DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Rare transparency from the Outlaws in Carson Macedo crash investigation | Daily 6-16-2023
On this final daily of the week, we are talking rare World of Outlaws transparency, early Eldora Million entries, and everything you need to know for a busy dirt racing weekend coming up. Let's go!
It's Friday, June 16th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Real quick before we get to the show, it's a big merch drop Friday over at shop.dirtrackr.com. There are three new items to check out today, and more will be coming in the next few weeks. In this first round, there are new decals featuring one of the alternate DIRTRACKR logos. I'm calling this one the "Under the Lights" logo sticker. You can get one for $4, and I've still got the traditional logo and late model stickers as well. There are also two new hat options. One is black, features the logo in white, and the hats are distressed and adjustable. These are $25. The other new hat is a graphite colored Flexfit with the logo in black. These are all size large/extra large and are $30. There are limited quantities of the hats, and the last restock I did of logo hats was sold out in nine days, so don't wait if you want one. I do still have some late model shirts hanging around which you can get for $15, and I've got just a few sprint car shirts left in limited sizes, those are $15 as well. You can find all the merch over at shop.dirtrackr.com and there is more to come soon.
I know I've brought up safety stuff on this show a lot lately, but with some of the recent incidents we've seen, there is definitely plenty to talk about and plenty still to do to make improvements around the sport. It seems though that the calls for better are being heard, and we got some evidence of that yesterday with the World of Outlaws and World Racing Group putting out a statement concerning the Carson Macedo crash at Knoxville. This is a level of transparency that I don't remember getting in the recent past, and I couldn't think of an example of a situation where the series and WRG had done this in recent years. That is putting out a public statement about an ongoing crash investigation. The statement thanked those that acted to get Carson to safety, and said they have studied all available video to to find where to make improvements. It also said quote "Series officials have been working to determine the cause of the accident, the cause of the fire suppression bottle dislodging from its mount during the crash, and the cause of the fire itself. The investigation started immediately after the car was returned to the team’s pit area and is continuing with the help of Jason Johnson Racing, Lifeline Fire, and Kaeding Performance. The findings will be shared with teams and industry stakeholders to hopefully prevent another situation like this from occurring during a crash." The series is really under no obligation to share anything with us as race fans, but it's clear they are taking this situation seriously and wanted the community to know it. The most important thing is working with and communicating with the teams about necessary changes going forward, but I like that they went the step further. This was twice this week that the series addressed issues in the public space, if you include the Wayne County tweet thing from earlier, and hopefully this is a trend for the future.
As for racing, the Outlaws are at Beaver Dam in Wisconsin for the next two nights. Today is $10,000 to win, and Saturday is $20,000 to win. Sheldon Haudenschild has won three straight at Beaver Dam, and before that it was Brad Sweet winning three straight. Coming off a brutal weekend at Knoxville where he had finishes of 15th and 25th, Sheldon could use a good showing or two. Sweet enters with a 14 point lead over David Gravel, with Carson Macedo 30 back. As we talked about yesterday, Macedo will race after his nasty crash last week. Both nights will be live on DIRTVision.
At Atomic Speedway last night, Ohio Sprint Speedweek got rolling again, and it turned into a dominating win for Tim Shaffer. He led all 30 laps from the pole, toppiong JJ Hickle and Justin Peck. The Steel City Outlaw hadn't won an All Star feature since September of 2020, when he beat Shane Stewart and Cale Thomas at Attica. Finishing a couple spots ahead of Tyler Courtney, Zeb Wise extended his speedweek points lead a few more, to now six with Eldora and Portsmouth still to come. The All Stars had 41 cars last night, and I would not be surprised to see that grow with Eldora being the final race before the Million, and more than $20,000 to win on Saturday. FloRacing has livestreams of both shows.
Speaking of the Million, the first few entries are viewable over at eldoraspeedway.com. 21 cars on the pre-entry list so far, and a bunch of big names on it already, including Donny Schatz, Brent Marks, Lance Dewease, Brian Brown, Brad Sweet, Kyle Larson and Rico Abreu. I was a bit surprised to see Daryn Pittman listed, and he's going to race the Alex Bowman Ally 55 car. I'm not sure when we'll see Bowman race again, as we know that Jake Swanson is running the rest of the High Limit schedule in that car, but cool to see Pittman coming out to make a start. We'll keep an eye on the list to see who else ends up joining the chase for a million bucks.
If you want some big time late model racing today and tomorrow, look no further than the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series at Smoky Mountain Speedway. Twin 30 lap features tonight for $5000 to win, and then $50,000 to the winner on Saturday. Ricky Thornton Jr. is the series points leader, and comes into the weekend with seven straight top five runs, which includes three victories. Hudson O'Neal is second in the standings, and he's coming in with his pockets a little fatter after winning the $100,000 show at Kokomo with XR back on Monday. Chris Madden won this race a year ago, but his schedule shows him off this weekend. Other guys with good average finishes recently at Smoky Mountain include Mike Marlar, Jimmy Owens, and Jonathan Davenport. Both nights of Lucas are live on FloRacing if you can't get there.
With USAC on Thursday, Max Adams and Thomas Meseraull led laps early, but it was Emerson Axsom who went to victory lane for the first time in 2023. Axsom and the Clauson Marshall team hadn't won a national sprint car race since Cocopah back in October of 2022, and it was very cool that they were able to get it done on Bryan Clauson's 34th birthday. TMez settled for second after leading 15 laps, and I feel like he needed a good run. His midget season has not gone great so far, with six finishes outside the top ten through nine events. Up next for Eastern Storm are stops at Williams Grove, Port Royal, and Action Track USA through Sunday. Axsom holds the weeklong championship lead, while Jake Swanson still shows the way for the season long standings. One sidenote, is the backstretch at Big Diamond as narrow as it looks on the broadcasts? There is that one tractor tire about the midpoint of the straightaway, and it looks like guys have to actively try and avoid it.
The Summer Nationals was at Kanakakee last night, and Brian Shirley won again, to go 2-for-2 to start the season. Jason Feger tried like hell to challenge him, but just couldn't quite get close enough to make a move. He settled for second with Dennis Erb Jr. third. Tyler Nicely was the night's modified winner after coming up short to Allen Weisser at Peoria. The next races for the Summer Nationals are at Tri-City, Fairbury, and Sycamore to close week one.
Out west, the fastest four days in motorsports are off and running for the NARC sprint cars. They were at Southern Oregon Speedway, and the car count ended up being a bit disappointing with only 17 410s in the pits. I know 410s are light in Oregon, but I would have thought some more of the California guys would have towed north to race. The feature went caution free, and it was Corey Day picking up win number four on the year. Justyn Cox went absolutely full send in the final corner to try and get around him, but came up short. My guy Tanner Holmes rounded out the podium. The NARC sprint cars head to Douglas County in Roseburg tonight, then Willamette on Saturday and Grays Harbor in Washington on Sunday.
Other winners last night included Carlos Ahumada Jr. with the USMTS at Cedar Lake. The Masters continues tonight and tomorrow. And at Creek County, Sean McClelland picked up his first ASCS National Tour win since his rookie season at Houston Raceway Park, way back in 2006. He topped Chance Morton, who also led laps, and Jordon Mallett. Jason Martin had issues and finished 21st, while Seth Bergman's podium streak came to an end after eight races with a ninth place finish. The ASCS is headed for Humboldt today and 81 Speedway on Saturday.
One other race I wanted to spotlight today, this one for my northeast fans. The Short Track Super Series is at Devil's Bowl Speedway in Vermont on Sunday. $10,000 to win, $500 to start for the north region. Matt Sheppard already has two north region wins this season, and he's the defending winner at Devil's Bowl. It should be a stacked field on hand, so check that one.
Drop me a comment, let me know what your dirt racing plans are for the weekend. If you are so inclined, maybe hit me up on the DIRTRACKR Twitter account with some tweet your seat action over the next few nights wherever you are.
Hope you guys enjoy the dirt racing weekend out there, we'll see you back here on Monday.