2025 World of Outlaws

Making up for last night's disappointment, what a race tonight! Rico barely holds on over a charging Larson, who came from the fifth row to nearly take the win on the final lap. Logan Schuchart was third and is the hottest WoO driver right now. Other than him, it definitely felt like a High Limit race broke out and an Outlaws event. The track was very tricky with a lot of comers and goers.
 
Hard, hard night for Schatz. Winds up in the Non-Qualifier races, starts the feature on a provisional, and then gets wrecked because of whatever the hell happened to PPM.

Lots of immediate overreactions this morning that High Limit dominated. Sure helps when High Limit had lured in the former Knoxville weekly guy that dominated this race until the PPM/Schatz wreck.
 
It's one night, and WoO had been on the whole stronger this year leading up to it. But there is no way that was a good look for WoO last night at the crown jewel track of the sport. In addition to Schatz, several of the top ten WoO teams were stuck in the B. Several took provisionals.

Schuchart is really fast right now. Gravel is always solid everywhere. Scelzi can perform at Knoxville. Beyond that, in terms of last night, yikes.
 
Schatz handicaps himself in this format by not being able to time in. He's putting himself in a huge hole after 2 laps. Yes he went out 28th and timed in 26th. Ruetzel went out 22nd and set quick time in group B. Yes, Reutzel has ruled Knoxville lately, but you got to remember Donny is (or was) Donny Knoxville.

Larson should not have allowed Brown to pass him in the heat, thus losing a spot in the dash, and a real shot at victory lane. All of the hard chargers came out of their provisional starting position. (13, 12 and 11 spots for the WoO regulars)
I found it quite interesting that they did not do an interview with a platinum team after each heat race.

Heat 1 Brian Brown P2
Heat 2 Kerry Madsen P5
Heat 3 Riley Goodno P4
Heat 4 Brad Sweet P4.

Back in the not so far distant past, that would never happen.

Can't wait for the High Bank Nationals at Husets, as I assume the bulk of the High Limit guys will be there also.

Brent Mark's was MIA all weekend, which is strange.
 
Larson wins a wild one on an ultimate cowboy up track over Brady Bacon, Macedo, Schuchart, and Gravel. Tomorrow at Haubstadt should be just as good.
 
Sheldon Haudenschild leads flag to flag at TSS-Haubstadt, but faces continual pressure throughout on restarts from Buddy Kofoid, who settles for second. Kofoid inched ahead a couple times but couldn't make it stick. Tyler Courtney was third, followed by Emerson Axsom and David Gravel.
 
Really rotten break for Macedo, Schuchart, and Kofoid to have the lapped car spin right in front of them. Will allow Gravel to pull further ahead in the points again.

Looks like Donny is back.
 
gnomesayin said:
Really rotten break for Macedo, Schuchart, and Kofoid to have the lapped car spin right in front of them. Will allow Gravel to pull further ahead in the points again.

Looks like Donny is back.
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Ugly looking wreck too glad they are all ok.

Posse take 2 of the podium spots with Macri winning and Dietrich 3rd Gravel in 2nd.
 
Some quick thoughts at this point in the season:

-David Gravel looks absolutely on fire. 8 wins in 23 starts this year, no finish worse than 6th. Crazy stats. He will have to fall apart to lose the title this year.

-Next tier down in the Outlaws: Schatz moving back to Chevy hasn't been the panacea, has it? Kofoid's had moments but isn't consistent enough yet to mount a real title challenge. Schuchart has been up and down all year. Scelzi still hasn't shown the consistency to run up front every night but he does so about every third night and is exciting.

-The field: Balog is obviously the class of it and I'm happy to see him with a win as a full timer outside of Wisconsin. I know Windom looked better at Oshweken than he has much of the year but I still don't really believe he has "it" for wing racing. Garet Williamson, Cole Macedo, Skyler Gee, Zach Hampton, and Conner Morrell are all going to show up and do well once every 5th or 7th night but you're excited when it does happen. All 5 can wheel. Then there's Hunter Schuerenberg. He's definitely a driver in the World of Outlaws right now in 2025 and we'll see if he still is come July.

-Car counts are consistently good: lowest this year was 26 at Cotton Bowl. The 60+ numbers in April for Pevely and Knoxville were crazy. Even this week, we're seeing nearly 40 cars showing up to Oshweken to compete against a lot of people that, frankly, don't even have 410 engines (or have borrowed one for the weekend).

-They aren't beating High Limit every week but they never have nor will. The Posse showed strong at Lincoln and The Grove, which I think is going to be a repeating theme in 2025. Since last year, Zearfoss has come off the Outlaw tour to assume the driving duties in the Eichelberger #8 while the 1A Shark car has gone from the road where it was a contender to win with national tours to being a PA-only car with Ashton Torgerson behind the wheel and Jacob Allen turning wrenches. None of the other drivers/teams seem to have gotten significantly weaker.

Anyways, lots of Ohio/Wisconsin coming up in the near future and these represent some of my favorite tracks to see the Outlaws run. Just about a month out from a 6 figure payday event with the High Bank Nationals and I expect a very strong field to show up.
 
kkfan91 said:
I think Gravel ends up well north of 20 wins this year.
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It's sort of hard to picture him not winning something like 20 this year when he might have 10 in the bag before June 1.

Definitely feels like this year to me that Macri, Gravel, Larson, and Abreu are on a different level than everyone else. Obviously Larson always is, but the other three sort of excel and fade.
 
Sheldon H had a terrible start to the year, but since has settled into some decent runs. He's probably my favorite on the WOO trail and sure would like to see him put together a run for the title. But they don't just had those out to anybody.
 
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