Sad News: A horrendous “ball of chaos” brings the Eldora Million to a grinding halt!

Dirt Racing’s Winning Moment: Logan Schuchart, the pole sitter, ran away from the competition and led all 50 laps of the Eldora Million on Thursday night into Friday morning (July 13–14), capping the richest race in dirt track history.

Even though Schuchart often competes in the World of Outlaws on a multi-car team, Shark Racing, which gained attention in the off-season for their attempts to obtain more sponsorship for 2023, benefited greatly from the significant victory.

Brad Sweet and Carson Macedo, two other Outlaw mainstays, completed the podium. The $100,000 Macedo received for coming in second place was the biggest salary he had ever received.

Dirt Racing’s Dramatic Moment: With Schuchart making the event academic up front, the story of Thursday’s race came after the race’s scheduled break after 20 completed laps. Coming back to green after open-red stops, top-five runner Aaron Reutzel spun on his own in turn 2 and triggered a violent five-car crash that took out contenders Spencer Bayston and Kyle Larson.

All drivers involved in the wreck walked away from their machines.

What Dirt Racing Fans’ll Be Group Chatting About This Morning

The dirt late model Eldora Million was unquestionably the race of the year a year ago. Eldora Million, a sprint car, will be remembered for damaging racecars valued at a million dollars.Seven figures have been completed for sprint cars. It is not required to be completed again.

Since I began covering dirt racing, I have been quite critical of the Knoxville Nationals’ race format and planned mid-race break.Here, too, I shall provide the same critique.

When the de facto “competition caution” flew on lap 20, the Eldora Million feature was literally heating up, with the leaders in lapped traffic and announcer Chet Christner dubbing a three-wide struggle in the top 10 mixed with lapped traffic.It is impossible to dispute that as a plus.

Five minutes of chaos under the competition caution/open red resulted in fuel spills being cleaned up on the Eldora front stretch with speedy dry, and speculation on Twitter about whether race leader Schuchart’s car was damaged when his crew dropped it off the jack without the right rear tire attached erupted.

Not to mention that the mid-race break caused the field to reorganize and was the direct cause of the restart that set off the lap 20 Big One, which eliminated Reutzel, Larson, and Bayston—three drivers that had the pace to win this race.

This was not necessary to occur.There is little doubt that a 40-lap race would have been equally revolutionary and spectacular.Since the King’s Royal begins tomorrow, five race teams that were originally going to compete now have rebuilds to look forward to, at least five more racecars would have made it out of Eldora intact.

Even though this didn’t happen, consider the possibility that Schuchart would not have won the race if the jack drop had caused damage.In sprint car racing, pit stops are not included. Making them a part of their crown-jewel races makes absolutely no sense.

To be clear, nothing improved the on-track product during the mid-race stoppage.Christner called a three-wide action just before the mid-race break, but it never materialized again.It was anything but a classic, and Eldora, along with the entire sprint car racing community, should be thanking their lucky stars that a feel-good story prevailed.

Thursday night’s first heat races were almost like a demolition derby; the first heat lasted over thirty minutes and saw Brent Marks literally run out of fuel, which infuriated the Posse driver.

Social media users disagreed with Marks’s depiction of Eldora’s comments regarding the number of laps that the cars needed to fuel, but I can’t say that I agree with the No. 19 driver on this one. Running with less fuel for a short heat race has an edge over the competition, but as with any advantage, there is a risk involved, particularly if you drive a racecar with outdated push-start equipment that encourages prolonged cautions. This time, Marks was bitten.

Speaking of technology, it was interesting to watch race officials replace team radios just before the main event began and look around for Apple Watches.

Although I have witnessed the Apple Watch check performed on at least a few occasions this year among the late model ranks, this was the clearest demonstration of the process I have yet to witness.

The purpose of this is to stop drivers from utilizing the watches to obtain communications that they would otherwise have to send through signal sticks, which are not commonly used by sprint car teams, or two-way radios, which are prohibited on winged sprint cars.I understand why it’s being done; it’s just a sign of the times. I have no remark.

Jonathan Davenport, the late model Eldora Million winner from the previous year, was there at the race on Thursday and even posed for photos with Schuchart in victory lane after the event, which was extremely cool. Even though there is debate concerning push starts and inverts, maybe reasonable dirt fans will see this as evidence that the competition between the late model and sprint car factions is unimportant.

Having said that, I have to give the guys credit for Davenport’s development of an opinionated edge that will make him a valuable voice in 2023. In addition to publicly calling NASCAR Cup racing a show during his Bristol Dirt Track debut with the series, “Superman” caused a stir this week in the dirt racing community with his biting critique of Eldora’s use of inverts.

When it comes to crown-jewel races, at least, I completely agree with Davenport. This week, Eldora insisted on using a structure that eliminated Wednesday’s heat races in favor of awarding points for qualifying in a manner similar to that of heat races. This didn’t do anything to boost the on-track product.

While it was exciting to watch Schuchart move from ninth to first in his heat race on Wednesday, it wasn’t as impressive as watching other backmarkers who didn’t even qualify for the race to turn front-row heat starts into Eldora Million checkered flags.In any discipline, side-by-side racing ought to entail more than just single-car qualifying.

Of course, racetracks should abandon single-car qualifying and switch to a pill draw for heat races if they are certain that changing up the field improves the on-track experience.I’m all for cutting 45–60 minutes off the program, especially because the Million took more than six hours to run a single class of car.

Overall, Flo Racing did a great job of broadcasting this event, however at times it came across as self-aggrandizing and Chet Christner’s music selection was a little too esoteric for its own good (Monty Python is NOT conducive to pushing off 900-horsepower racecars). It’s important to note how assured they came over in their broadcast, bringing up their rivals frequently, whether it was the DirtVision platform itself or the World of Outlaws (which competes with the High Limit Racing Series and All-Star Circuit of Champions that Flo televised).

This is nothing new for Flo; they released the viewership figures for the first Kyle Larson Late Model Challenge last year. This would provide dirt racing enthusiasts with a precise understanding of the scale of the event.

Dirt Racing’s Heroes of the Day

We’ll veer off course there since there will be no shortage of tales about Schuchart and Shark Racing’s rags to (literal) riches.Buddy Kofoid, who moved up from 20th to seventh in the Eldora Million feature, receives a shoutout for taking home the hard charger award that evening.

We’ll also honor USAC regular CJ Leary, who qualified for the A-main and ran nicely, moving up from 21st to 12th, despite this being only his third sprint car start of the year. The Eldora Million’s performance by Leary was the closest thing to Tim McCreadie’s outstanding showing at the Chili Bowl earlier in the season.

The racers involved in Reutzel’s lap 21 spin and the ensuing melee were the clear victims of the evening.

However, the day’s biggest casualty didn’t even make the A-main. That distinction was awarded to WoO regular Sheldon Haudenschild, who took a hard fall early in the race when Marks poked him during his heat.

Haudenschild was buried as a result in a C-main, where he proceeded to work. After moving up from 15th to 2nd in his C-main, he moved up to the top 10 and was attempting to go up until being tagged by Cale Thomas and wrecking, depriving everyone in attendance of a cup of alphabet soup. The strongest car to miss the Million field was by far Haudenschild.