DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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We haven't done a sprint car silly season/ride update in a while... | Daily 9-12-2023
An update today on more sprint car silly season moves, including a full circle situation for Justin Henderson. We'll also talk more Hoosier stuff, plus racing on tap for tonight. Let's go!
It's Tuesday, September 12th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Yesterday afternoon the new DIRTRACKR logo hats hit the merch shop, and they are in hand ready to ship. They are both trucker style hats, with one being gray with the logo in black, and the other being multicam camo with the logo in white. These will ship free for US buyers. Also, if you want to grab a shirt with your hat order, use code "HAT23" at checkout and that will get you 30% off any of the shirts in the store. The discount code will expire tomorrow at noon eastern. You can checkout all the DIRTRACKR apparel over at shop.dirtrackr.com.
We haven't done a sprint car silly season update in a while, and there have been several recent moves including one yesterday in Central Pennsylvania. We'll start there. Since the split with driver Lance Dewease, Don Kreitz had tapped a few different drivers to run the powder blue 69K, including Logan Wagner for Port Royal events, and Daryn Pittman for the National Open at Williams Grove. Yesterday we found out that regular midwest competitor Justin Henderson will be in the 69K for a trio of events late in the season. That includes the October 14th Weldon Sterner Memorial at Lincoln, World Finals at Charlotte, and the year ending race at BAPS. This might seem like a strange pairing, but it's actually an interesting full circle move. I didn't remember this myself, but when Don Kreitz decided to get out of the 69K back in 2015, Henderson was used as a fill-in driver then. When Henderson left the Kreitz team to return to the midwest, that's when Lance Dewease's eight year run in the car kicked off. And now, Henderson finds himself back in the car for a few races. Jeremy Elliott reported that Henderson was of those 75 drivers that reached out to Kreitz to talk about the open seat after the Dewease split. It sounds like the driver situation with Kreitz will remain fluid into the future, and Henderson could stay in the mix if all goes well.
Other recent moves include Pennsylvania driver Tyler Bear splitting with BK Motorsports. Bear had made 11 410 starts this season, mostly at Port Royal. In Ohio, Zane Devault is out of the JSM 23 and has been running some scattered 360 shows very recently. He was a USCS winner at Carolina back in July, and had some top five runs during Western PA Speedweek. And young Cameron Smith decided to step away from the Trone 39 following the Dirt Classic at Lincoln. Smith had made 53 starts this year all around Pennsylvania, with five top fives and 15 top tens. No announced plans for either of those two sides at the moment.
Back to the tire issues we saw during the World 100 at Eldora. Kevin Kovac had a full breakdown yesterday, with comments from a bunch of people involved. I retweeted it on the DIRTRACKR Twitter account if you want to see it, it's also posted over on floracing.com. Hoosier's Shanon Rush said they were seeing increased tire temperatures on the inside of those blown right fronts, which he said were the highest he's seen in 21 years on the job. His recommendation to the teams was to run 14 PSI in those tires and reduce the camber in the suspension. But it sounds like in the busy-ness of the weekend, that messaging didn't get around to all the teams. And those with destroyed race cars were not pleased. I'd defintely recommend reading through the whole thing if want more details.
After a three and a half month break, the FloRacing Night in America late models are back in action tonight with a stop at Fairbury for $23,000 to win. As a quick reset, Hudson O'Neal leads the midweek series championship right now by 24 points over Bobby Pierce. Tim McCreadie, Jonathan Davenport, and Ricky Thornton Jr. complete the top five in the standings. Through the opening seven races, O'Neal, RTJ, and Dennis Erb Jr. have two wins each, and Mike Marlar has one. Besides the top 10 drivers in points, the field should include the usual suspects at Fairbury, plus guys like Brandon Overton, Spencer Hughes, Terbo, Earl Pearson Jr., and Ryan Gustin. Earlier this season, Lucas and Outlaw wins at Fairbury went to Pierce and Thornton. And other guys to score super late model wins there this year include Shannon Babb and Jason Feger with MARS, and Mike Spatola, McKay Wenger, Frank Heckenast Jr., Kyle Bronson, and Ethan Dotson in weekly action. Including tonight, six Flo series races remain in 2023, with Tyler County next on September 27th, then 411 on October 10th, Tri-County on October 12th, and Senoia on November 10th and 11th. Later this week, the national guys are headed to Iowa for the Late Model Knoxville Nationals, but there will be plenty of other dirt late model racing going on, including with MARS, the Southern All Stars, XR Workin' Man, Iron-Man and more. I know I've mentioned this here before, but if you want a nice run down each week on the larger late model schedule, dirtondirt.com does a nice job with theirs. On the flip side, tjslideways.com has a fairly comprehensive weekly open wheel schedule as well.
Elsewhere tonight, the Clay County Fair is going on in Spencer, Iowa and the race track is hosting the ASCS National Tour and the SLMR late models. You can find all the fair details at claycountyfair.com. This will be a busy week for the ASCS sprint car competitors, as after tonight, they are headed to Wheatland, Missouri for the Hockett/McMillin Memorial weekend. The three nights of racing will also feature the non-wing POWRi WAR sprint cars. In the ASCS championship, Jason Martin has stretched away a bit from Matt Covington, with everyone else from Jordan Mallett in third on down really too far behind to make a charge. In 24 races, Martin has nine wins, 16 top fives, and 21 top tens. He's also won two of the last three races. Just 10 more races left for the ASCS 360 guys, with the season ending later in October.
For those of you not interested, I'm going to talk about iRacing now. Feel free to tune out here and we'll catch you on the next one. For those of you sticking around, what looked like an easy World of Outlaws late model championship and $10,000 for Evan Seay next week at Charlotte has now been blown wide open. Logan Rumsey took the race lead last night at the virtual Lincoln Speedway past half way and went on to his second series win of the season. Behind him, after leading early from the pole Seay slipped down through the top five and eventually was involved in an incident with real life crate late model racer Tanner Tomasi. Seay was done for the race, finishing down in 19th. The incident also collected his teammate Blake Matjoulis, and with just one race to go both Rumsey and Kendal Tucker now have a shot at the title. Seay's points lead has been halved, and while he's still in the driver's seat, he can't afford any issues next Monday night. You can watch the season finale live next Monday night at 9PM eastern on YouTube and DIRTVision.
Hope you guys have a good Tuesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow.