By T.J. Buffenbarger
(July 14, 2023) — When I decided to seed the entire field for the Eldora Million I promised that I would circle back for accountability and see how well I did the task. While having some lunch and unwinding a bit on what I refer to as “casual Friday” (also known as the Knight Before the Kings Royal), I put together a list of results versus my seeding.
For the dual C-Mains I split the field so the first non-transfer in the C-Main went first and the first non-transfer in the second C-Main was slotted in behind them.
Here is how the seeding went.
1-10
| Seed | Driver | Result |
| 1 | Rico Abreu | 5 |
| 2 | David Gravel | 4 |
| 3 | Brent Marks | 11 |
| 4 | Kyle Larson | 20 |
| 5 | Brad Sweet | 3 |
| 6 | Donny Schatz | 8 |
| 7 | Tyler Courtney | 14 |
| 8 | Carson Macedo | 2 |
| 9 | Logan Schuchart | 1 |
| 10 | Giovanni Scelzi | 22 |
Obviously I undervalued Logan Schuchart’s victory in May at Eldora in seeding him in the 9th spot. As I’ve written throughout the week, after the first hot lap session if I had to seed this over he would have been at least a top three seed, if not the top seed, after that one lap of practice.
Brent Marks rollercoaster ride through the Eldora Million shows I have overvalued him as well. The speed I saw in June at Eldora was there for Marks, but a lackluster performance in his heat race on Wednesday put him behind the eight ball for the remainder of the week.
Kyle Larson and Giovanni Scelzi likely would have finished near their top seedings had they not crashed in the feature on Thursday. Otherwise I was relatively happy of how the top 10 seedings went for my first attempt at doing this.
11-30
| 11 | Brian Brown | 6 |
| 12 | Spencer Bayston | 21 |
| 13 | Michael Kofoid | 7 |
| 14 | James McFadden | 10 |
| 15 | Sheldon Haudenschild | 39 |
| 16 | Zeb Wise | 27 |
| 17 | Kerry Madsen | 79 |
| 18 | Cory Eliason | 13 |
| 19 | Parker Price-Miller | 71 |
| 20 | Jacob Allen | 15 |
| 21 | Sam Hafertepe | 82 |
| 22 | Aaaron Reutzel | 19 |
| 23 | Shane Stewart | 28 |
| 24 | Daryn Pittman | 18 |
| 25 | Danny Dietrich | 80 |
| 26 | Hunter Schuerenberg | 44 |
| 27 | Justin Peck | 9 |
| 28 | Brock Zearfoss | 25 |
| 29 | Lance Dewease | 36 |
| 30 | Kasey Kahne | 45 |
This is where I did my worst work in the seedings. For instance, I knew Brian Brown was fast, but I undervalued him thinking that all of his speed as the Knoxville Raceway may not fully translate to the Million even though Brown has run well at Eldora at times. Brown typically must pass a lot of cars week in and out at Knoxville, and I should have made that more of a factor in my seeding of him.
On the other end I over valued Swindell Speedlabs gelling with Hunter Schuerenberg. Sometimes these things take races to figure out, and I’ll be curious to how they perform the remainder of the weekend.
I was close on a few seeds such as James McFadden, Arron Reutzel, and Daryn Pittman, but largely this entire group for me was a bust due to multiple drivers having crashes or mechanical issues within the seeding.
31-50
| 31 | Brady Bacon | 74 |
| 32 | Blake Hahn | 35 |
| 33 | Cole Macedo | 38 |
| 34 | Ian Madsen | 76 |
| 35 | Chris Windom | 40 |
| 36 | Sye Lynch | 42 |
| 37 | Chase Randall | 33 |
| 38 | Tim Shaffer | 46 |
| 39 | Jamie Veal | 78 |
| 40 | Cale Thomas | 26 |
| 41 | Cole Duncan | 24 |
| 42 | Bill Balog | 32 |
| 43 | Garet Williamson | 31 |
| 44 | JJ Hickle | 55 |
| 45 | Dylan Cisney | 37 |
| 46 | Justin Whittall | 16 |
| 47 | Kyle Reinhardt | 17 |
| 48 | Kraig Kinser | 47 |
| 49 | Greg Wilson | 70 |
| 50 | Lachlan McHugh | 23 |
This is where I thought I would make the biggest mistakes, but this segment of the seeding was not as far of a miss as I thought it would be once Wednesday’s program was complete.
The biggest miss in this group was undervaluing Kyle Reinhardt, Lachlan McHugh, and Justin Whittall. I had some advice to not shortchange Reinhardt with some speed the team had recently found that I dismissed and should have adjusted accordingly. McHugh is very talented and Brandon Ikenberry has a fast race car, but I wasn’t sure it would translate at Eldora. Huge mistake on my part. Reinhardt put himself in position to take advantage of one of the craziest sequences of events I’ve ever witnessed in a heat race but showed relatively good speed all week.
Most of the overvalued seeds in this group ran into incidents during the event. I may have overvalued Greg Wilson’s knack for getting around Eldora instead of taking recent performance into account.
51-83
| 51 | Lee Jacobs | 43 |
| 52 | Noah Gass | 81 |
| 53 | Robbie Price | 34 |
| 54 | Cody Maroske | 51 |
| 55 | Zachary Hampton | 41 |
| 56 | Travis Philo | 73 |
| 57 | Harli White | 68 |
| 58 | TJ Stutts | 29 |
| 59 | Jordan Ryan | 72 |
| 60 | Conner Morrell | 77 |
| 61 | Skylar Gee | 63 |
| 62 | Zane DeVault | 66 |
| 63 | Chris Andrews | 83 |
| 64 | Paige Polyak | 75 |
| 65 | Kory Crabtree | 65 |
| 66 | Cody Bova | 60 |
| 67 | C.J. Leary | 12 |
| 68 | Tyler Street | 69 |
| 69 | Carl Bowser | 30 |
| 70 | Landon Myers | 49 |
| 71 | Brandon Matus | 56 |
| 72 | Michael Bauer | 53 |
| 73 | Brent Matus | 62 |
| 74 | Ryan Myers | 52 |
| 75 | Mitchell Harble | 54 |
| 76 | Danny Smith | 67 |
| 77 | Bradley Ashford | 64 |
| 78 | McKenna Haase | 50 |
| 79 | Trent Pigdon | 58 |
| 80 | Michael Millard | 57 |
| 81 | Austin Bishop | 48 |
| 82 | Frank Rodgers | 61 |
| 83 | Denny Peebles | 59 |
I knew someone in this group would make me look bad, and C.J. Leary blew his 67 seed out of the water by finishing 12th in the Eldora Million. When someone surprises me that much, I don’t even feel bad about missing it.
Austin Bishop is another driver that I felt had some impressive moments during the weekend and significantly outperformed his 81 seed I gave him.
Robbie Price is getting faster being out on the Outlaw tour, but when a driver like Price goes through the process of getting their teeth kicked in on certain nights while gaining experience that progress is not as evident until you come to an event such as the Eldora Million with a large group of racers. Price showed off his progress.
Denny Peebles deserves perhaps the larges apology from me for being placed in the 83rd seed and outpacing that prediction by a significant margin.
Otherwise, I was relatively happy with this group of seedings.
In closing
This was a fun but very laborious task. With this being a one-time event and how Eldora Speedway’s Jonathan Bateman formatted the entry list it was a prime candidate to try something like this.
Some have asked if I will do this for the Knoxville Nationals. It is under consideration, but I plan on waiting until after this weekend to decide.
I do want to thank all of the readers who made this one of the most read pre-race features I have ever done.