DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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The trouble teams will face in a growing High Limit field of full-timers | Daily 12-31-2023
After a short break, the Daily show is back! We'll talk High Limit additions, plus the difficult area some teams will find themselves in as the series approaches 20 teams, and plenty more. Let's go!
It's Sunday, December 31st, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
It's the final day of 2023, but after a few days off around Christmas, we are back at it today. I hope you had a good holiday and were able to take some time off yourself. While I was away, I did post three new interviews, including ones with Brandon Sheppard, Alex Bowman, and Dominic Scelzi. I hope you got a chance to check those out, because there were great things in all of them. If you haven't, they are available here on the YouTube channel and in the podcast feed. These Daily shows will continue to be the main focus for my content, but I will try and sprinkle in some more interviews throughout the year. If you are new around here, or just don't subscribe, make sure to hit that button and like these videos. That's a free way to help out the show and make sure you don't miss future episodes.
There is plenty to talk about from the last week, and we'll start today working back through some of it. The big racing happening at the moment is sprint cars down under and the Tulsa Shootout. I won't go into the Shootout today, as drillers won't be given out until tonight, so we'll talk more shootout tomorrow. If you want to watch, the Shootout is playing all day over on FloRacing and will continue into tonight.
Down under, Rico Abreu and Brad Sweet have picked up victories in recent days, as has Carson Macedo. Western Australia Speedweek continues coming up at Bunbury, with Perth next up after that. You can catch a lot of the racing action live on Clay Per View, which is the Australian version of DIRTVision or FloRacing. DV and Flo have in the past had some racing from Australia and New Zealand in the offseason, but that all seems to have dropped off at this point. It's clear that those events don't move the needle for the streaming services here, because if they did, they'd still be carried. But, especially with Flo, we've seen them not hesitate to shed series and events they don't view as revenue drivers. At one point, Flo had a huge number of events through the year, and now they've really pared that down to just the big stuff. And I'd expect that trend to continue. They've got their big late model stuff, they were a big driving force in creating High Limit, and anything else needs to push subscribers or it will be dropped.
Speaking of High Limit, their full timers list has grown in the past week to now 15 teams. The two most recent additions were Tanner Thorson and Conner Morrell. I think Thorson was a bit of a surprise, that wasn't a name I had heard mentioned as a potential full timer. Thorson will head out on the road with a new team, Rod Gross Motorsports, and campaign the number 88. I don't know anything about this team, other than a Pennsylvania-based LLC I found via a quick search. Maybe you guys in the comments can clue me in on this one. Thorson is much better known for his exploits on the non-wing side, including that 2022 Chili Bowl win and the 2016 USAC national midget championship. He's made scattered winged sprint car starts back through 2015 and appeared 11 times in 2023. He drove the LA Competition 58 car a bunch in Pennsylvania, and had top fives during PA Speedweek at BAPS and the Grove. His busiest sprint car year was 2022, where he made 27 starts, so going full time with High Limit will be a significant step up. Thorson is a talented driver, but going up against this group with limited experience and a startup team will be a tall task. The other High Limit addition was Conner Morrell and the Marc Dailey owned 28 team. They'll go full time, stepping up from the All Stars a season ago, while Dailey's other car, the 2MD with Cap Henry behind the wheel, will chase the midweek championship. I actually got a chance to chat with Conner Morrell at the PRI show a few weeks ago, and at the time he was working on getting support together to try and run High Limit, so good to see that they were able to make it work. Morrell had four top tens in 410 competition in 2023, including two with the All Stars, and one with FAST. He ended the season fifth in All Star driver points and eighth in the owner standings. Just like with Thorson, Morrell will face a big jump up in competition with High Limit.
Looking ahead, I still think there are probably at least two more teams to sign on, including Tyler Courtney. I remain surprised that they haven't been announced yet, but behind the scenes it sounds like the High Limit brass view this one as a done deal, even though there is chatter of a few issues to overcome first. As we continue to see more teams join High Limit, we are starting to get into that territory of too many cars for the system. Once we start getting beyond 12 cars, the economics for those down the order start to become more difficult, as those teams can't make enough features or money to be able to survive. I think it's highly likely that High Limit goes to Florida with close to 20 teams, but come Texas at the end of the season, that number will be smaller. If you look at the teams further down the Outlaw standings in 2023, like Robbie Price, like Noah Gass, you can see where things start to break down. Price had just shy $90,000 in race winnings, tack on another $30k or $35k in tow money, plus the end of the season point fund at $52,500. That's not even $200k for the season. It's pretty tough to run a 410 sprint car operation on tour without significant sponsorship funding at that level. And that is true anywhere, not just with the Outlaws. The same economics will apply to High Limit. I think the newness of High Limit, plus the potential freedom are drawing in a lot of teams early. Get in now with the hopes of getting close to that charter threshold and hope things go your way. If they don't, these teams will be no worse off, and they can race elsewhere and go back to picking and choosing. So High Limit at 15 currently, the Outlaws at 11. There should still be one or two more to come on the Outlaw side as well.
One interesting possibility to watch on the sprint car side as well is Dominic Scelzi. If you didn't watch my interview with him, we did get into some rumors involving him considering a move to a national series. His crew chief in Jimmy Carr has a ton of experience on the road, and they have traveled plenty in the past. Even if they don't go full time, Dom did say they would like to come east more often in 2024. Definitely something to watch for one of the main California teams.
Looking ahead to the upcoming week, plenty more to talk about, including the aforementioned Tulsa Shootout, several national late model touring teams committing for 2024, and an interesting situation developing in Central PA's sprint car scene. So stay tuned for all of that.
Before we close out, thanks to Jeremy Elliott for his recognition of this show and DIRTRACKR for 2023. In his recent year end awards, he spotlighted what I do here, and I always appreciate when folks in the industry take notice of my work. I know I won't always get things 100% right, but I try my ass off to make sure I represent the sport as best I can and keep you guys informed. We more than doubled the YouTube subscribers this year, from less than 13k at the end of 2022, to more than 26k here as we close out. And we had massive viewership growth this year, going from about 2.2 million show plays in 2022, to well over 5.5 million for 2023. If you guys keep tuning in, I'll keep pushing to bring you more and better.
That's it for the show today, make sure to stop by dirtrackr.com for the streaming schedule and latest news from across the sport.
Hope you guys have a great Sunday out there and a safe New Year's Eve, we'll see you back here tomorrow!