Dirt Racing’s Winning Moment: Brandon Sheppard and Ryan Gustin both couldn’t maintain their leads over Chad Simpson, who prevailed to win a wild Lucas Oil MLRA feature at the Davenport Speedway in Iowa Thursday night (April 13).
Both Sheppard and Gustin ran down Simpson during green-flag runs but found late-race trouble; Sheppard cut down a tire while leading with around 10 laps to go, while Gustin drove off the berm in turn 2 during the closing laps battling for the point.
Super late models were the story of the night and continued their prominence in 2023 in more locations than one, with home-state ringer Ross Robinson besting Bryan Bernheisel late to win at Georgetown Speedway in Delaware.
Dirt Racing’s Dramatic Moment(s): Pretty much all 50 laps of Thursday’s late model feature at Davenport. The quarter-mile black dirt track has been as close to a sure thing as super late model racing has since it was reconfigured.
What Dirt Racing Fans’ll Be Group Chatting About This Morning
No need to re-invent the wheel, Davenport Speedway can be summed up as follows.
I will say this about the Davenport facility though … for as great as the quarter-mile is, the TrackChaser in me is pained to see the track’s old half-mile configuration just sitting there as a parking lot for track prep equipment. Would love to see some big-time programs at the facility run one night on the short track and one on the big one.
I know that crate engines and crate racing in general serve a purpose in terms of cost savings and driver development, but damn if they don’t sound underwhelming when they’re on the same ticket as the full-throated super lates. Though even all that engine noise couldn’t hide the background static in the Georgetown Speedway audio system.
Off the track today, wingless sprint car racing took another hit with the news that Jason McDougal is hanging up his helmet. The driver who made headlines in 2021 with his record-tying I-D run in the Chili Bowl Nationals is not going too far, but is opting to focus instead on the chassis construction side of sprint car racing.
In better news for sprint car racing, Jake Neuman was released from the hospital following his vicious crash at Lakeside Tuesday night.
For more on the Neuman story, I’d encourage fans to check out today’s Dirtrackr Daily show from Justin Fiedler, who did an excellent piece analyzing the apparent mechanical failure that led to…
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