victory. Winger was also fast on Monday, including briefly challenging Tyler Erb for the win. He could be one to pay attention to the rest of the week. Hudson O'Neal was again second, to make it a Rocket top two for the second night in a row, and Brandon Sheppard was third. That was a nice bounceback for Sheppy who was out in a B-Main on Monday night. Last night's track looked a little heavier, and definitely had more character in it than the previous night. Overton was again fast in the 2X, and Dennis Erb Jr. picked up his second top five in a row. Tonight's show at East Bay bumps to $7000 to win, it's still not for points, but you could see an even fuller field with the added cash, and this being the last chance to get on track before points count on Thursday. Tonight and the rest of the week continue to be live on FloRacing.
Over at All-Tech tonight, the Short Track Super Series begins their 2023 season. They'll run tonight through Saturday, with $126k in purse money available through the week. Tonight's show is $4000 to win, and should feature a healthy field of big blocks. Remember they can race through the weekend at All-Tech, and then go to Volusia next week for DIRTcar Nationals, so a bunch of teams usually travel south. We should see Matt Sheppard, Stewart Friesen, Alex Yankowski, Erick Rudolph, Larry Wight, Billy Pauch Jr., and a lot more. This one will be live on FloRacing as well.
If you need more dirt racing content this week, there are plenty of new podcast episodes floating around out there. Winged Nation has Mark Smith and Tony Bokhoven. Open Red has returned, with Ross at the helm. He's got a new episode with Brian Kemenah. Forward Bite has Scott Shirey, Quicktime has Kevin Swindell, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks has Drake York, All Gas No Brakes has like five new episodes, Hoogie's Garage has Brendan Mullen, Dunewich on Dirt has Brandon Gibson Jr., and there are new episodes of The Dirt Reporters, Passing Points, the Dirt Nerds, Quicktime and Dirt Track Confessions. To check out all the shows and recent episodes, click over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
There are seven shows on the streaming services for this Wednesday. FloRacing has night two of the All Stars at Volusia, night three of the Lucas late models at East Bay, they've also got the Short Track Super Series from All-Tech and Flo 24/7. DIRTVision has UMP modifieds from Volusia and DIRTVision Now. And Speed Sport has mod lites from Hendry County. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, head over to dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Have a good Wednesday out there, so you guys tomorrow!