Danny Dietrich shared his criticisms and what he thinks Williams Grove Speedway needs to do to improve the racing after the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series had a doubleheader there this past weekend.
Dietrich had a solid weekend at the track finishing 12th on Friday night and then 6th on Saturday night. However, he had some pointed thoughts about the track and shared them on the most recent episode of DIRTVision’s Pit Bull, “The banking is terrible. … It is absolutely so crowned that they-. I wouldn’t say that they need to move the clay to the top of the track, I think they have too much clay on the track already.”
While commenting on a clip from the race that saw Buddy Kofoid running the top off of four, he added, “Like right there where Buddy is at, that’s about as high as you can really run with much speed ’cause there’s a lot of banking on the bottom half of the track. And then once you get over it like where Buddy’s at right there, like it just gets really, really flat. You call it crowning. The banking is so steep at the bottom and you can see that anybody that goes up there, they just go in there and if they’re not on the right rear they want to spin out. … You can just see the car that’s underneath has the banking and keeps the car going in the right direction.”
“They got to fix the race traffic,” he declared. “Otherwise it’s going to suck the rest of the year. It’s so flat around the time. I really don’t have much more to say.”
“I think they put a lot of effort into getting it as good as it can. They need to take some tough criticism, some constructive criticism from us drivers if they want to have really good racing the rest of the year. It seems to me it’s getting worse and worse, week in and week out. They finally got the hole better going into 1 where we’re not bouncing all the way across the race track, which is great. That’s phenomenal. We shouldn’t have to take [inaudible]. A track this big has to be smooth. It’s that simple. … You get to turn 2 and you lose speed, for the most part.”
“I know Sheldon [Haudenschild] come down to me at the end of Saturday night and thanked me for not driving through him ’cause he lost brakes and kept missing the bottom,” Dietrich shared. “But even he said, ‘This place sucks like you can’t run the top.’ I tried to run the top and like I said you either want to spin out or lose the right rear and go the wrong way.”
“Give the Grove like a B for effort. But like an F- for racing conditions,” he declared.
Pit Bull co-host Conner Wade would later chime in and shared that there were only two passes for the lead the entire weekend at the track with David Gravel making a pass in his heat race on Friday night and Justin Whitall passed Carson Macedo in the LCS on Friday.
“So not a single pass for the lead Saturday night under green flag conditions,” Wade said. “And a whole two on Friday. Like that’s not good.”
Dietrich then went on to share more of his displeasure with the track, “The fact that the next car that passed the most car was myself, who passed four on Saturday in a 30-lap feature, that is absolute [crap]. And it’s going to rub rubber on the bottom. We can say, ‘Oh, it’s going to rub rubber on the bottom.’ If we had a better race track where you didn’t have to run the bottom, you wouldn’t have rubber. I don’t think the surface is that bad outside the crowning. I think if you look at the track, the surface looks like it has moisture up, off the bottom, but you can’t run it because you just go the wrong way on the race track. You’ve got to have progressive banking. You can’t have crowning on a race track.”
The Williams Grove Speedway addressed complaints about the track in a lengthy post on Facebook earlier this week. and specifically about the lack passing, “On Friday and Saturday nights, the track conditions were excellent. When the fastest car starts at the front for all heat races and features, it significantly reduces opportunities for passing.”
The track prep team shared their own theory as to why the racing was subpar, “My theory is that we have a 1400-pound, 900-horsepower race car on the surface that is not effectively engaging with the track. Discontinuing the use of flat-top wings would allow the cars to properly connect with the track surface instead of just sitting on top. From my perspective, let’s consider the period when the 358 utilized the 15 sq ft deep-dish wing. They were able to compete effectively. Currently, they are using the same flat wing design as the 410.”
As for the crowning, the track team did acknowledge it and noted they are working to fix it, “Please be advised that we are aware of the shelf and are in the process of gradually making adjustments. This is not a task that can be completed immediately and will require time to fully resolve.”
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