DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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Wait, who is the most popular Outlaw driver?! Future looking brighter for Davenport Speedway | Daily 10-18-2023

Headed to Eldora, the Rocket house car just might be the car to watch for the Lucas title. We'll dive into their season and their incredible numbers at Eldora. Plus who are the most popular World of Outlaws drivers, Davenport Speedway isn't dead yet, and more. Let's go!

It's Wednesday, October 18th, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

The 2023 season may be winding down for a few tracks, but BAPS Motor Speedway in Central Pennsylvania is ready to give fans and drivers a banger to close out the year. BAPS has announced its largest payout in track history with the Les Stewart Sprint Showdown, coming up on Saturday, November 11th. Paying $25k to win and $1325 to start, there is also another over $4,000 available in additional lap money contingencies awards. The overall purse is well over $85,000. The BAPS Sprint Showdown is the last chance for fans and race teams to get on the dirt and show off before the gates close on 2023. It's also an event that has traditionally attracted sanctioned drivers who may not be able to race in PA during the regular season due to contract obligations and scheduling conflicts. Past winners include Brent Marks, Danny Dietrich, Freddie Rahmer and Jacob Allen. If you'd like to be there, right now for a short time, BAPS is offering fans the opportunity to purchase one adult general admission ticket with the second adult ticket $5 off. Just go to bapsmotorspeedway.com to find the Sprint Showdown Event Link or contact the speedway directly. As always, free camping, free parking and plenty of high-backed grandstand seating will be available on the frontstretch. So grab your tickets soon and let them know you heard about it here on DIRTRACKR Daily.

I don't know if you've seen it, but the World of Outlaws are currently running most popular driver fan votes at the moment. It's just reserved for the full time guys, and the current results are kind of interesting. After you vote, you can see who's got the highest percentages, but things are very different from the sprint car side to the late model one. On the sprint car side, three drivers have double digit percentages. They are Logan Schuchart in third with 10%, David Gravel in second with 21% of votes, and Sheldon Haudenschild leading with 32%. I'm not really shocked by those numbers, and as we get closer to a potential split in the sprint car world, the important people might be taking a look at this to see who they should be attracting to their series for 2024. When you look at some of these drivers on Google Trends, Sweet and Gravel are actually much higher than Sheldon, which I think can be attributed to performance this season. On an interesting note, Rico Abreu seems to top all of them via Trends. On the late model side though, I think we've had a bit of ballot stuffing. Todd Cooney has somehow garnered nearly half the vote at 46%. 14th in the standings and just a single top ten all season makes me think the rest of the late model fan base is asleep at the wheel. If you want to check out the voting for yourself, there are links to both sets on the Outlaw social media channels.

In the lead up to this weekend's Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora and the Lucas chase finale, we've been spotlighting the four contenders this week. We talked Devin Moran on Monday, Jonathan Davenport yesterday, and today let's get into Hudson O'Neal. O'Neal is still in his first full season as the Rocket Chassis house car driver, having taken over late in 2022 for the departing Brandon Sheppard. Mark Richards came calling for O'Neal, who was driving for Double Down Motorsports in 2022, to become the next in a very solid line of highly successful house car pilots. It took a little bit of time for Rocket to find their footing in 2023 as we documented on this show, but by the latter part of the East Bay week, things started to fall in place. They ended up winning three straight, and having five straight Lucas top two finishes into the month of May. From there, they have been very strong all season, and while Ricky Thornton Jr. has continued on his tear, Huddy's grip on second place in the Lucas standings never was in doubt. In series action, he heads to Eldora this week with six wins in 53 races, with 31 top fives and 43 top tens. He's also very much in the fight with the Flo series, trailing points leader Bobby Pierce over there by just a few headed to the season's final weekend. It's not outside the realm of possibility that he could win two championships this season. Looking at his whole 2023 campaign, 15 wins in 88 races with 72 total top tens across Lucas, the Outlaws, Flo series, XR and more. As we talked about a few weeks ago, O'Neal should get decently close to a million in earnings this season. As for his chances on Saturday night at the Dirt Track World Championship, I'd put him a pretty close second to Jonathan Davenport. JD clearly the favorite based on recent history, but O'Neal and the Rocket 1 have been very good at Eldora this year between the two crown jewel weekends. In six features, which includes the four prelim nights and the two big shows, O'Neal has led laps in five of them. He had a win and a second before finishing seventh at the Dream in June. And leading into his incredible World 100 victory just a little over a month ago, he could have easily swept the entire weekend. He won the first prelim show, and was out front in the second before having issues. We haven't seen many drivers track down Davenport at Eldora and drive by him for a win, but that's exactly what O'Neal did during the World. They've also got some momentum on their side coming off the recent Flo series win at Tri-County. O'Neal is a multi-time crown jewel winner already at just 23 years old, so this moment won't be too big for him. And he's got one of the most successful dirt late model teams in the history of the sport behind him. These guys will definitely be in the mix on Saturday night. Drop me a comment, let me know your thoughts on the Rocket house car coming into the Lucas season finale with the championship on the line.

I do have some more race track news for you today. We've already talked about the futures this week for Devil's Bowl and Fremont, and now we have at least some indication on the future of Davenport Speedway in Iowa. Yesterday, the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, which own the track, posted to their Facebook page that they have found new promoters for 2024. They said Friday night lights will be back, along with their special events. No further details were provided, but we should know more in the coming months. If you might remember back to late August, following the World of Outlaws late model weekend at Davenport, Ricky and Brenda Kay ended their multi-year run as promoters of the facility. At the time, they said they wanted to spend more time with their grandchildren, but rumors and chatter of clashes with the fair board seem to have played a role in their departure. Hopefully the new promoters have better luck in that department. Davenport has provided some great racing, and it's nice to hear we won't be losing it. We'll keep you posted on future details.

Just a quick note. I had a DM yesterday from sprint car driver AJ Flick. He said he recently realized he had to subscribe again to my show, and that YouTube had removed some of his subscriptions. It might not be a bad idea to check and make sure you are still subscribed yourself. I certainly appreciate AJ giving me the heads up.

Looking around the other dirt racing shows this week, Winged Nation has Sam Hafertepe, Danny Smith and James McFadden. Passing Points has Bryan Hulbert, Dirt Tracks and Rib Racks has Eddie Tafoya, Hoogie's Garage has Kenny Jacobs and Zeb Wise, Dunewich on Dirt has Dave Dusick, and Non-Wing Worldwide has Dave Darland. There are also new episodes of The Dirt Reporters, the Dirt Nerds, Dirt Track Confessions and Dirt Track Weekly. Also joining the podcast page this week is the Across the Groove show. The Cross brothers have guests and talk dirt racing out in California. To see all of these shows and episodes, head over to dirtrackr.com/podcasts.

That's it for the show today. The streaming schedule is just the 24/7 channels and micros from Millbridge on DIRTVision. You can see the schedule at dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.

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