Ep. 77 - NASCAR (Michigan), IndyCar (St. Louis), NHRA (New England) + High Limit (Eagle) Recap

About the Podcast: The Throttle to the Floor Podcast is a motorsports podcast where me (William Earnest) and Evan Sager co-host and sit down with guests each week to talk about what is happening in the world of NASCAR, IndyCar, and NHRA plus we take frequent looks at other racing under the motorsports umbrella.

About the Episode: On this episode of the Throttle to the Floor Podcast, I recap a full house of action, as NASCAR is in the Irish Hills of Michigan, IndyCar is in St. Louis, NHRA is in Epping, New Hampshire, and High Limit Sprint Cars are at "One Badass Racetrack" Eagle Raceway; listen, watch, and download episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

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Hey y'all, welcome to today's episode of the Thor Four Podcast. I'm your host, Will Ernest, here tonight with just myself. Uh got a quick recap episode, so let's jump right into it. But I want to talk about uh Eagle Raceway in Nebraska real quick. I mean, the name one badass racetrack certainly uh lived up to its name, lives up to its name. And uh Tuesday night's racing was no different fifty-five thousand five hundred and fifty-five dollars to win the FK Rodden's Eagle National, the highest paying event of the season for high limit racing. But it wasn't just the high rollers chasing the victory, the top four in World of Outlaw's uh world of outlaws points, including two-time defending champion David Gravel, were there along with Kyle Larson, who won three high end limit events in a row the week prior. Corey Day, who won an Eagle Raceway with High Limit back in April, and more all in all, 48 sprint cars showed up for 24 spots in the A-Mane feature, 26 due to provisionals being used. But it looked like another Aaron Reichzel shows he was fastest overall among the two flights of qualifying before starting third in the A-Main. However, while running second in the A-Mane, his rear axle broke, ending his night early. David Gravel won the dash, which allowed him to start on pole for the A-Mane, but it was second place starter and defending high limit champion Rico Aber that took advantage of points later Aaron Reisel's misfortune, as we mentioned, the broken rear axle. Uh, but Rico ran off with the victory and the $55,555 payday that went along with it. It's Aber's fourth overall win of the year, ninth rotor router midweek series victory, which extends that record, and 28th career interstate batteries high limit racing win, which extends that record as well. Gravel second for his 15th podium in 28 starts this year across both High Limit and World of Outlaws competition, and Garrett Williams in third to round out the podium. Corey Dan Collerson, despite them both starting outside the top 20 in the A-Mane, they drove through the field to finish 7th and 10th respectively. But with Rico's win and Rightzel's DNF, we have yet another lead change in the championship as it's the ninth lead change, so they're just 21 of 57 events. Rico leads Reitzel by 39 points. But high limit sprint cars, they conclude their busy stretch with the Iowa Lottery Shelby County Showdown in Harlan, Iowa on Thursday night, June 11th, before they take a couple weeks off. But onward to NHRA now, the Proc versus Vandegriff saga continues this time at the NHRA New England Nationals presented by B Pro Auto Parts. One week after finally getting a win with Tasca and Ford at Maryland, Austin Proc once again gets bounced in the first round of Funny Car for the fifth time in eight events this year, and that's not counting the DQ at Gainesville in the season opener. Vandegriff, meanwhile, advances to another final round where he'll face John Force racing teammate Jack Beckman. Uh Jordan Vandegriff won last month at South Georgia while Beckman looks for his first win since Chicago of 2025. Unfortunately, we'll have to wait to find out who wins as Rain cut the final rounds of Top Fuel and Funny Car short, so those will be decided at Bristol during Q2 under the lights this Friday. And speaking of Top Fuel, Sean Langdon is once again just owning the whole class as he advanced to yet another final round as he looks for his fifth win of the year and fourth in a row. If he does win his fourth in a row, it'd be the first time we've seen it in top fuel since Steve Torrance won five in a row and eight out of nine events uh during the 2019 season. It was from Spring Charlotte to Denver, and the one exception during those nine events was Mike Salinas' win, ironically, at Bristol. Langdon will face Leah Pruitt as she advances to her second final round of the year after losing to Langdon at Phoenix back in March, which was Langdon's first win of the year. Um, but we did get one of the finals in in uh in New England at least, pro stock, as Dallas Glenn took the victory over Matt Hartford with a 002 reaction time and a 654-3 at 209.39 miles per hour for his third win of the year, first at New England Dragway, and his 24th career pro stock victory. Glenn now holds a 39-point lead over teammate Greg Anderson heading to Bristol this weekend, which speaking of Bristol in the Pro Stock Motorcycle World, Joey Gladstone will sub in for Matt Smith as he continues to recover from gallstones and the remover of his gallbladder, among other things. Uh, but we know Smith will also miss uh Norwalk at the end of June and I believe the uh call out in Sonoma in July. So hopeful for a quick recovery there. He said that the latest he would return would be the US Nationals Indianapolis, so um should be good to go. Hopefully they are at the latest, but hopefully also uh sooner, as Matt Smith tries to chase a record-breaking seventh pro stock motorcycle world championship. But Bristol will be interesting. Thunder Valley is a way different elevation change up in the mountains than on the New England coastline, and to add on to that, Bristol has a new concrete surface for the first 330 feet before switching back to asphalt. So track conditions will also be very different as well. And it's interesting to see who can conquer it this weekend, both on Friday and Q2, to see who wins at uh officially wins New England, and then um on Sunday when we actually decide who wins uh at Bristol, but we'll see. But now to IndyCar, um they were racing at uh Gateway in St. Louis, and at first this appeared to be Marcus Ericsson's race to lose as he led 114 laps in search of his first win since St. Petersburg in 2023, but it would not be his night. I didn't think this race would get in as we had multiple rain delays, uh, but that clearly didn't matter. Joseph Newgarn and Christian Ratchison, they put on an electric battle in the closing stint of this race. Meanwhile, Chip Ganassi racing they tried to roll the dice and they got snake bit as Dixon, uh Scott Dixon had the emergency pit for fuel uh while the pits were closed, and pole sitter Alex Pelow, who took his fourth pole in a row, um he ran out of fuel while coasting down to his pit stall. So uh as such, both the Ganassi cars finished outside of the top ten. Pelot um has finished no worse than seventh all year, except for at Phoenix and Gateway. Phoenix 24th after DNF and got caught up in a wreck and then uh 17th at Gateway due to running out of fuel on pit road. Kyle Collette had the best run of his rookie season so far, running in the top five during the second half of the race and leading seven laps before his engine expired with 34 to go, which brought out the last caution. And when the chips were down, it was the king of short ovals and the king of Gateway, Joseph Newgarden securing the win two weeks after injuring his foot during the 110th Indianapolis 500. It's Newgarden's second win of the year after Phoenix, uh his sixth win at Gateway, which is a track record, and his 15th career win on an oval shorter than one and a half miles, and his 34th career win, Erickson second, Rashbeson third at Gateway for the second year in a row. Renus VK, shout out Renus VK, fourth season best there, and Scott McLaughlin fifth, who was the uh the top finisher of those who took fresh tires under the lavish caution with 34 to go. McLaughlin restarted ninth and charged all the way up to fifth relatively quickly within a few laps, but just couldn't do anything else after that. But Pillow, as we mentioned, thanks to running out of fuel on pit lane, finished down in 17th and with Kirkwood, Kyle Kirkwood finishing sixth, that trims Alex Pelow's lead to 49 points over Kyle Kirkwood at the halfway point of the season through nine of the 18 races. But our picks and standings, I still lead the points by a commanding 198 points over Evan, 260 over Bernardo, 265 over Stacey, 302 over Haley, 315 over Noah, and Zane has a seven-point advantage over Ethan uh in the part-time picks. The reason why my lead is still so commanding is in the first nine races of this indie car season, I have five victories. That is right. I picked Joseph Newgarten and he uh got me the dub, leading 53 laps and also securing the fastest lap. Evan with Kyle Kirkwood ended up sixth. Haley with Will Power ended up eighth. Uh season best for her. Willpower uh for once didn't have like a terribly terrible race. Stacy with uh Padua Ward in 11th, and Bernardo with Christian Lingard in 10th, just Errol McLaren did like nothing in this race. Noah with Santiana Ferrucci in 13th, which was the ironically the worst of all of our picks. Um Ethan with David Malucas in 7th, and Zayn with Marcus Erickson ended up second, led 114 laps, which was the most laps uh on the day. So interesting there. IndyCar, they're off for a couple weeks, and then they return to uh road course, traditional road course racing with Road America, uh June 21st. So we'll see how that goes. Alex Polo is the defending winner of that race, too. Um he's not quite on as of a dominant pace as he was last year, but he's still he's still uh well on his way to trying to win his fourth championship in a row and fifth overall. But heading to Michigan now, uh I want to start with the truck series. At first, it was it it looked like Christopher Bell and Carson Hospital, it looked like they had this race on lock as they combined to lead 102 of the 125 laps with Bell sweeping the stages, but Bell ended up fading back, and so too did Hosopar due to A, the truck being tight, uh since he only took two tires, and B, uh he had debris on his truck late in the race, so he had to clear that off. But Clay S McFarland, uh shout out, he finished his first full truck race. Small golf clap there, but finished in 25th after recovering from a mid-race spin. He also finished 14th uh in the arca race after getting his first arca pole um on Friday, which the Arca race was cut short after 57 of the 100 laps due to rain. But all in all, it was the tricon trucks that emerged to battle for the win like most truck races. And it was once again high and time as Corey Haim held off teammate Caden Honeycutt for the win in Michigan at Times third win of the year and just his fifth start. He's yeah, he's ran five starts and he has three wins, and it's his 26th career truck series win. Plus, even with everybody else, like all the full timers, they've ran 12 starts compared to Him's five because Haim has three wins. Like, Corey Himes still sits 11th in the truck series points still. Like, that's just absurd. Caden Honeycutt second, Carson Ospar third, Lane Riggs fourth, and Chandler Smith completing the top five. Lane Riggs leads Caden Honeycutt by 26 points in the standings after 12 of the 25 events. We're basically halfway through the truck season uh as well. Our picks and standings. Evan has retaken the points lead. We've had four lead changes in the truck series in the last four races between uh the top three in points. Evan leads Stacy now by 27 points, Bernardo by 56, uh Haley by 115, me by 136, Noah by 164, and then Ethan has a 12-point advantage over Zane. Uh, part-time picks-wise, our picks. I picked Stuart Friesen, he was the defending winner coming in, but he never really had better than like a 10th place truck and really just kind of got stuck in the mid-pack, ended up 22nd. Evan picked Corey Heim and won the race, and so that is definitely how he took the points lead back. Uh Haley with Chandler Smith gets a fifth place finish. Stacy with Ben Rhodes, uh, similar to me, just kind of stuck in the mid-pack, ends up 21st. Only uh Ben Rhodes had to start basically towards the back in this race, so he really couldn't uh climb really any higher than mid-pack in this race, anyways. Uh Bernardo with Spencer Boyd ends up DNFing in 34th, so that's how Bernardo tumbles out um uh second. Noah with Brandon Queen ends up 14th. Uh Ethan with Caden Honeycutt ends up second. Just had a run off of turn four, but just couldn't pass Corey Heim. And Zayn with Carson Hospar ends up third. Hospar would have won this race had it not been he took two tires and the truck was tight, and uh had he not had the debris uh on the front of his truck either. So just tough deal there. But moving on now to Cup uh Hamlin, Danny Hamlin once again started in the back after getting the pull. This time due to unapproved adjustments made on his car because he had to repair damage after qualifying. But more on him later. We'll package that up and revisit that later. It was initially Tyler Reddick that had control of this race. He went on to win stage one, but then in stage two, Carson Hosebart ended up causing a 10-car pile-up on lap 83, which took out multiple cars, including Tyler Reddick, the 2024 Michigan winner. Then it was Chase Elliott that led a bulk of the middle portion of the race and won stage two before being taken out in a hard crash of his own with uh Christopell on lap 148, which it was confirmed that Christopher Bell suffered a fractured wrist, but despite that, he has been cleared to race Pocono this upcoming weekend. Although I wouldn't be surprised if he gets out of the car at some point, you know, starts starts the race, gets the points, but then gets out. So we'll we'll see, we'll see how he feels. But after a track record, 11 cautions and a red flag for uh wall repair after the Bell Elliott wreck, which that was a brutal wreck. Uh it was Denny Hamlin yet again charging from the back of the field to the front for the second week in a row to win, this time securing the win by a much more comfortable 11.11 seconds. I know, so ironic. Uh, and this was despite spinning in that lap 83 wreck, but didn't really suffer any damage from it. It's Hamlin's third win of the year, fourth if you count the all-star win, his fourth win at Michigan, and it's his 63rd career win, which ties Hamlin for 9th all time with the late Kyle Bush. Hamlin did his burnout with a uh number 18 flag. The one was stylized in the JGR font, and the eight was stylized in the RCR font. So uh great tribute there to his former teammates and competitor. Hamlin now chops his points gap down to 51 points behind Tyler Reddick thanks to Hamlin's win and Reddick's DNF in this race. Michigan native Eric Jones comes home second, Bubba Wallace third, Kyle Larson fourth, and another Michigan native Carson Hospar uh, as we mentioned, finished fifth, but our picks and standings. I still lead the points, surprisingly, uh, by 71 over Haley, 124 over Stacy, 171 over Evan, 188 over Bernardo, 284 over Noah, and Ethan has a 23 points advantage over Zane in the part-timer picks. The reason why I was surprised I still led the points is because I picked Tyler Reddick, who initially had this race in firm control, and then just got caught up in uh Carson Hospar's mess. Got caught up in the hurricane, I guess. Um, but yeah, ends up 35th DNFing. It's my first DNF of the year, tragically. Evan with Chris Busher ends up ninth, just a quiet day for him. Haley with Carson Hospar ends up fifth. Leeds 21 laps has the fastest lap. Stacy with Bubba Wallace ends up third. Bernardo with Austin Dillon ends up 36 DNFing. He was the one who ended up uh nailing Tyler Redick in that rec uh on lap 83. Noah with Ty Dillon ends up 24th. Uh Ethan with Ty Gibbs ends up 25th. Also DNFs as well. And Zayn with William Byron ends up 18th. Just William Byron needs some serious help. I don't know what it is. It's like sometimes he like if like if Byron's lucky, he has like top 10 speed. I mean, it's like, you know, Elliot, yeah, he got caught up in that wreck, but like, you know, Elliot in the middle portion of this race had a winning car. One stage two led a bunch of laps. Elliot actually led the most laps uh in this race. It's just like, you know, and Lar even Larson has more speed than Byron does right now. And it's Byron hasn't had speed basically all year, so I don't really know. I mean, it it it's almost like a competition between who's the most disappointing, Byron or Briscoe. They've both been pretty disappointing. It's like you'd think they'd do better in top equipment, but oh well. Uh House Host Bar segment. Uh he ran El Dora with the dirt late model on Wednesday, Thursday. Even though it looked like uh the Intimidante Cup scheme, uh he still didn't do that good. But at least he had fun, I guess. The truck race and the cup race, uh, you know, home track in Michigan. He had fast cars in both. Uh could have easily won both as well, but just wasn't meant to be, I guess. Third in the truck race, fifth in the cup race. Tomorrow he'll run an asphalt late model at Berlin Raceway as part of Money in the Bank, where he is the defending winner. So uh yeah. Trading the dirt late model for the asphalt late model. Hopefully, it goes a lot better than he'd been running in the dirt late model. But uh thanks for listening to this segment of House Hospital Bar. I might need to change the segment where it's both Hostabar and Geo Celsi. I'm not sure. Not sure, but just what a what an what another weekend. Up and down weekend for me. I didn't do that good in the truck race, I didn't do that good in the cup race, but I got another indie car win, so I guess I guess I'll take it. But we got uh Pokono this upcoming weekend, just cup and O'Reilly's, no trucks, trucks are off after six straight weekends of racing. O'Reilly's is coming off of their first off week of the year after 16 straight weeks of racing to open their season. Um San Diego's on the horizon the week after that. Uh they released on iRacing uh the San Diego uh Qualcomm circuit. It's it's very tight and bumpy. That's kind of my first impression of it. I don't know. We're gonna see some traffic jams for sure, some Southern California traffic jams. But yeah, just Cuppano Riley's at Pocono uh this upcoming weekend, and IndyCar is off. They race at Road America in a couple weeks. NHRA is at Bristol, which not only they race at Bristol, but it will also determine the funny car and top field winners from New England because that got rained out. So yeah, another another big weekend this upcoming weekend. But um, yeah, that's all we got for today's short recap episode of the Throttle Four Podcast. Make sure you tune in and listen and watch and download on Spotify, app podcast, YouTube, check out the chill photography and throttle for podcasts, Instagrams, and uh TikToks. Uh it's funny because I got a present at my grad party. It's a bunch of these koozies. It's like it's got the podcast logo and the photography logo. It's a double-sided koozie, so cool there. Shout out to my aunt for uh making those. But yeah, so if you ever run in if you ever run into one of these koozies, just so you know, uh, it was my aunt that made them and uh it's it was it was from me, so yeah, but um, yeah, that's all we got for uh today's episode of the Time Floor Podcast, and we'll see y'all on Friday.