DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Will we see a bunch of dirt late model ride swapping? Plus more on High Limit and the All Stars | Daily 9-27-2023
The dirt late model silly season has been pretty quiet, but that might be about to change. We'll talk about some recent moves, plus more on this High Limit/All Stars situation, and plenty of racing to check out. Let's go!
It's Wednesday, September 27th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
High Limit sprint cars at Lernerville last night. Big crowd, $50,000 to the winner, Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the house. The vibes were pretty high. In the night's main event, I wonder how often in history you have guys like Kyle Larson and Brad Sweet start on the front row of the feature, and neither pick up the win. Because that was the case last night. Each led laps, but Lernerville was heavy and treacherous, and big moments and mistakes knocked both drivers out of contention. David Gravel was there to capitalize, and he just made fewer mistakes than the other guys did. He picked up the $50k with his final Outlaw freebie of the season. Definitely a good decision for him. Rico Abreu made a late charge to second, and Sweet finished third. With Rico second and Larson down in eighth after his big moment in turn two with nine to go, the championship lead is just 20 points with two races left. We'll see if Rico can keep chopping it down and take the fight to Yung Money. The Lernerville surface was lighting fast all night, and then come feature time it got a little cowboy up in spots. That heavy track allowed Sweet to knock down the 21 year old track record, which Joey Saldana set back in 2002 before there were sprint car weight limits. Big hat tip to Justin Sanders on his spin and win in the heat race. Not often you can completely loop the car, not get a caution, and drive off to a win. Next up for High Limit is Tuesday, October 3rd at Bridgeport. And the season ends October 10th at Lincoln Park.
As for what we talked about on yesterday's show around the High Limit and All Stars situation. As expected, no big announcement yesterday that High Limit had bought out the All Stars from Tony Stewart. We'll see if something ends up getting done in the future. Thinking through this specific deal, I think there are cases to be made on both sides for why High Limit should or shouldn't acquire the All Stars as they work towards expanding beyond just a small, midweek series. If some version of High Limit goes to a 50 or 60 race schedule, which seems incredibly likely at this point, they will need a bunch more infrastructure beyond what little they have now. And absorbing the All Stars would solve some of those problems. It would also eliminate some measure of competition for cars and tracks. It would obviously depend though on the price tag, and I had someone ask yesterday what the value of the All Stars is. That's honestly a question I cannot answer. There is clearly some book value for trucks and equipment that the series possesses, but there is also some intrinsic value for the series branding and history. At the end of the day, something is only worth what another party is willing to pay for it. On the flip side, Brad and JP might want to just start fresh with everything, and avoid laying out the capital to buy another series. They don't really need the All Stars to expand.
I did want to get back to the current High Limit infrastructure too. There are clearly still issues for the series to work through around race management and officiating. Earlier this year we talked about the problems at Tri-City with the Rico and Larson officiating deal. And last night you saw it during qualifying, which was a mess, sometimes one car at a time, sometimes two. Cars getting extra attempts, push trucks everywhere. The feature was also shortened at some point from 40 laps to 35, and I don't remember seeing or hearing a reason why, or even acknowledgement from the series about it. One moment it was 40, and then as the cars were pushing off, it was 35. It's actually kind of interesting to watch a high profile group of people make mistakes and try and figure things out on the fly. Not something we see often, because the other big series we watch have all figured these things out and we don't even notice them. I think that's why they stand out so much when there are problems. Plenty more to come though with High Limit and it's future, and I'm sure we'll be talking a lot about it in the coming months as they work towards 2024.
Over to some late model stuff. The FloRacing Night in America series is in action tonight, and there have been a few silly season moves as of late. With things so active on the sprint car side, it's felt like the driver ride swapping has been pretty tame on the late model side. But some moves have been announced, and it sounds like more are coming. In recent days we learned that Max Blair will part ways with the Boom Briggs' owned team for 2024. Briggs has run a two car operation in recent seasons, first with Josh Richards, and now with Blair. But it sounds like he's ready to scale back down to just one team. So for next season, Blair is moving over to the Pennsylvania based Centerline Motorsports team. The plans are for Blair to remain on a national tour, but they have not yet decided on Lucas or the Outlaws. Blair is currently ninth in the Lucas standings and on his way to rookie of the year. He's got a split field prelim win, and 22 top tens in 50 races.
On the regional level, modified standout Ethan Dotson has signed with Georgia late model team Coltman Farms Racing for next season. Dotson currently pilots the Longhorn chassis modified house car and has a number of wins this season in IMCA and UMP competition. He also scored a pair of Comp Cams series late model wins this year. No schedule was announced for this new pairing. There are also other rumors out there about changes, so we'll see what transpires coming up. Drop me a comment and let me know who you think could or should be on the move for 2024 in the late model world.
As for the Flo series, they are at Tyler County tonight for $23,000 to win. Bobby Pierce currently holds a slight lead on Hudson O'Neal for the series championship. Should be a strong field tonight, and you can watch it live on FloRacing.
At Indianapolis today, the BC39 gets going on the dirt inside turn three of the big track. Right now there are 72 USAC midgets on the entry list. Today is the Stoops Pursuit event, and then Friday and Saturday are split field prelim nights leading into Saturday's finale. Four years of the BC39 have seen four different winners, in Brady Bacon, Zeb Wise, Kyle Larson, and Buddy Kofoid. The field of entries includes all the main national names, plus a whole lot more, so action should be pretty wild all four days. If you can't get there, this one will also be live on Flo.
One other item for you today. We talked last week about Sam Hafertepe Jr.'s Hills Racing team protesting Northern Sprint Car Nationals winner Mike Bowman at the Ohsweken Speedway. Both teams' magnetos and ignition boxes were sent to MSD to be checked out for traction control devices, and the track announced this morning that Bowman's win is upheld, and that no devices were found. So Bowman keeps the big trophy and the $30,000 check. The Northern Sprint Car Nationals was the final event of the year for Ohsweken, and all that's left is the banquet on November 17th.
Looking around dirt racing podcast land over the past week, Winged Nation has Lance Dewease and Chris Windom. Quicktime has Stu Snyder and Joey Danley, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks has Chuck Reed, Hoogie's Garage has Sean Quinn, Non-Wing Worldwide has Todd Hobson, and there are new episodes of The Dirt Reporters from Dirt on Dirton, the Dirt Nerds, Dirt Track Confessions, and Dirt Track Weekly. To see all these shows head over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts.
That's it for today's Daily. You do have a few streaming options today, so make sure to hit up the schedule over at dirtrackr.com.
Hope you guys have a great Wednesday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow.