DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
Dirt racing news, results, discussion, analytics. Sprint cars, late models, modifieds, you name it. From national series, to top local shows. Brought to you five days a week. Email the show at info@dirtrackr.com.
Effects from the Ashton Winger vs. GR Smith shenanigans continue | Daily 3-15-2023
Effects of the weekend shenanigans from GR Smith and Ashton Winger continue to ripple out, plus yet another new All Star full timer, more weekend cancellations, and a track that has had enough with posting videos. Let's go!
It's Wednesday, March 15th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
There was more fallout yesterday from the weekend insanity that was GR Smith vs Ashton Winger at Southern Raceway. If you live under a rock, last Saturday night Smith decided to use his car as a weapon under caution to get payback on Winger for a situation he himself kicked off with first corner contact. Winger then threw a short slider, which led to more contact from Smith, and then it was on. After several unhinged moves from Smith under that caution to spin Winger out, both Ashton and his dad Gary made attempts to go after GR in the pit area, with both ending up arrested along with GR's merch guy. I don't know the details, but it sure felt like there was some past history here between these two, which is wild since they were paired together just one season ago. The mugshots that have been circulating from the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's department of the three have really added a nice little something extra to this absolute clown show. As I said back on Monday, maybe these guys need to find something else to do on their weekends that doesn't involve race cars. In the days since though, people have been bailing off the GR Smith ship. World of Outlaws rookie of the year contender Payton Freeman announced yesterday he was departing the Team 22 machine owned by Smith. A reason wasn't given, but I think it's pretty obvious what the deal is. Freeman will return to his family owned F1 ride that he had run before partnering with Team 22 for this season. It is not clear at this moment how this will affect his schedule and if he'll remain an Outlaw full timer. I haven't seen this confirmed anywhere, but there are also rumors that Austin Kirkpatrick has fled Team 22 as well. Kirkpatrick was going to run a partial schedule in the other GR Smith owned car and continue development of his AK chassis. No penalties or suspensions have been announced from the series following the weekend, but if I'm in charge of one of these dirt late model tours right now, I'm making it clear behind the scenes that maybe these guys sit out for a while.
And speaking of dirt late model tours, both the Outlaws and Lucas have sacked their weekend races coming up because of weather. The Outlaws had stops at Boyd's Speedway and Smoky Mountain Speedway on tap, but both shows have been cancelled. We'll see the series again in a few weeks at Farmer City for the Illini 100. And Lucas was headed to Indiana and Ohio, but they announced yesterday their weekend is off as well. The race at Brownstown has been cancelled outright with no suitable makeup date available. The Buckeye Spring 50 at Atomic is being pushed back to May 4th, and that will end up being a kickass night of racing. Lucas will be joined at Atomic by the All Star Circuit of Champions for what they are going to call The Night The Stars Come Out. A little throwback to Atomic's days as KC Raceway hosting the All Stars and the STARS Late Models. We won't see the Lucas late models now until April 21st at Tri-City and April 22nd at Macon.
Yesterday on the show we talked about Conner Morrell announcing his plans to go full time with the All Stars in 2023, and the field has grown yet again. We already knew that JJ Hickle was joining Andy Potter with the Seeling Motorsports team for this season. They initially announced a schedule which would center on Ohio plus a trip to Knoxville for the Nationals. But now they have decided to step up to full time All Star competition. We've seen the yellow Seeling sprint car a bunch with the All Stars recently, with Greg Wilson behind the wheel. Hickle spent last season with Brandon Ikenberry in the midwest, with that pairing making the feature at the Nationals. Hickle is from Washington and racked up a bunch of ASCS victories a few years ago. The addition of Hickle brings the All Star field to eight joining Morrell, Tyler Courtney, Chris Windom, Parker Price Miller, Scotty Thiel, Zeb Wise, and Hunter Schuerenberg. We've still got that asterisk next to Justin Peck.
Last night at Millbridge Speedway here near Charlotte, the next generation of the Larson family found victory lane for the first time. Kyle's son Owen, who races in the beginner box stock class of outlaw karts, picked up his first ever win during Millbridge's opening night. I am a little disappointed that he didn't bring dad up on the wing, like dad does for him, but oh well. It looks like the future of the Larson legacy is in good hands.
And finally today, I had a few people message me this graphic that was posted yesterday by Winchester Speedway in Virginia. I always love going to find these on especially Facebook, because I'm curious about how terrible the comment section on these posts look. And in this instance, the track folks knew they were going to catch hell, so they just went ahead and closed the comments. That's my favorite. In this graphic though, Winchester is basically saying that nobody is allowed to post any video from the track on race days. That includes both live streams and recorded videos. Anyone caught posting will be asked to leave the facility. They go on to say that live videos harm the speedway's existence, and tickets, weekly expenses, snow balling, you get the idea. I'm glad there are certain tracks out there who are shortsighted enough to enact policies like this, because in the aftermath, when this doesn't fix their problems, maybe, just maybe, they will be forced to actually start dealing with the issues that are really keeping people away. What's interesting about Winchester too and this announcement, is this place very much feels like a back gate race track. They have just three shows all season that feature any sort of super late models, along with two nights of USAC east coast sprint cars. There are no other big series that come through. The rest of the year is limited late models, SCDRA, hobby stocks and modifieds. This is one of hundreds of tracks that exist specifically for hobby racers. And they know it, which is why a grandstand ticket is $15 and a pit pass is $30. They're going to sell way more pit passes than GA tickets on a weekly basis. For comparison, you can also buy a $30 pit pass at several shows at Eldora and Knoxville weekly. So I'm not sure who they are worried about with this policy. But hey, I hope it works out for them.
If you want to get into some other dirt racing content this week, Winged Nation has Liam Tencza and Joey Saldana. Passing Points has Brady Bacon and Chase Randall, Forward Bite has Adam Stricker, All Gas No Brakes has several new interviews including Kendal Tucker and Ashton Winger (Winger was from before the issues with GR Smith), Dunewich on Dirt has Jack Cofer, and there are new episodes of The Dirt Reporters, Suave Talk, the Dirt Nerds, and Dirt Track Confessions. To see all these shows and new episodes, head over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
We've got the same streaming schedule today that we had yesterday. Racing from Millbridge on DIRTVision, plus DIRTVision Now and FloRacing 24/7. The only difference is yesterday was outlaw karts at Millbridge and today is micros. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Have a good Wednesday out there, we'll see you guys tomorrow.