WHEATLAND, Mo. — Progressive American Flat Track, sanctioned by AMA Pro Racing, will conclude its unprecedented run of six consecutive Short Tracks to open the campaign with the inaugural Short Track at Lucas Oil Speedway on Saturday.
This weekend marks the Grand National Championship’s 20th visit to the Show Me State, although just its second in the last 20 years.
Previous stops were hosted by Wentzville, St. Louis, Sedalia, Joplin and Odessa, with Wheatland now set to join that list.
An all-new racing venue known as Wheatland Raceway opened on the east side of town in 2001. Within five years, new ownership completely transformed the facility with a multi-million dollar renovation that resulted in Lucas Oil Speedway, aka, the “Diamond of Dirt Tracks.”
Featuring a pristine three-eighths-mile clay oval, a 1.2-mile offroad track, and go-kart circuit, and the drag-boat friendly Lake Lucas – and top-notch facilities and amenities to boot – Lucas Oil Speedway represents a full half of Wheatland in terms of acreage and stands as a national powerhouse on the four-wheeled dirt-track racing scene.
The addition of the world’s greatest two-wheeled dirt track racers only further cements the venue’s outstanding reputation.
KEEP ROLLING
The month-plus layoff between rounds may have come as a relief to some of the Mission AFT SuperTwins pilots, but title leader Briar Bauman (No. 3 RWR/Parts Plus/Latus Motors Harley-Davidson XG750R) would have likely preferred to keep lining up every week on end.
The Rick Ware Racing ace carries the momentum of three consecutive victories into Lucas Oil Speedway, making his achievement of claiming the Harley-Davidson XG750R’s first premier-class victory at Senoia’s Round 3 feel almost like a distant memory.
Prior to the start of the ‘25 season, among the top 15 riders on the Grand National Championship’s career win list, only Dick Mann, Kenny Roberts, and Bauman achieved that distinction with zero Harley-Davidson wins on their résumés.
The caveat for Roberts and Mann was that a substantial portion of their GNC race victories came on pavement, while for Bauman it was rising to prominence during an era of Indian dominance.
Bauman has exited that company three quick H-D-powered wins this season. However, he now trails only Roberts in terms of most career wins among riders with no XR750 victories.
While it still has a long way to go and an impossible mission before it to live up to the standard established by the XR, the XG750R is rolling along just fine at the moment, thank you.
Bauman’s mastery of the bike will face a new test this weekend as they prepare to do battle on unfamiliar grounds.
INAUGURATION DAY
By contrast, Dallas Daniels (No. 32 Estenson Racing Yamaha MT-07 DT) may have welcomed the opportunity to reset and refocus. His ‘25 season has not gone poorly by any stretch of the imagination – he’s currently building upon a modern-era record of 18 consecutive podiums that has long since left every previous reunification era (2010-on) podium streak in the dust. However, despite that week-after-week success, the heavy preseason favorite now finds himself in a double-digit deep points hole as the Mission AFT SuperTwins title fight arrives in Missouri.
Historically, Daniels has performed very well when the field is thrown into a new arena. Not quite to the level of former rival Jared Mees – but better than anyone else, and Mees is no longer in the picture.
Since Daniels stepped up to the premier class in 2022, the series has visited eight all-new venues while returning to a pair of others that it hadn’t been to in decades.
At those ten races, Mees led the way with six wins, while Daniels earned two victories. The remaining two wins were split by JD Beach and Brandon Robinson (No. 44 Mission Roof Systems Harley-Davidson XG750R).
Meanwhile, Mees landed on the box in 90% of those outings, with Daniels was not far off at 70% (despite missing one he likely would have been favored at due to injury). Beach was third with podiums in five of the ten races, followed by Bauman at four.
The raw numbers suggest that Bauman has not been at the same level as his elite-caliber rivals at unfamiliar venues, however, over half of the time in question was spent developing the KTM, which proved something of a weekly rollercoaster ride regardless of locale.
Robinson, meanwhile, took two podiums in those ten races, a number equaled by Jarod VanDerKooi (No. 20 Fastrack Racing/Wally Brown Racing KTM 790 Duke), another key player with a chance to step up to meet the opportunity presented by this weekend.
GONE FISHING
Absent from that list is Davis Fisher (No. 67 Rackley Racing/Bob Lanphere’s BMC Racing KTM 790 Duke). That said, over the course of his career, Fisher has always been more likely to finish fourth, fifth, or sixth, than first, second, or third.
However unlikely, Fisher has stepped his game up right from the jump in a transition from Indian to KTM that appeared daunting from the outside. As it stands, he’s already looking like a bigger threat on the Duke than he ever was on the FTR750.
He comes to Lucas Oil Speedway with two podiums and four top fours in five races. Last time out, he finished second – trailing only Bauman and ranking ahead of Daniels.
In terms of the points, he now sits third – trailing only Bauman and Daniels, and ranking ahead of Robinson, VDK, and everyone else.
As he’s been uniformly strong at pretty much every variety of Short Track presented thus far this season, there’s little reason to think he’ll be anything but at Wheatland.
STEPPING AWAY
Brandon Price has chosen to step away from the sport on the advice of his doctors.
If that’s it and Price never enters another Progressive AFT event, he can look back on an impressive career in the sport with pride.
He’s destined to go down as one of the best to have never won a premier-class Main Event. During his run, Price earned Mission AFT SuperTwins runner-up finishes in four separate seasons, while coming within a second of victory more times than that.
Price, who finished second in the 2017 AFT Singles championship, was leading the ‘18 title fight before suffering a catastrophic fall at the Springfield TT.
In that crash, he was knocked unconscious, broke his scapula, bruised his lungs, lacerated his liver, and suffered a subdural hematoma that required a hole be drilled in his skull to relieve the pressure. After regaining consciousness a couple days later, doctors informed him he was unlikely to ever race again.
Instead, he returned to action later that season, stepped up to the premier class the next year, and proceeded to give some of the greatest riders in the sport’s history serious fits with regularity.
