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.

Behind the scenes transitions lead to changes to timing and scoring apps for dirt racing | Daily 4-6-2023

Kyle Larson's late model show is coming up tonight, and I've got everything you need to know, plus, what's up with Race Monitor? Let's go!

It's Thursday, April 6th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

If you're a user of timing and scoring apps around dirt racing, you may have noticed some changes in recent weeks and recent months. Even within the last few days there has been some chatter on social media and we've seen posts from drivers like Danny Dietrich and Cale Thomas, plus crew members and other fans wanting to know why certain things are on one app and not another. The two big players we are obviously talking about here are Race Monitor and MyRacePass. For years, a lot of the dirt races could be found on the Race Monitor app, and it became fairly ubiquitous at dirt tracks to see the app open on phones in the pit area and the grandstands. Race Monitor isn't just for dirt racing though, and at this moment they have live upcoming coverage of action at Langley Speedway and Laguna Seca, the Thermal Club, tracks down under, VIR, karting, and much more. The app is free to download, but you'll need a paid subscription for the live stuff. And that subscription just got a tick more expensive, although $6.99 for the entire year ain't bad. Recently though, a lot of stuff has been moved over to MyRacePass, with the notable series being the World of Outlaws and other World Racing Group owned properties like the Summer Nationals and Super DIRTcar Series. If you want to get live timing on the MRP app, it will set you back $7.99 for the year. WRG swapped to MRP officially for the 2022 season, although they were still pushing data to Race Monitor all the way up to DIRTcar Nationals this year. But at this moment, that's no longer the case. WRG owned series are now exclusively on the MRP app, and race results you find at worldofoutlaws.com and elsewhere are actually coming through the MyRacePass API. Besides live timing and scoring, if you weren't aware, MRP also offers full on race management solutions for timing and scoring, results, keeping track of points, generating race night lineups and more. And a lot of your favorite series use this platform. If you're curious about learning more about MyRacePass, I did an interview with Josh Holt a few years ago, and we discussed a lot of this stuff. I'll link to it in the video description below. So, if you're curious about what's changed, it's really a couple of things. In this current day and age, data is a big deal, and it was something that was talked about when I worked at WRG years ago. Pushing to Race Monitor is fine, but how can the series find better ways to display, capture, and share those results for both the fans and competitors. Race Monitor hasn't really changed much, and MRP came around offering more options, while series could still own their data. So that's one thing. The other though, and probably much larger factor, is Race Monitor's ownership. Race Monitor was started by Mike Weatherman and Mark Lubischer, and it's parent company is Karting Coach Inc, which was started in 2008. In 2022 though, Karting Coach Inc, and underneath it also Race Monitor were acquired by the folks at FloRacing. A filing with the Colorado Secretary of State's office from November shows a statement of merger for Karting Coach Inc. with the other entity involved being DirtonDirt.com, LLC. And obviously DoD was acquired a few years ago by Flo. And with the current nature of competition between Flo and DIRTVision, which is owned by WRG, it wasn't going to be long before that started to get around, and WRG owned properties were going to disappear from Race Monitor. And that's where we are right now. I do not know what the future plans are for Race Monitor from the Flo side, and I have reached out to them with questions. As of right now, nothing has changed with their website or app, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more Flo integration in the future. I also wouldn't hold out hope that certain series are going to return to Race Monitor, regardless of how much drivers and fans tweet about it. So if you're headed to a race track this year, and want living results on your phone, just make sure you have the correct app.

Tonight is Kyle Larson's Late Model Challenge race at Volunteer Speedway. 50 laps, and $20,000 to win, and the entry list is star studded. The track is in Bulls Gap, Tennessee and sits right about an hour southwest of Bristol Motor Speedway, straight down Interstate 81. This is the second time this race is being held, and a year ago it was Mike Marlar leading all 50 for the win. Besides Larson being in attendance in the Rumley six, fellow NASCAR drivers Kyle Busch and Chase Briscoe are coming to race as well. Busch has partnered with Brandon Overton and Wells Motorsports to drive a second entry, and Briscoe will be in a car owned by Kyle Strickler. From there, you'll get a who's who of dirt late model stars including Overton, Jonathan Davenport fresh off that MLRA win last week, Chris Madden, Jimmy Owens, Ricky Thornton Jr., Dale McDowell, Devin Moran, Ross Bailes, Cory Hedgecock and more. This race is unsanctioned, so nothing to race for outside of the cold, hard cash, and Volunteer is a fun track. 4/10 mile, big ol high banks, it's a good one. If you missed it too, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was there yesterday hanging out with Vic Hill, and supporting Josh Berry as he made some laps in a late model to get up to speed for the Cup race at Bristol this weekend. Grandstands open at 3PM eastern today, with cars on track around 6:30. If you're around Bristol this week for the NASCAR stuff, I'd definitely head down there. If not though, FloRacing will have live coverage.

I've tweeted about this a few times now in recent weeks, but guys, if you don't already have it setup, you need to get two-factor authentication going on your social media accounts. We've seen a bunch of dirt racing accounts hacked in the last year, and some recent victims include the Short Track Super Series and Brad Sweet. Go in your app store and get an authenticator app, like those from Google or Microsoft, and follow the instructions to link your various accounts. You can use the same app for all of them, and you need the apps specifically with Twitter and Facebook removing other authentication options recently. Your password is not enough these days, as it's not super difficult to write code to brute force a hack. If you work for a series, a media outlet, are a racer or track, or even just a lowly race fan like me, do it. It will save you a bunch of future headache. You can also Google instructions on how to get the authenticators setup if you don't know how.

A couple of other notes for you today. First, the MLRA late models have cancelled their upcoming weekend at Tri-City Speedway because of saturated grounds and rain. The event will not be made up, but the series will be back at Tri-City later this year, with races scheduled for October 13th and 14th. The next shows on the slate for the MLRA are April 13th at Davenport and April 14th and 15th at 34 Raceway.

Also, just this morning, Selinsgrove Speedway announced they are cancelling their next two weekends of racing as they work through resolving a quote "massive water leak" at the facility. They will use the off time to fix the problem and they also mentioned infrastructure improvements to hopefully avoid situations like this in the future. The next time we'll see racing at Selinsgrove is April 21st through the 23rd.

Four shows on today's streaming schedule. FloRacing has the Kyle Larson late model race plus FloRacing 24/7. Clay Per View has racing overnight from Bunbury Speedway, and there is DIRTVision Now. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

Have a good Thursday out there, we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.