DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript

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That time the Outlaws tried an indoor 410 sprint car race... | Daily 11-23-2023

Did you know the World of Outlaws sprint cars once ran an indoor race? I've got that story today on what turned into a massive disaster, plus midgets at Merced, more sprint car updates, and more. Let's go!

It's Thursday, November 23rd, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.

Happy Thanksgiving friends! Hope everyone has a great holiday out there and you get to enjoy a little time off. Over in the DIRTRACKR merch shop today, hoodies are here! They are performance style hoodies that are a little bit lighter, they are black, and have new cool DIRTRACKR art on the front. I've got sizes large to 3XL in stock and ready to ship. On top of that, everything in the merch shop is on sale today for a little Black Friday deal. And that includes the new hoodies. I put them up and they are immediately marked down along with the hats, shirts, stickers and more. And as an added bonus, any order will get a free can koozie, no matter how small the order is. You can checkout the new hoodies and take advantage of the sale over at shop.dirtrackr.com. No coupon code is needed. Don't forget too, if you are a channel member, you can get an additional 10% merch any time with your coupon code.

For the show today, I wanted to dig into another little bit of history and tell you another story. Indoor shows for dirt racing aren't super common during the season, but we do have a few. The Chili Bowl is obviously a big one, and we've got indoor midget racing in Du Quoin. We are also just a few weeks away from the Gateway Dirt Nationals, where we'll again have super late models and modifieds racing on a very small track inside the dome in St. Louis where the Rams used to play. But did you know there was a World of Outlaws Sprint Car show indoors back in the early 90s? In Tampa, Florida, the Rays baseball team plays inside Tropicana Field, which used to be the Florida Suncoast Dome. It was opened in 1990, and in 1992 the World of Outlaws came through in February for a pair of shows. They took place around the same time of year we now have DIRTcar Nationals, so a little bit of a different version of Florida in February. Organizers built something in the neighborhood of a quarter mile track inside the dome that was sort of oval-ish. You can see in this photo how it's not quite round and has some strange corners with the wall. Paul Arch, who is a photographer who helps me out immensely for these videos, was there and he sent me a bunch of images. The plan was for a two day Outlaw show, plus appearances by four NASCAR drivers who were going to run a special match race and sign autographs. Ken Schrader, Kyle Petty, Michael Waltrip, and Ernie Irvan, along with Chris Economaki from Speed Sport, all jumped on Rusty Wallace's airplane and flew from Daytona, where they were for the 500, to Tampa to participate. Each driver was promised $5000 to appear, but when they showed up at the Dome, they were told the checks they were given were not good, and were instead handed an envelope with $1700 in cash. The group promptly got back on their plane and returned to Daytona without racing. The reason for the rubber checks was because the spectators didn't turn out, and that combined with high operating costs for the event meant there wasn't enough money coming in to cover expenses. The Friday night show was kicked off by Steve Beitler grabbing his one and only career World of Outlaws quicktime, and he did it with a 360 under the hood. Surprisingly, he did not ended up making the main event though, which was won by Steve Kinser. According to Speed Sport, Tampa city officials had to get money together to be able to pay the Friday night purse, with Kinser getting $3500 for the win. Their hope was that it would get the drivers to actually show up for the Saturday show after the disaster that was Friday. Even though the All Stars were racing outdoors not far away at Bubba Raceway Park, the drivers did return, but again to a poor crowd, and more trouble on the way. Sammy Swindell took the $8200 victory over Bobby Davis, but according to a bunch of folks, the teams were never paid their part of the nearly $40,000 Saturday purse. A story in the Tampa Times said that the promoters expected 15,000 to 20,000 spectators each night, but that they had only sold somewhere between 3000 and 4000 advance tickets. They needed to sell 34k tickets to break even. I guess the walk up crowd they had hope for never materialized, and you can see in several of the photos how many empty seats there were. This was the first time that an indoor sprint car race like this had been attempted, but it went so poorly, that it was never tried again. There were other sprint car races run in places like the RCA dome, but they were on concrete or paved surfaces, and not dirt. Looking through the photos, Paul shared with me that this photo of Steve and Sammy was the only time he ever caught them together in an image actually both smiling. Big thanks to Paul and World of Outlaws announcer Johnny Gibson for their help in providing me information for this show. I'll also link below to a Mike Kerchner Speed Sport story for 2021 that has a bunch of details as well.

At Merced last night, the USAC midgets wrapped up their two day show, and we were also treated to 360 sprint cars. That sprint car show was the final one of the year in California, and it was Ryan Timms going the distance for the win. He held off a brief mid race challenge from Tanner Carrick who settled for second at the checkered, with Gauge Garcia the other podium finisher. It was Timms' first winged sprint car win since the Hockett back in September, his fourth 360 win of the year, and sixth total overall sprint car victory. His racing season though will continue this weekend at Ventura in the Keith Kunz midget he's been running all year. The night's USAC midget win went to already crowned series champion Logan Seavey. He started outside front row and was around polesitter Jake Andreotti for the lead by lap seven. Behind Seavey, the action was really good, with announcer Chet Christner saying at one point quote "I can't tell you where to look." There were sliders everywhere and plenty of big movers through the field. Justin Grant went 10th to second, Timms seventh to fourth, Carson Macedo 11th to fifth, Corey Day 15 to seventh, and the night's hard charger was Bryant Wiedeman who went 21st to 12th. With the win, Seavey's top ten streak is now 21 straight races, and he's led laps in four of the last five features. He'll try and repeat his Turkey Night success this weekend from back in 2021. The midget teams have today off for the holiday, and then they've got practice Friday night at Ventura.

A quick update on the sprint car stuff we talked about yesterday. I mentioned Robbie Price and his unsure future after running the last few season with the Sides Motorsports 7S on the road with the Outlaws. He reiterated in a Facebook post yesterday that he does not have a ride currently for the 2024 season. So that obviously means he's on the hunt, and the Sides car now needs a driver. I have not heard anything about the future for the 7S or what direction they might go. Also, Amanda Hoegsted commented on my video yesterday and said that she and Bill Rose will be back on the road next year with the World of Outlaws. We didn't see Bill towards the end of the year as he dealt with some injuries, and then had surgery on his neck. He is now recovery from that successful procedure and is on the mend. Thanks to Amanda for jumping in with the update.

If you're looking for something else to watch today, check out David Gravel's live stream from last night. Me and Jeremy Elliott were on for the first hour or so talking all sorts of sprint car topics, and then after that he had Tanner Holmes on for another hour or so. Watching the Tanner part, it sounds like he doesn't quite yet have his sprint car plans set for 2024, but he did tell Gravel that he'll be back at the Chili Bowl in January. Tanner drove a Chad Boat car last year, ending up 16th in a Saturday C-Main. I'll link to Gravel's show below in the video description if you want to tune in.

That's it for the show today. Make sure to hit up dirtrackr.com to see the weekend streaming schedule and all the other cool dirt racing stuff over there.

Hope you guys have a great Thanksgiving out there, we'll see you back here on Sunday.