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Who is running High Limit? Plus Bridgeport makes safety changes | Daily 10-4-2023

Rico Abreu closes the championship gap to Kyle Larson, Bridgeport makes some safety changes, and who exactly is running High Limit behind the scenes. Let's go!

It's Wednesday, October 4th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

High Limit at Bridgeport last night and a bunch of stuff to talk about with the event. Rico Abreu your winner, led all 35 laps from the pole and became the first High Limit winner to start on the front row of the feature. I do think that Buddy Kofoid was faster, at least at one point in the main event, but his way too ambitious move for the lead did not go well. With 16 to go, he went full send into three, cleared Rico, but did not clear the lap car of Dusty Zomer. The two hit pretty hard, and honestly it was a miracle we didn't have a bigger incident. Zoom Zoom was done for the night, but Kofoid did continue. I did see a scattered midget comment or two in the aftermath, and Buddy has been known to make some sketchy moves at times. He, like a lot of the other young talent, is hyper aggressive, and I think as he gets more experience, he'll mellow a bit. He did pick up the Bridgeport track record last night, and eventually drove back to an 11th place finish. That's two weeks in a row where we had track records with High Limit. With Kofoid out of the picture, Kyle Larson did try and track Rico down in lap traffic, but could never get close enough to make a move. Rico and Larson were joined on the podium by Cory Eliason. I'll be curious to see what happens with Eliason and that Crouch 11 car for 2024. A lot of rumors swirling about what could happen there. Eliason has shown speed this season, including two wins and last night's third place run. But it hasn't all been easy for him and I think team owner Leighton Crouch has big plans and big expectations for that ride. The battle between Larson and Rico for the High Limit title did tighten a bit, with 15 points now separating the two. Looking ahead to next week's finale at Lincoln Park, if Rico wins, Larson has to finish sixth or better to lock up the championship.

A quick merch note before we dive into some other High Limit stuff. I would like to do some hoodies and maybe a new shirt, but before that I'd like to clear out some of what I still have in stock now. So if you want to grab something from shop.dirtrackr.com, use code "OCTOBER" at checkout for 30% off your entire order. That code is good for everything in the shop, hats, shirts, stickers, koozies, everything. I'll also have a link below you can click that will automatically apply the coupon code as well.

Alright, some other notes about last night. I did have two separate people tell me that Mike Hess was indeed in attendance last night. I did hear his voice at one point on the broadcast as well, so he was back race directing on the driver radio. Everyone continues to claim he's not officially an employee, and maybe that's true, but all signs point to this being a done deal for 2024. Tommie Estes, who is also working with USAC this year, continues to be with High Limit as well, and I'll be curious to see the breakdown of series leadership going forward. I could see a scenario where Hess is more than race director, and possibly be bumped up to series director. Rounding out those leadership positions will be very important for High Limit's future. Looking around online and consuming some other content this week, I do think there is a disconnect out there about who is actually in the driver's seat for High Limit, and although FloRacing does have a big part to play here, make no mistake that Brad Sweet is a main driving force behind this series. He's doing a lot of the work behind the scenes to keep High Limit going at the moment, and also a lot of the heavy lifting for the future. Kyle Larson's business manager in Josh Peterman, you'll hear him referred to as JP, is also playing a role here as well, which allows Yung Money to focus on driving and especially his Cup stuff where he's chasing another NASCAR title. It seems as though some think Flo is really running this deal, and that Brad and Kyle are just attached as names, but that's not true. The Flo people, in Rigsby and Ben Shelton and Dustin Jarrett keep their midweek late model series going as organizers, but it's not the same with High Limit. Don't forget that Brad has promoted races for quite a few years now, going back to some of the Outlaw shows at Placerville, plus the operation of Silver Dollar Speedway. He has experience in this arena already. As this progresses, there are plenty of other questions to be answered as we follow this High Limit story, and I'll have plenty of thoughts to share. But I want to see how some of this plays out before we dive into some other areas.

As for Bridgeport itself, they did try at least to address that frontstretch wall opening that played a heavy role in Justin Peck's All Star crash at the track back in the spring. If you might remember, Peck got turned into the fence at the start, and his car ended up in that opening and striking a railing, before spinning back out onto the race track where it was hit again by other cars. Peck's Buch 13 machine was absolutely destroyed, and the cage took heavy damage if you recall some of those videos and images that came from that night. I was sent some photos yesterday of that opening, one from the spring after Peck's incident showing the bent railing, and another from last night where you can see the track had placed plastic barrels there. Big thanks to that individual for the photos. In a perfect world, I think that opening probably needs to be fenced all the way across, but I would hope hitting those barrels is better than a metal stair railing and the larger fence post. It's a makeshift solution, but progress is progress, and I think it's important to point that out. Last night's program did include a modified invitational, which was won by Matt Stangle over Brandon Gross and Billy Pauch Jr.

At Weedsport last night, Erick Rudolph picked up the 358 modified win in advance of Super Dirt Week, while Larry Wight grabbed the Empire Super Sprints win. Jordan Poirier was crowned the Empire Super Sprints champion for the second straight season. Up in New York tonight, attention shifts over to Brewerton for their season finale with 358s and sportsman modifieds on the card. You can watch this one live on DIRTVision.

Looking around the other dirt racing podcasts this week, Winged Nation has Brent Marks, Cap Henry, and Devon Borden. Open Red has Daryn Pittman, Hoogie's Garage has Cole Garner and Elizabeth Phillips, Dunewich on Dirt has Chris Wise, and there are new episodes of The Dirt Reporters, The Dirt Nerds, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks, Dirt Track Confessions, and Dirt Track Weekly. To see the full list of shows and episodes, head over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts.

That's it for today's Daily. Make sure to stop by dirtrackr.com/watchtonight to see what your streaming options are for today.

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