DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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A new sprint car from a well known name makes sneaky, quiet debut | Daily 9-5-2023

An interesting sprint car ran Sunday in a 360 show out in Washington, and I've got some details on it for you today. We'll also talk Monday results, and share some fun stuff from the Dirt Classic. Let's go!

It's Tuesday, September 5th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

We are just a couple of days away from the 53rd World 100, and if you are going to be at Eldora Speedway this week, be sure to visit our friends at the Whistle Stop Bar and Grill. The Whistle Stop is located south of the track, just six miles down 118, in Ansonia. When you leave Eldora and head south, it's a straight shot there, you don't have to make any turns, as the Whistle Stop sits on 118, which is Main Street in Ansonia. The Whistle Stop have been huge supporters of dirt racing with partnerships with Sheldon and Jac Haudenschild, Rico Abreu, Chris Windom, Cap Henry, the Dirt Nerds, Eldora Speedway and obviously DIRTRACKR! They offer indoor and outdoor dining for breakfast, lunch and dinner or you can order online at whistlebarandgrill.com and take it back with you. If you're a cigar smoker, they'll have the mobile cigar lounge there all weekend as well, so you can check that out too. Grab some new friends in the campground or grandstands and make the trip right down the road to The Whistle Stop, Ohio's favorite train depot.

We'll start today off with the Labor Day racing action from around the country. The day kicked off yesterday with 410 sprint cars at Port Royal. I got asked in the YouTube comments if I thought there would be any All Star guys there to get laps ahead of the Tusky 50, and I initially thought there wouldn't be. But I got proved wrong, as there were a few who made the trip including Chris Windom and Tyler Courtney, plus Sye Lynch who is basically a full timer. Some other travelers who were there included Brian Brown, Parker Price Miller, Lynton Jeffrey, and Sam Hafertepe Jr. Brownie sat on the pole and led early, before Mike Walter took over with a sketchy slider. Late in the going though, eighth starting Dylan Cisney was on the move, and after a brief battle with Walter, he took over for good and picked up his first Port Royal victory since opening day. Anthony Macri and Brown rounded out the podium. Walter ended up finishing way down the order after tangling with Macri battling for second. He backed it into the turn three wall pretty hard and was done for the day. Quick side note, I love on the live streams when things go quiet on the broadcast under caution, and you can hear things being said in the tower around the announcer. If you pay attention, you can catch a good tidbit or two here and there. The $56,000 to win Tuscarora 50 starts Thursday at Port.

At Grays Harbor with the Outlaws, after a brief opening lap battle with Brad Sweet, pole sitter Logan Schuchart took over for good on lap two and went the distance for Outlaw win number six. Rico Abreu and Donny Schatz completed the night's podium finishers. The infield tires at Grays were hungry last night, and there were several victims through the course of the night, including Sheldon Haudenschild and Buddy Kofoid among others. It's a razor thin margin on that bottom to hit it right and avoid those tires. As I put the show together, points haven't been updated on the Outlaw website, but Sweet did extend again, finishing fourth with Gravel sixth and Macedo eighth. Should be 82 back to Gravel now, and 106 to Macedo. Not looking good right now for those other guys, and I think Gold Cup this week might be show-up points only with the differing format. I'll try and confirm that. Gold Cup starts at Silver Dollar on Thursday.

The USAC midgets closed out the Fireman's Nationals at Angell Park on Monday night with a Logan Seavey win. He snagged the lead from polesitter Taylor Reimer just past half way and drove on to season win number four. He's now got 11 straight top four finishes. Jade Avedisian, and Justin Grant rounded out the top three. With a few weeks off now, Seavey's championship lead has ballooned to 171 points over JG.

The big IMCA Super Nationals winner from Monday was Jeff Aikey in the late model. It was number eight for him, and he took home $3 grand and a bunch of other good stuff. Today's schedule at Boone includes a full show for sport compacts, plus more qualifying races for the northern sport mods and hobby stocks.

Before we get into my main topic today, I wanted to share a couple of quick things from the Dirt Classic at Lincoln. Cliff Adams was our free ticket winner, and he shared his Sunday view on Twitter. Nice to see him having a good time. Also, the promo code buyers got entered into a drawing, and that drawing's winner was Joe who emailed me this morning. Him and his wife got to check out the trophy and winner's check ahead of time, plus got to grab a photo with race winner Brent Marks afterwards. Really cool deal that Lincoln did for my DIRTRACKR audience, and I really appreciate them sharing the photos with me. Hopefully we'll get to do more stuff like this in the future.

Alright, back on Sunday, in between the Outlaws finishing up at Skagit and the Labor Day show at Grays Harbor, there was a 360 program at Grays. It also featured IMCA modifieds, limited sprints and hornets. The 360 field was 15 cars, and the feature was won by Trey Starks. It would have been something that was easy to pass over if you were perusing Sunday results. What was interesting though about that show, was Corey Day was in the field as well, but not in a Jason Meyers car like we've seen him recently. He was driving an all white car with the number four on it. In looking at some places online and asking around a bit, the car is owned by Willie Kahne, who owns Factory Kahne shocks. And he had quite the group of crew members hanging around, including Drew Warner, and Carson and Cole Macedo. The chassis was built by Triple X, and built here in the US. That's notable, because most of the Triple X production happens overseas in China. The chassis are put together there, and then sent here for quality control before they are distributed to teams. Triple Xs are common in sprint car racing, with guys like Aaron Reutzel, Logan Schuchart, and Brady Bacon among those using them. Triple X though has their main US facility just north of Seattle, in Arlington, Washington. That works out great for Willie, because Factory Kahne is in Enumclaw, just about 75 miles south of where Triple X is. Just for a bit of history and context, Willie has campaigned sprint cars before, notably back in 2017 and 2018. James McFadden and Aaron Reutzel drove the car then, and that was a partnership with Sean Dyson. They ran Trophy Cup I think, some World of Outlaws shows, and some other west coast stuff. Those number 51 sprint cars had chassis built by CS9 which were special designs from Willie, with a big focus on driver safety. Willie told me and Ross way back on a 2017 episode of Open Red that they had a wider cockpit for the driver, and he was trying to make improvements because of guys getting hurt, including Joey Saldana. What was interesting though on that episode of Open Red, was Willie also telling us that he used some specialized testing equipment at Triple X back then to test his design, so this connection between he and Triple X already existed. And in looking at some images of this car that Corey Day drove on Sunday, the design is similar to what Willie had before, with maybe some updates and improvements. But unlike the rest of Triple X's cars, this one was supposedly put together at their Washington facility that does have the capacity to fabricate custom pieces. I have no idea if we'll see this car again soon in some races, as Willie kind of pops in and out as he wants and as his schedule allows. He's obviously busy building shocks and running FK, but he's a super interesting guy with a long history in sprint car racing, and plenty of technical know-how. If you want to listen to that episode of Open Red, I'll link to it below. It's definitely one of my favorites. I'll also link to a video from Cali Dirt Video that has a bunch of footage around the car from Sunday. Just like the Dave Blaney car we talked about last week after his Sharon win, this deal caught my eye because I like seeing people try and innovate inside the box. At first glance, these Willie cars might not look much different, but if you dive in a bit, they are definitely a bit of a departure. Hopefully we'll see it again soon.

That's it for today's show. A few things on the streaming schedule today, even though it's a Tuesday, so stop by dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

Hope you guys have a good day out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow.