DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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Lucas, Outlaw fields grow; so long Rick Ferkel; Tulsa Shootout wraps up | Daily 1-1-2024
Lucas and the Outlaws add more full timers, the Tulsa Shootout wraps up, we've got the Flo series schedule, and we'll talk Rick Ferkel. Let's go!
It's Monday, January 1st, I'm Justin Fiedler. This is DIRTRACKR Daily.
Happy New Year friends! Hope that hangover isn't treating you too badly today. We've got a bunch of stuff to get into, and we'll start first with last night's Tulsa Shootout results. As is usual, plenty of wild moments during the week, including a few scuffles at the top of the ramp, a thrown steering wheel or two, but even with that amount of cars in one place, the cream always rises to the top. In the younger categories, Braxton Flatt made a nice late move on JJ Beason to score the junior sprint victory after starting sixth. And the restricted win went to Wyatt Miller, who started on the pole and drove on to a nearly 2.6 second margin of victory. Both the younger categories were won by drivers piloting cars campaigned by Chad Boat. Wyatt Miller, if you don't know, is the son of Kelley Earnhardt Miller and LW Miller, and is Dale Earnhardt Jr's nephew. He's become a regular at Millbridge Speedway, and the Earnhardt bloodline seems like it's alive and well. The night's stock non-wing victory went to Frank Flud. Ricky Thornton Jr. looked like the car to beat, driving from sixth to the lead, but his engine went south late giving the top spot to Kris Carroll, who then got outdueled by the ninth starting Flud. The Outlaw non-wing feature was won by Blake Hahn, who started third and picked up his ninth career golden driller. In A-Class, it was an incredible come-back win for Ashton Torgerson, who had that terrifying midget crash at the Chili Bowl a year ago. He was out front early and held off challenges from both Flud and Daison Pursley. And in the finale, Emerson Axsom drove from fourth to the front by lap 16 and went the distance for his fourth career driller. It was also his third career winged outlaw score. Jake Hagopian finished second in his Tulsa Shootout finale, and Joe B Miller was third. With the Shootout now complete, the focus for the Tulsa expo center will shift to the Chili Bowl. Teams practice next Sunday, January 7th, with racing beginning a week from today, on Monday, January 8th.
Before we move on, if you aren't subscribed to our email newsletter, The Slider, you can check that out over at dirtrackr.com/theslider. Later in December we had an interview with Bill Balog from Jordan Wilman, as the Northpole Nightmare gets set for his World of Outlaws rookie run. We also had a piece from Earnhardt Jaworski the day after Christmas about the new era of sprint car racing and the coexistence that will be necessary for success on both sides. And coming up I've got another interview, this one with Kasey Kahne. You can sign up to get the emails free, and if you want to contribute an article for a future issue, let me know. I do pay for submissions that get published.
We talked yesterday about some recent series commitments on the sprint car side, and I wanted to double back to a few late model ones as well. On the World of Outlaws Late Model side, I believe we are now at 14 total for next season. We did get the official nod from the series about Bobby Pierce returning, but we already knew about that one. He'll be back to defend his series championship and at the moment, based on commitments, I'd say Brandon Sheppard will be his closest competition. Of the top five in 2023 points, the two drivers we didn't know about yet were Chris Madden, who remains uncommitted at this moment, and Kyle Bronson. But the series announced back on December 27th that Bronson will return next season as a full timer. He ended this past year fourth in the standings with a win, 11 top fives, and 24 top tens. He had a very strong month of June, where he picked up his win, led laps in six of eight straight races, and had six podiums. The team did switch to Longhorns part way through the season, and this time off should give them a chance to reset and have those cars ready to go come Florida. This team should be in the mix again regularly in 2024, and multiple wins are possible.
On the Lucas side, we've got one fresh face and one championship contender back for 2024. The fresh face is North Carolina driver Daniel Adam, who raced 42 times in 2023, across various late model series and legends cars. He made three Lucas appearances, all at East Bay, and four Outlaw appearances, one at Brownstown, plus all three nights of World Finals. He'll join the series at Golden Isles in January, running Rocket Chassis with Pro Power engines. The championship contender that's returning, is Devin Moran. This one isn't really a surprise, and I don't know that I've seen it posted anywhere super publicly. But I was informed via the DIRTRACKR Instagram account that Moran will be back. He nearly stole the championship at Eldora in 2023 as a bit of a darkhorse coming into the final four at the Dirt Track World Championship. He eventually finished second behind series champion Hudson O'Neal. Moran had two Lucas wins last year, driving for Double Down Motorsports, and had an insane run to the finish that saw him finish 9th or better in 17 straight races. That team definitely figured something out late in the summer, and we know Moran can pile up wins when he gets hot. The additions of Moran and Adam take the Lucas field to 11 at the moment. Some names we are still waiting to hear 2024 plans for include Jonathan Davenport, Brandon Overton, and Tyler Erb.
The final big schedule piece we were waiting for on the late model side for this upcoming racing season was released in recent days as well. The FloRacing Night in America Late Models will again be back for 10 races at nine tracks. Spoon River, Lincoln, Brownstown, Macon, Eldora, Fairbury, Lernerville, I-75, and Senoia will all host the series from May 8th through November 16th. All are weekday shows, except the finale at Senoia, and all will pay $20,000 to win at least. The to-win amounts were adjusted down from last year, but series GM Ben Shelton says they redistributed money down through the field, and are growing feature fields from 22 cars up to 24. The payouts are in line with what we'd heard before, and with some of the changes we've seen elsewhere, like at Eldora. This will be year three of the mini-series, with Brandon Sheppard and Bobby Pierce winning the titles the first two go-arounds. You can see the full Flo schedule over at floseries.com.
Finally today, some sad news in the sprint car world. The Ohio Traveler, Rick Ferkel passed away at the age of 84. Ferkel is a sprint car hall of famer, was one of the original World of Outlaws drivers, and is 29th all time in Outlaw wins at 21. Besides his time as a racer, he was also a series official, crew chief, and campaigned cars for other drivers. Social media is being lit up today by tributes to Ferkel, who was instrumental in so many careers throughout his life, including the one of now NASCAR Cup Series driver Christopher Bell. If you want to hear from the Ohio Traveler yourself, go find Open Red episode number 91 from back in 2018. Me and Ross Wece got to interview him, and in that episode he tells the famous story of building a sprint car out of his daughter's swingset, and then taking it to Eldora. As he talks about, money was tight, he was building cars and chassis at home, and needed some metal tubing because he'd been crashing too often. It's one of the classic Open Red moments and an insane story you should hear for yourself if you haven't before. A quick Google search will lead you to that episode. So long to the Ohio Traveler.
That's it for the show today. The streaming schedule is quiet, but you can find it anytime over at dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
Hope you guys have a great Monday out there, we'll see you back here tomorrow!