BRADFORD -- Vermont's most famous racing family returns to Bear Ridge Speedway on Saturday night as the Dragons race on the dirt. Patriarchs Harmon "Beaver" Dragon, 69, and his brother, Bobby, 64, put their home town of Milton, Vt., on the stock car racing map as they won races from the 1960s to the 2000s. Their sons, Brent and Scott, are also successful racers, and will join their fathers at the Bradford quarter-mile for a family showdown.
Both members of the New England Auto Racing Hall of Fame, Beaver and Bobby Dragon racked up well over a dozen track and series championships, and have competed on superspeedways including Daytona, Charlotte and Darlington. Brent, Beaver's son, is a three-time Airborne Speedway champion and is among the all-time winners on the present-day American-Canadian Tour, and Bobby's son Scott is a three-time ACT winner currently competing with the Pro All Stars Series.
Bobby Dragon won last year's inaugural event, as Beaver and Brent played a last-lap game of bumper tag. Brent held his own ground in the regular 30-lap Sportsman Modified event that evening, though, finishing tenth in his first-ever dirt-track start.
"I plan to do a lot better this year in the main feature," Brent chuckled. "I was nervous about it last year having never raced dirt before, but I know what to do now."
Beaver and Bobby both raced on dirt tracks in Vermont and New York during the 1960s and '70s, but Bobby was still surprised to have won last year.
"It was a lot of fun, but it was a lot different from the asphalt I'd been used to running on. I think this year we've got to remind Beaver that the guys that own these cars have to race them after we're done and he shouldn't try to tear them all up like last year," Bobby laughed.
Bobby said that his son Scott, who will take part in the race for the first time this year, has designs of his own. "Scott's never been on a dirt track before, but he told us he's going to show us all how it's done out there."
Fairlee's Adam Pierson earned his first feature win of the season last week and leads the Sportsman Modified points after three events. Jack Cook of Moultonboro, N.H., sits second ten points back, with three-time defending champion Gary Siemons of Orford, N.H., third, twelve points behind Pierson. Melvin Pierson, Josh Harrington, and Jason Horniak pace the Sportsman Coupe division, and Will Hull leads Jeremy Hodge in the Limited Late Models.
Woodsville Guaranty Savings Bank presents the card at Bear Ridge Speedway at 6:00pm on Saturday.
Showing posts with label PASS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PASS. Show all posts
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Juice: It's Head-Smashing Time
-by Justin St. Louis
VMM Editor
Laperle made it adamantly clear at the beginning of his career that he was going to do things his way, and to his credit, he has stayed one hundred percent true to that. Unfortunately for Laperle, Curley did the same thing twenty years earlier, and has stuck to his guns ever since.
The result? A total win-win for ACT fans.
There are spats between drivers here and there -- Brian Hoar vs. Mike Bruno in the 1990s, Hoar vs. Joey Polewarczyk last year, Cris Michaud vs. Brad Leighton the year before, and Laperle vs. Donald Theetge, well, forever -- but the rivarly between Laperle and Curley is a horse of a different color.
Curley, a fiercely independent Irishman from the Maine seacoast, is arguably the most
successful short track promoter in the history of northeastern racing, and is in the elite crowd of the Bob Harmons, the Rex Robbins, the Hugh Deerys, and the Humpy Wheelers of the world. He has been called a maverick, a rebel, and, by his own admission in a Stock Car Racing Magazine article some twenty-odd years ago, "a pain in the ass." It's his way or the highway.
Laperle, a very focused, very talented, very popular Frenchman from suburban Montréal, has been a house afire since virtually the first race he ever drove at Airborne Speedway in 1998. He has won races and championships almost everywhere he's been from Québec to Florida, and is without question the most controversial racer in these parts.
When you put the two together, it's a recipe for a sort of magical disaster. The magic is in watching Curley set rules in place and create an entertaining racing product, and in watching Laperle at times make that product his own personal stomping ground. The two are among the very best in their chosen fields. The disaster comes when they challenge each other -- and they've been doing that since the beginning -- and feelings get hurt.
Remember, Laperle left racing full-time with ACT in 2005 and 2006 after repeated disagreements with Curley. He came back in 2007 and won the Série ACT-Castrol title, the ACT Late Model Tour title the next year, and nearly won the Castrol title again last season. When everything came to a head at St-Eustache last September, Laperle swore Curley off and said he'd be gone for two years, unless he felt like "smashing [his] head off a wall" again in 2010.
Apparently, it's already head-smashing time. We'll sit back and watch at Albany-Saratoga Speedway this weekend for anything that may or may not come out of the next chapter of Laperle vs. Curley.
***
Don't forget: If you can't make it to Albany-Saratoga Speedway this weekend (or even if you can!), follow VMM for raceday coverage of the ACT Late Model Tour opener, presented by RPM Racing Engines. We're here on the blog, but we're also on Twitter and Facebook!
***
How Hollywood-perfect would it be if Laperle was to win in ACT's first go at Albany-Saratoga this weekend?
History is a bit on his side, too. Of Laperle's 16 career ACT Late Model Tour wins, four have come in the series' first-ever appearance at a track: Lee USA Speedway in 2003, Twin State Speedway in 2004, and both Autodrome St-Eustache and Kawartha Speedway in 2007. He also won last year's Fall Foliage 300 in his first start at Airborne Speedway since the track was redesigned, and won the first-ever Coors Light 200 Showdown at Autodrome Chaudière in 2008.
***
Hey, if you haven't checked out the total facelift done on the new Big Daddy's Speedbowl in Rumney, N.H., you need to. Holy cow. Congratulations to Mike Rivers and his crew.
***
One more bit on Laperle -- We spoke with him again on Wednesday morning, and Laperle praised Curley and ACT for moving to electronic scoring this season. Laperle said that the decision to come back to ACT was helped largely because of the switch.
***
Kudos to both ACT and the Modified Racing Series on their decisions regarding the weather last weekend, for very different reasons.
Facing a total washout on Sunday, ACT and Lee USA Speedway called their event in southern New Hampshire off two days in advance. The result was a lot of travel, time, and money saved.
Up against the same thing in New York, the MRS troops tried to get their combination event with the Race of Champions Tour in at Albany-Saratoga, but were unable to do so. With nasty weather in the forecast on Friday, A-S management called Saturday's events off but played a wait-and-see game for the Sunday race, hoping the forecast would improve. It did, and they kept on schedule for Sunday and were even able to get a couple of heat races in. Unfortunately, the forecast is only a prediction, and the skies ultimately opened up anyway.
Valiant calls by both groups, we say. Pro All Stars Series officials have been blasted by fans and competitors for years over calling off events early due to unfavorable forecasts. They've also been blasted for waiting too long by the same groups of people. We're of the opinion that both ACT and MRS did the right thing -- an actually, so did PASS, having also been rained out at Speedway 95 in Bangor, Me., on Sunday -- by working with the options they had.
***
THIS WEEK:
Saturday, April 24
Airborne Speedway, Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (Open Practice)
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (Open Practice)
Canaan Dirt Speedway, Canaan, N.H. -- 11:00am (Open Practice)
Canaan Fair Speedway, Canaan, N.H. -- 11:00am (Open Practice)
Monadnock Speedway, Winchester, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Open Practice)
Riverside Speedway, Groveton, N.H. -- Tire Sale & Track Clean-Up Day
Sunday, April 25
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (ACT Late Model Tour/Modified Tri-Track Series)
Big Daddy's Speedbowl, Rumney, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Car Show)
Twin State Speedway, Claremont, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Open Practice)
TOURING SERIES:
ACT Late Model Tour: Sun., April 25 -- Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. (1:00pm)
Modified Tri-Track Series: Sun., April 25 -- Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. (1:00pm)
NASCAR Nationwide Series: Sat., April 24 -- Talladega Superspeedway, Talladega, Ala. (2:30pm)
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Sun., April 25 -- Talladega Superspeedway, Talladega, Ala. (1:00pm)
Pro All Stars Series: Sat., April 25 -- Orange County Speedway, Rougemont, N.C. (7:00pm)
VMM Editor
It seemed like it was only a matter of time. Patrick Laperle coming back to the American-Canadian Tour, that is. After all, it seemed like it was only a matter of time for his falling out with Tom Curley last September.
Laperle made it adamantly clear at the beginning of his career that he was going to do things his way, and to his credit, he has stayed one hundred percent true to that. Unfortunately for Laperle, Curley did the same thing twenty years earlier, and has stuck to his guns ever since. The result? A total win-win for ACT fans.
There are spats between drivers here and there -- Brian Hoar vs. Mike Bruno in the 1990s, Hoar vs. Joey Polewarczyk last year, Cris Michaud vs. Brad Leighton the year before, and Laperle vs. Donald Theetge, well, forever -- but the rivarly between Laperle and Curley is a horse of a different color.
A battle like this gives fans something new to cheer for -- The rebellious cog upsetting the dictator's machine.
Curley, a fiercely independent Irishman from the Maine seacoast, is arguably the most
successful short track promoter in the history of northeastern racing, and is in the elite crowd of the Bob Harmons, the Rex Robbins, the Hugh Deerys, and the Humpy Wheelers of the world. He has been called a maverick, a rebel, and, by his own admission in a Stock Car Racing Magazine article some twenty-odd years ago, "a pain in the ass." It's his way or the highway. Laperle, a very focused, very talented, very popular Frenchman from suburban Montréal, has been a house afire since virtually the first race he ever drove at Airborne Speedway in 1998. He has won races and championships almost everywhere he's been from Québec to Florida, and is without question the most controversial racer in these parts.
When you put the two together, it's a recipe for a sort of magical disaster. The magic is in watching Curley set rules in place and create an entertaining racing product, and in watching Laperle at times make that product his own personal stomping ground. The two are among the very best in their chosen fields. The disaster comes when they challenge each other -- and they've been doing that since the beginning -- and feelings get hurt.
Remember, Laperle left racing full-time with ACT in 2005 and 2006 after repeated disagreements with Curley. He came back in 2007 and won the Série ACT-Castrol title, the ACT Late Model Tour title the next year, and nearly won the Castrol title again last season. When everything came to a head at St-Eustache last September, Laperle swore Curley off and said he'd be gone for two years, unless he felt like "smashing [his] head off a wall" again in 2010.
Apparently, it's already head-smashing time. We'll sit back and watch at Albany-Saratoga Speedway this weekend for anything that may or may not come out of the next chapter of Laperle vs. Curley.
***
Don't forget: If you can't make it to Albany-Saratoga Speedway this weekend (or even if you can!), follow VMM for raceday coverage of the ACT Late Model Tour opener, presented by RPM Racing Engines. We're here on the blog, but we're also on Twitter and Facebook!
***
How Hollywood-perfect would it be if Laperle was to win in ACT's first go at Albany-Saratoga this weekend?
History is a bit on his side, too. Of Laperle's 16 career ACT Late Model Tour wins, four have come in the series' first-ever appearance at a track: Lee USA Speedway in 2003, Twin State Speedway in 2004, and both Autodrome St-Eustache and Kawartha Speedway in 2007. He also won last year's Fall Foliage 300 in his first start at Airborne Speedway since the track was redesigned, and won the first-ever Coors Light 200 Showdown at Autodrome Chaudière in 2008.
***
Hey, if you haven't checked out the total facelift done on the new Big Daddy's Speedbowl in Rumney, N.H., you need to. Holy cow. Congratulations to Mike Rivers and his crew.
***
One more bit on Laperle -- We spoke with him again on Wednesday morning, and Laperle praised Curley and ACT for moving to electronic scoring this season. Laperle said that the decision to come back to ACT was helped largely because of the switch.
***
Kudos to both ACT and the Modified Racing Series on their decisions regarding the weather last weekend, for very different reasons.
Facing a total washout on Sunday, ACT and Lee USA Speedway called their event in southern New Hampshire off two days in advance. The result was a lot of travel, time, and money saved.
Up against the same thing in New York, the MRS troops tried to get their combination event with the Race of Champions Tour in at Albany-Saratoga, but were unable to do so. With nasty weather in the forecast on Friday, A-S management called Saturday's events off but played a wait-and-see game for the Sunday race, hoping the forecast would improve. It did, and they kept on schedule for Sunday and were even able to get a couple of heat races in. Unfortunately, the forecast is only a prediction, and the skies ultimately opened up anyway.
Valiant calls by both groups, we say. Pro All Stars Series officials have been blasted by fans and competitors for years over calling off events early due to unfavorable forecasts. They've also been blasted for waiting too long by the same groups of people. We're of the opinion that both ACT and MRS did the right thing -- an actually, so did PASS, having also been rained out at Speedway 95 in Bangor, Me., on Sunday -- by working with the options they had.
***
THIS WEEK:
Saturday, April 24
Airborne Speedway, Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (Open Practice)
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (Open Practice)
Canaan Dirt Speedway, Canaan, N.H. -- 11:00am (Open Practice)
Canaan Fair Speedway, Canaan, N.H. -- 11:00am (Open Practice)
Monadnock Speedway, Winchester, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Open Practice)
Riverside Speedway, Groveton, N.H. -- Tire Sale & Track Clean-Up Day
Sunday, April 25
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (ACT Late Model Tour/Modified Tri-Track Series)
Big Daddy's Speedbowl, Rumney, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Car Show)
Twin State Speedway, Claremont, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Open Practice)
TOURING SERIES:
ACT Late Model Tour: Sun., April 25 -- Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. (1:00pm)
Modified Tri-Track Series: Sun., April 25 -- Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. (1:00pm)
NASCAR Nationwide Series: Sat., April 24 -- Talladega Superspeedway, Talladega, Ala. (2:30pm)
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Sun., April 25 -- Talladega Superspeedway, Talladega, Ala. (1:00pm)
Pro All Stars Series: Sat., April 25 -- Orange County Speedway, Rougemont, N.C. (7:00pm)
Thursday, April 15, 2010
The Juice: Practice Was Actually A Lot Of Fun
-by Justin St. Louis
VMM Editor
For most racing folks up where we're located, this weekend is a big one. For Late Model fans, the American-Canadian Tour kicks its 25th season off at Lee USA Speedway on the New Hampshire seacoast on Sunday, while the open-wheel fans can enjoy the first-ever Modified Racing Series/Race of Champions Tour showdown at the all-new Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta, New York. A bit further east, the Pro All Stars Series Super Late Models open their North schedule at Speedway 95 near Bangor, Maine.
As much as we'd love to be in two or three places at once, VMM is headed to Lee to find out who the first qualifier for the ACT Invitational at New Hampshire Motor Speedway will be.
Now if only Mother Nature can cooperate.
***
Getting back to Thunder Road for Tuesday's practice session -- strangely enough -- did this soul a whole lot of good. Yeah, we started the season a few weeks ago with an actual race at Waterford, but it was cold, windy, wet, and far from home. In fact, there was a pretty decent snowstorm that we trudged through on the way back north.
But the weather at Thunder Road was pretty close to perfect for mid-April in Vermont, and the ride home was about three-and-a-half hours shorter. In fact, I even got back in time for supper, in time to tell my new puppy, Witten, that no, this was my spaghetti, not his.
We got a pretty-much-complete list of the Late Models and Tiger Sportsmen that were there, but God help me if I was going to get all of the numberless and even paintless Street Stocks and Warriors.
Late Models we counted: Norm Andrews, Joey Becker, Cody Blake, Nathan Brown, Craig Bushey, Brooks Clark, John Donahue (two cars), Aaron Fellows, Jamie Fisher, Grant Folsom, Reno Gervais, Chip Grenier, Brian Hoar, Joey Laquerre, Cris Michaud, Doug Murphy, Scott Payea, Dave Pembroke, Chris Riendeau, Phil Scott, Nick Sweet, Dave Whitcomb, Matt White.
And Tigers: Eric Badore, Mike Billado, Jeff Bousquet, Jason Corliss, Josh Demers, Alex Ferno, David Finck, Shawn Fleury, Neal Foster, Kevin Godfrey, Troy Gray, Jimmy Hebert, Joel Hodgdon, John Lambert, Mike Martin, George May, Derrick O'Donnell, Matt Potter, Tim Potter, Ricky Roberts, Tucker Williams, Mike Ziter.
***
John Donahue had both of his cars at Thunder Road, including one with the new Ford crate engine. Donahue was happy with the switch and basically echoed the thoughts of others that have tried out the new powerplant.
"It's got a longer power curve," he said. "I feel like all my speed is at the end of the straightaway, rather than out of the corner with the Chevy motor." Donahue said he thinks it will be very interesting at shorter tracks like Thunder Road. He also practiced the engine at White Mountain Motorsports Park last week and was pleased with the performance of it there.
***
Our favorite Tweet of the week: "@LaxSpeedway: We are proud to announce that Festival Foods' Oktoberfest Bratwursts are the Speedway's official Bratwurst this year."
Gotta hand it to LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway for constant promotion. The Wisconsin track's annual Oktoberfest is a national short track happening, and to me, the Bratwurst thing seems like a fantastic year-long reminder of that event. (And honestly, who wouldn't want to eat a couple of those every Saturday night at the races?) Good work, LaCrosse.
It's been suggested that VMM should sign some sort of endorsement deal for an official food.
I wonder if I can get Mike Perrotte to get on board with this. Eight Airborne Speedway Michigan Dogs a week and you've got a deal.
***
Check out these cool videos produced by the Air National Guard in association with Vermont's own Latitude 43 Motorsports. And while you're at it, check out some cool videos we put together from Thunder Road.
***
An interesting deal: Jay Webb will be back behind the wheel of a Tiger Sportsman car this season. Webb struck a deal with car owner Chris Burnett that brings a new engine under the hood of the #19 car driven weekly at Thunder Road by Neal Foster in exchange for a seat in the car at the four ACT Tiger Sportsman Series races at White Mountain, Canaan, Thunder Road, and Riverside. Webb will also turn some wrenches on the car when Foster drives.
The Milton racer won the 1997 Renegade championship at Airborne and was one of the Tiger division's top racers in the early 2000s with six feature wins there and in long-distance series events. He and Burnett have each spent the last few years as crew members for RPM Motorsports on the ACT Late Model Tour, winning titles with both Jean-Paul Cyr and Brian Hoar.
I'll say it now: it wouldn't surprise me a bit to see Jay Webb snare a win or even contend for the Tiger Sportsman Series championship this year. On top of that, Foster made big gains at the end of last year, and his program should improve quite a bit more this season with Webb in the pits.
***
Notably absent from Thunder Road Late Model practice: Jean-Paul Cyr, Tracie Bellerose, Brent Dragon, Eric Chase, Mike Bailey, Tony Andrews, Rich Lowrey, Dylan Smith, and Tom Tiller.
That's right, Tom Tiller was not there. Come to think of it, he's missed the last few practices, too. Hmm.
***
The best moment from practice was a conversation with Cris Michaud, who has become a gold mine for instantly classic quotes. You see, Michaud is as much a hockey fan as he is a racer, loving specifically the Montréal Canadiens. (He's a smart man. Habs over Washington in six. Ovechkin who?)
While we can't reprint everything from the conversation, it started something like this:
VMM: "Hey Cris, how are ya?"
Michaud: "(Expletive) Canadiens... They can't (expletive) get one (expletive) win before the (expletive) playoffs?"
...and it went on from there. We feel your pain, Cris Michaud, we feel your pain. Hang on to 1993. It could happen again.
***
THIS WEEK:
Saturday, April 17
Airborne Speedway, Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (Open Practice)
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 12:00pm (Quarter-Midgets, NETS Trucks, Enduro)
Canaan Fair Speedway, Canaan, N.H. -- 9:30am (Tire Sale)
Monadnock Speedway, Winchester, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Open Practice)
Sunday, April 18
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (MRS/ROC Modifieds)
Big Daddy's Speedbowl, Rumney, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Car Show)
Lee USA Speedway, Lee, N.H. -- 1:00pm (ACT Late Model Tour)
Twin State Speedway, Claremont, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Open Practice)
TOURING SERIES:
ACT Late Model Tour: Sun., April 18 -- Lee USA Speedway, Lee, N.H. (1:00pm)
Modified Racing Series: Sun., April 18 -- Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. (1:00pm)
Mr. DIRTcar 358-Modified Series: Sat., April 17 -- Can-Am Speedway, LaFargeville, N.Y. (4:00pm)
NASCAR Nationwide Series: Sat., April 17 -- Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, Tx. (9:00pm)
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Sun., April 18 -- Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, Tx. (3:00pm)
Pro All Stars Series: Sun., April 18 -- Speedway 95, Hermon, Me. (1:30pm)
VMM Editor
For most racing folks up where we're located, this weekend is a big one. For Late Model fans, the American-Canadian Tour kicks its 25th season off at Lee USA Speedway on the New Hampshire seacoast on Sunday, while the open-wheel fans can enjoy the first-ever Modified Racing Series/Race of Champions Tour showdown at the all-new Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta, New York. A bit further east, the Pro All Stars Series Super Late Models open their North schedule at Speedway 95 near Bangor, Maine.
As much as we'd love to be in two or three places at once, VMM is headed to Lee to find out who the first qualifier for the ACT Invitational at New Hampshire Motor Speedway will be.
Now if only Mother Nature can cooperate.
***
Getting back to Thunder Road for Tuesday's practice session -- strangely enough -- did this soul a whole lot of good. Yeah, we started the season a few weeks ago with an actual race at Waterford, but it was cold, windy, wet, and far from home. In fact, there was a pretty decent snowstorm that we trudged through on the way back north.
But the weather at Thunder Road was pretty close to perfect for mid-April in Vermont, and the ride home was about three-and-a-half hours shorter. In fact, I even got back in time for supper, in time to tell my new puppy, Witten, that no, this was my spaghetti, not his.
We got a pretty-much-complete list of the Late Models and Tiger Sportsmen that were there, but God help me if I was going to get all of the numberless and even paintless Street Stocks and Warriors.
Late Models we counted: Norm Andrews, Joey Becker, Cody Blake, Nathan Brown, Craig Bushey, Brooks Clark, John Donahue (two cars), Aaron Fellows, Jamie Fisher, Grant Folsom, Reno Gervais, Chip Grenier, Brian Hoar, Joey Laquerre, Cris Michaud, Doug Murphy, Scott Payea, Dave Pembroke, Chris Riendeau, Phil Scott, Nick Sweet, Dave Whitcomb, Matt White.
And Tigers: Eric Badore, Mike Billado, Jeff Bousquet, Jason Corliss, Josh Demers, Alex Ferno, David Finck, Shawn Fleury, Neal Foster, Kevin Godfrey, Troy Gray, Jimmy Hebert, Joel Hodgdon, John Lambert, Mike Martin, George May, Derrick O'Donnell, Matt Potter, Tim Potter, Ricky Roberts, Tucker Williams, Mike Ziter.
***
John Donahue had both of his cars at Thunder Road, including one with the new Ford crate engine. Donahue was happy with the switch and basically echoed the thoughts of others that have tried out the new powerplant.
"It's got a longer power curve," he said. "I feel like all my speed is at the end of the straightaway, rather than out of the corner with the Chevy motor." Donahue said he thinks it will be very interesting at shorter tracks like Thunder Road. He also practiced the engine at White Mountain Motorsports Park last week and was pleased with the performance of it there.
***
Our favorite Tweet of the week: "@LaxSpeedway: We are proud to announce that Festival Foods' Oktoberfest Bratwursts are the Speedway's official Bratwurst this year."
Gotta hand it to LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway for constant promotion. The Wisconsin track's annual Oktoberfest is a national short track happening, and to me, the Bratwurst thing seems like a fantastic year-long reminder of that event. (And honestly, who wouldn't want to eat a couple of those every Saturday night at the races?) Good work, LaCrosse.
It's been suggested that VMM should sign some sort of endorsement deal for an official food.
I wonder if I can get Mike Perrotte to get on board with this. Eight Airborne Speedway Michigan Dogs a week and you've got a deal.
***
Check out these cool videos produced by the Air National Guard in association with Vermont's own Latitude 43 Motorsports. And while you're at it, check out some cool videos we put together from Thunder Road.
***
An interesting deal: Jay Webb will be back behind the wheel of a Tiger Sportsman car this season. Webb struck a deal with car owner Chris Burnett that brings a new engine under the hood of the #19 car driven weekly at Thunder Road by Neal Foster in exchange for a seat in the car at the four ACT Tiger Sportsman Series races at White Mountain, Canaan, Thunder Road, and Riverside. Webb will also turn some wrenches on the car when Foster drives.
The Milton racer won the 1997 Renegade championship at Airborne and was one of the Tiger division's top racers in the early 2000s with six feature wins there and in long-distance series events. He and Burnett have each spent the last few years as crew members for RPM Motorsports on the ACT Late Model Tour, winning titles with both Jean-Paul Cyr and Brian Hoar.
I'll say it now: it wouldn't surprise me a bit to see Jay Webb snare a win or even contend for the Tiger Sportsman Series championship this year. On top of that, Foster made big gains at the end of last year, and his program should improve quite a bit more this season with Webb in the pits.
***
Notably absent from Thunder Road Late Model practice: Jean-Paul Cyr, Tracie Bellerose, Brent Dragon, Eric Chase, Mike Bailey, Tony Andrews, Rich Lowrey, Dylan Smith, and Tom Tiller.
That's right, Tom Tiller was not there. Come to think of it, he's missed the last few practices, too. Hmm.
***
The best moment from practice was a conversation with Cris Michaud, who has become a gold mine for instantly classic quotes. You see, Michaud is as much a hockey fan as he is a racer, loving specifically the Montréal Canadiens. (He's a smart man. Habs over Washington in six. Ovechkin who?)
While we can't reprint everything from the conversation, it started something like this:
VMM: "Hey Cris, how are ya?"
Michaud: "(Expletive) Canadiens... They can't (expletive) get one (expletive) win before the (expletive) playoffs?"
...and it went on from there. We feel your pain, Cris Michaud, we feel your pain. Hang on to 1993. It could happen again.
***
THIS WEEK:
Saturday, April 17
Airborne Speedway, Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (Open Practice)
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 12:00pm (Quarter-Midgets, NETS Trucks, Enduro)
Canaan Fair Speedway, Canaan, N.H. -- 9:30am (Tire Sale)
Monadnock Speedway, Winchester, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Open Practice)
Sunday, April 18
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (MRS/ROC Modifieds)
Big Daddy's Speedbowl, Rumney, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Car Show)
Lee USA Speedway, Lee, N.H. -- 1:00pm (ACT Late Model Tour)
Twin State Speedway, Claremont, N.H. -- 12:00pm (Open Practice)
TOURING SERIES:
ACT Late Model Tour: Sun., April 18 -- Lee USA Speedway, Lee, N.H. (1:00pm)
Modified Racing Series: Sun., April 18 -- Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. (1:00pm)
Mr. DIRTcar 358-Modified Series: Sat., April 17 -- Can-Am Speedway, LaFargeville, N.Y. (4:00pm)
NASCAR Nationwide Series: Sat., April 17 -- Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, Tx. (9:00pm)
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Sun., April 18 -- Texas Motor Speedway, Fort Worth, Tx. (3:00pm)
Pro All Stars Series: Sun., April 18 -- Speedway 95, Hermon, Me. (1:30pm)
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The Juice: A Bunch of Random Stuff. Seriously.
-by Justin St. Louis
VMM Editor
April what? Feels like June. I'm in shorts and a t-shirt as I write this column, and my lawn is as green as I've ever seen it this time of year. By the way, this week's "Juice" has no real direction, but rather it's just a mindless collection of thoughts and notes I've taken during the last few days. Then again, I guess that's pretty much what this column is every week anyway. Enjoy.
***
We continue to watch Kevin Lepage in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Since missing the cut at Daytona, the Shelburne native has easily made the starting field in all four events, qualifying no worse than 28th in Jack McNelly's #56 MacHill Motorsports cars.
Alas, Lepage is forced to "start and park" his car each week due to a lack of funding. A botched sponsorship deal with distributor Revolucion World Wide and its START Natural Energy Drink brand left the team scrambling for money to go racing. McNelly is funding the now-sponsorless operation out of his own pocket at this point, and can't afford the costs accumulated by completing the entire distance of each race.
On Wednesday, this post came from Lepage himself on a message board dedicated to his fan base: "First of all, the MacHill Team is a better team then what I'm showing," he wrote. "We need to take care of these two cars so I can be at the track each week. Second, until we get a sponsor we will continue to [start and park]."
***
Go support the Autism Puzzle Foundation's "Casino Night" fundraiser at the Barre Auditorium on Saturday. This is the fifth year that the benefit will have the stars of the American-Canadian Tour and Thunder Road on hand to deal Black Jack, Craps, and Roulette, and it's a great time for a great cause.
Over 150 items will be auctioned off, including trips to Ireland and Las Vegas, and $1,000 cash. The dealers will be ACT Late Model Tour champion Brian Hoar, "King of the Road" Jean-Paul Cyr, top dogs Phil Scott, Robbie Crouch, Dave Pembroke, John Donahue, Nick Sweet, Joey Laquerre, and Eric Chase, and ACT/Thunder Road president Tom Curley.
Click here for more information.
***
We got a nice response from Waterford (Conn.) Speedbowl race director Scott Tapley regarding our comments on Keith Rocco's restarts on March 28. After suggesting that Rocco was kinda-sorta getting away with jumping the gun a little bit in last week's "Juice", Tapley responded with this:
"No special treatment for Rocco, in fact, his first three restarts were perfect. Our rule is that leader must maintain pace car speed and the leader, and only the leader, well be the first car to fire at the restart line in the middle of turn 3.
"His next restart, however, was a brake check at the line (I know because I race direct at the line), and I immediately told our spotter official to tell Rocco's spotter that that was his one and only warning on the brake check. He maintained his correct restarts for the remaining restarts with absoultely no question in my mind.
"[At] our season finale last year ... Keith's team argued for "extra" caution laps when the rule is four laps no matter what ... because of our pit in/out blending problems. (Editor's note: Waterford has a very odd pit road; the only entrance from the track surface is a swinging gate on the backstretch that can only be opened by an official during a yellow flag period.) We went green at our normal four laps and it took the Rocco team 18 laps to complete the change. A broken track bar braket cost him the title, as he entered the event the leader. The team claimed that we could have provided a "courtesy" [lap] but I my opinion it would nullify any rule ever made.
"If you dont have ruling consistency than you have no crediblity, and I'm proud of the fact that I and our officials have shown that in our first year of operation, much different than the Speedbowl I attended when I first moved to Connecticut in 2005."
So there you have it. Thanks to Scott Tapley for reading VMM, and thanks even more for the response.
***
Sad news comes with the passing of pioneer racer Ronnie "Satch" Hunt on Easter Sunday. Despite his youth, Hunt was a top driver in the barnstorming days of the open-wheel Coupes in Vermont and New Hampshire, winning multiple features in the #59 and #60 cars at Barre's Thunder Road and Northeastern Speedway near St. Johnsbury. At the time of his first win at Northeastern in 1960, he was just 19 years old.
Satch owned and operated Hunt's Auto Repair and AKM Recycling in his native Franconia, N.H., and was an active member of the community; he had roles with the Franconia Board of Adjustment and the Franconia Planning Board, was a town selectman and firefighter, and was a member of the LaFayette Lions Club. He also attended the Northeastern Speedway 50th reunion last July.
Satch was 68.
***
That NCAA title was one of the best basketball games you'll ever see. And thanks to Duke, I won a basketball hoop of my very own. #bracketology
***
There's something about Dale Brackett that you can get behind. Most small teams -- especially when they're based more than a thousand miles away from most of the action -- don't make it in the big leagues of NASCAR. I don't know whether or not Brackett's new NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team will, but at least he's got the right attitude about it.
"We're trying to make our own opportunity here," he said after failing to qualify for his debut at Martinsville on March 27. "It's a huge jump from where we've been, and we know that. There's no real way to prepare for it. But you've either got it or you don't."
Amen, fella.
***
Some numbers from the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East this year. Just for fun.
Races: 2
Winners: Darrell Wallace, Jr. (Greenville), Max Gresham (South Boston)
Oldest winner: Gresham, age 16 years, 11 months, 4 days
Number of starters: 30 (Greenville), 26 (South Boston)
Number of rookies: 16 (Greenville), 16 (South Boston)
Average age of Top 10 finishers: 22 (Greenville), 21 (South Boston)
Average age of Top 10 finishers at South Boston without Matt Kobyluck (age 40) and Eddie MacDonald (age 29): 18
Drivers younger than Joey Polewarczyk, Jr., (age 20) at South Boston: 13
My, how this sport has changed.
***
Our many thanks to Dave Parker and Subway of Barre, Montpelier, Waterbury, and Northfield for the live updates at Hickory Motor Speedway's Easter Bunny 150, part of the PASS National Championship series. Dave made it possible for us to get photos, interviews, and mid-race updates from North Carolina (much as he did for us at New Smyrna in January).
Unfortunately our northern drivers didn't fare too well overall, but what can you do?
Tarheel racer Preston Peltier won the race over Jay Fogleman and young Ryan Blaney. Maine's Cassius Clark led a bunch of laps before finishing fourth and Ben Rowe turned in a "miracle" performance to finish in eighth place, but that was the best we could get. New Brunswick racer Lonnie Sommerville was 25th, with Maine racers Johnny Clark 26th and Ryan Moore 28th, New Hampshire's Brad Leighton -- who entered the race as the National point leader -- 30th, and Danville, Vt.'s Steven Legendre a crashed-out 31st.
We had it all covered on our Twitter page on Saturday, including quotes from Moore and Legendre, and photos of guys like David Ragan and Max Papis, who were moonlighting from their regular gigs as NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers to have a little short track fun.
If you're not on Twitter, you'll be missing some good stuff this year that you may not find on the VMM homepage, like in-race updates, photos, quickie interviews, contests, and who knows what else!
***
WEEKEND SCHEDULE:
Saturday, April 10
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (Open Practice)
Canaan Fair Speedway, Canaan, N.H. -- 2:00pm (Open Practice)
TOURING SERIES:
NASCAR Nationwide Series: Fri., April 9 -- Phoenix Int'l Raceway, Phoenix, Ariz. (9:00pm)
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Sat., April 10 -- Phoenix Int'l Raceway, Phoenix, Ariz. (7:30pm)
VMM Editor
April what? Feels like June. I'm in shorts and a t-shirt as I write this column, and my lawn is as green as I've ever seen it this time of year. By the way, this week's "Juice" has no real direction, but rather it's just a mindless collection of thoughts and notes I've taken during the last few days. Then again, I guess that's pretty much what this column is every week anyway. Enjoy.
***
We continue to watch Kevin Lepage in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. Since missing the cut at Daytona, the Shelburne native has easily made the starting field in all four events, qualifying no worse than 28th in Jack McNelly's #56 MacHill Motorsports cars.
Alas, Lepage is forced to "start and park" his car each week due to a lack of funding. A botched sponsorship deal with distributor Revolucion World Wide and its START Natural Energy Drink brand left the team scrambling for money to go racing. McNelly is funding the now-sponsorless operation out of his own pocket at this point, and can't afford the costs accumulated by completing the entire distance of each race.
On Wednesday, this post came from Lepage himself on a message board dedicated to his fan base: "First of all, the MacHill Team is a better team then what I'm showing," he wrote. "We need to take care of these two cars so I can be at the track each week. Second, until we get a sponsor we will continue to [start and park]."
***
Go support the Autism Puzzle Foundation's "Casino Night" fundraiser at the Barre Auditorium on Saturday. This is the fifth year that the benefit will have the stars of the American-Canadian Tour and Thunder Road on hand to deal Black Jack, Craps, and Roulette, and it's a great time for a great cause.
Over 150 items will be auctioned off, including trips to Ireland and Las Vegas, and $1,000 cash. The dealers will be ACT Late Model Tour champion Brian Hoar, "King of the Road" Jean-Paul Cyr, top dogs Phil Scott, Robbie Crouch, Dave Pembroke, John Donahue, Nick Sweet, Joey Laquerre, and Eric Chase, and ACT/Thunder Road president Tom Curley.
Click here for more information.
***
We got a nice response from Waterford (Conn.) Speedbowl race director Scott Tapley regarding our comments on Keith Rocco's restarts on March 28. After suggesting that Rocco was kinda-sorta getting away with jumping the gun a little bit in last week's "Juice", Tapley responded with this:
"No special treatment for Rocco, in fact, his first three restarts were perfect. Our rule is that leader must maintain pace car speed and the leader, and only the leader, well be the first car to fire at the restart line in the middle of turn 3.
"His next restart, however, was a brake check at the line (I know because I race direct at the line), and I immediately told our spotter official to tell Rocco's spotter that that was his one and only warning on the brake check. He maintained his correct restarts for the remaining restarts with absoultely no question in my mind.
"[At] our season finale last year ... Keith's team argued for "extra" caution laps when the rule is four laps no matter what ... because of our pit in/out blending problems. (Editor's note: Waterford has a very odd pit road; the only entrance from the track surface is a swinging gate on the backstretch that can only be opened by an official during a yellow flag period.) We went green at our normal four laps and it took the Rocco team 18 laps to complete the change. A broken track bar braket cost him the title, as he entered the event the leader. The team claimed that we could have provided a "courtesy" [lap] but I my opinion it would nullify any rule ever made.
"If you dont have ruling consistency than you have no crediblity, and I'm proud of the fact that I and our officials have shown that in our first year of operation, much different than the Speedbowl I attended when I first moved to Connecticut in 2005."
So there you have it. Thanks to Scott Tapley for reading VMM, and thanks even more for the response.
***
Sad news comes with the passing of pioneer racer Ronnie "Satch" Hunt on Easter Sunday. Despite his youth, Hunt was a top driver in the barnstorming days of the open-wheel Coupes in Vermont and New Hampshire, winning multiple features in the #59 and #60 cars at Barre's Thunder Road and Northeastern Speedway near St. Johnsbury. At the time of his first win at Northeastern in 1960, he was just 19 years old.
Satch owned and operated Hunt's Auto Repair and AKM Recycling in his native Franconia, N.H., and was an active member of the community; he had roles with the Franconia Board of Adjustment and the Franconia Planning Board, was a town selectman and firefighter, and was a member of the LaFayette Lions Club. He also attended the Northeastern Speedway 50th reunion last July.
Satch was 68.
***
That NCAA title was one of the best basketball games you'll ever see. And thanks to Duke, I won a basketball hoop of my very own. #bracketology
***
There's something about Dale Brackett that you can get behind. Most small teams -- especially when they're based more than a thousand miles away from most of the action -- don't make it in the big leagues of NASCAR. I don't know whether or not Brackett's new NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team will, but at least he's got the right attitude about it.
"We're trying to make our own opportunity here," he said after failing to qualify for his debut at Martinsville on March 27. "It's a huge jump from where we've been, and we know that. There's no real way to prepare for it. But you've either got it or you don't."
Amen, fella.
***
Some numbers from the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East this year. Just for fun.
Races: 2
Winners: Darrell Wallace, Jr. (Greenville), Max Gresham (South Boston)
Oldest winner: Gresham, age 16 years, 11 months, 4 days
Number of starters: 30 (Greenville), 26 (South Boston)
Number of rookies: 16 (Greenville), 16 (South Boston)
Average age of Top 10 finishers: 22 (Greenville), 21 (South Boston)
Average age of Top 10 finishers at South Boston without Matt Kobyluck (age 40) and Eddie MacDonald (age 29): 18
Drivers younger than Joey Polewarczyk, Jr., (age 20) at South Boston: 13
My, how this sport has changed.
***
Our many thanks to Dave Parker and Subway of Barre, Montpelier, Waterbury, and Northfield for the live updates at Hickory Motor Speedway's Easter Bunny 150, part of the PASS National Championship series. Dave made it possible for us to get photos, interviews, and mid-race updates from North Carolina (much as he did for us at New Smyrna in January).
Unfortunately our northern drivers didn't fare too well overall, but what can you do?
Tarheel racer Preston Peltier won the race over Jay Fogleman and young Ryan Blaney. Maine's Cassius Clark led a bunch of laps before finishing fourth and Ben Rowe turned in a "miracle" performance to finish in eighth place, but that was the best we could get. New Brunswick racer Lonnie Sommerville was 25th, with Maine racers Johnny Clark 26th and Ryan Moore 28th, New Hampshire's Brad Leighton -- who entered the race as the National point leader -- 30th, and Danville, Vt.'s Steven Legendre a crashed-out 31st.
We had it all covered on our Twitter page on Saturday, including quotes from Moore and Legendre, and photos of guys like David Ragan and Max Papis, who were moonlighting from their regular gigs as NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers to have a little short track fun.
If you're not on Twitter, you'll be missing some good stuff this year that you may not find on the VMM homepage, like in-race updates, photos, quickie interviews, contests, and who knows what else!
***
WEEKEND SCHEDULE:
Saturday, April 10
Albany-Saratoga Speedway, Malta, N.Y. -- 1:00pm (Open Practice)
Canaan Fair Speedway, Canaan, N.H. -- 2:00pm (Open Practice)
TOURING SERIES:
NASCAR Nationwide Series: Fri., April 9 -- Phoenix Int'l Raceway, Phoenix, Ariz. (9:00pm)
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Sat., April 10 -- Phoenix Int'l Raceway, Phoenix, Ariz. (7:30pm)
Monday, April 5, 2010
Brackett Encouraged by Truck Debut at Martinsville
Despite failing to qualify, Mainer plans 6 more NCWTS events
STRONG, Me. -- Dale Brackett may not have qualified for his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series debut at Martinsville Speedway two weeks ago, but it doesn't have him down. In fact, he's thinking much more positively now than he was before the event.
"I was in the back of the hauler on the way down to Martinsville, really down on myself and doubting everything," Brackett admits. "But that's gone now."
The 31 year-old Maine racer took what he described as "a huge jump" by breaking into the Truck series. His wife, Valerie, purchased two trucks from Tim Bainey, Jr.'s team with the modest goal of her husband -- a former asphalt racer at Unity (Me.) Raceway and dirt Late Model driver in the Carolinas -- simply qualifying for races and getting approved to run bigger tracks.
During practice sessions in his first attempt at the Martinsville half-mile, Brackett was only about a second off the pace of eventual winner Kevin Harvick and point leader Timothy Peters. Even better, in Brackett's mind, is the fact that his truck was not in faster "qualifying trim" while virtually every other truck was.
Brackett has made some connections that he thinks will help, including former Truck and Nationwide Series champion Johnny Benson.
"My crew chief is Shain Romanoski, and his brother Vern races [ISMA] Supermodifieds. Johnny Benson is into the Supers, and we've gotten to know him pretty well throught that. He's helped us a bit," said Brackett. "We ask a lot of questions. We've got a huge learning curve and the guys on the team are all volunteers. They all bought their own NASCAR licenses at $550 each, they paid for their own drug tests, and they took time off work and used up vacation days just to go to Martinsville."
Brackett fell victim to the NASCAR rulebook when qualifying was cancelled by rain, and as a first-timer with the series and no provisional starting spot to fall back on, he was sent home to Maine.
But, Brackett and his team came back with confidence. "We belong there," he said. "We have good equipment and we ran well. We have a ton of passion, focus, and determination, as corny as that sounds. We're hoping that [NASCAR, teams, and sponsors] will take us as seriously as we take it."
Brackett finshed 12th in the first leg of the five-race Pro All Stars Series National Championship at New Smyrna Speedway in Florida in January, but decided after Martinsville that he will forgo his plans to complete the entire PASS National schedule; he did not make the trip to Hickory, N.C., for last weekend's Easter Bunny 150. Instead, he will focus on returning to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in six more events: Dover Int'l Speedway (May 14), O'Reilly Raceway Park (July 23), Bristol Motor Speedway (Aug. 18), New Hampshire Motor Speedway (Sept. 18), a return trip to Martinsville (Oct. 23), and the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 19.
"We're running Homestead so that NASCAR can hopefully declare us eligible to run the superspeedways," Brackett explained. "I don't want to be a big talker, and it all depends on sponsorship of course, but we're looking at racing the full schedule in 2011."
He said he is still considering running occasional PASS events this season, including the PASS North opener at Speedway 95 in Bangor, Me., on April 18.
Brackett understands that his goals are big, but he says he and his team are willing to work hard to find out what they're made of.
"We're trying to make our own opportunity here. It's a huge jump from where we've been, and we know that. There's no real way to prepare for it," he says. "But you've either got it or you don't."
STRONG, Me. -- Dale Brackett may not have qualified for his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series debut at Martinsville Speedway two weeks ago, but it doesn't have him down. In fact, he's thinking much more positively now than he was before the event. "I was in the back of the hauler on the way down to Martinsville, really down on myself and doubting everything," Brackett admits. "But that's gone now."
The 31 year-old Maine racer took what he described as "a huge jump" by breaking into the Truck series. His wife, Valerie, purchased two trucks from Tim Bainey, Jr.'s team with the modest goal of her husband -- a former asphalt racer at Unity (Me.) Raceway and dirt Late Model driver in the Carolinas -- simply qualifying for races and getting approved to run bigger tracks.
During practice sessions in his first attempt at the Martinsville half-mile, Brackett was only about a second off the pace of eventual winner Kevin Harvick and point leader Timothy Peters. Even better, in Brackett's mind, is the fact that his truck was not in faster "qualifying trim" while virtually every other truck was.
Brackett has made some connections that he thinks will help, including former Truck and Nationwide Series champion Johnny Benson.
"My crew chief is Shain Romanoski, and his brother Vern races [ISMA] Supermodifieds. Johnny Benson is into the Supers, and we've gotten to know him pretty well throught that. He's helped us a bit," said Brackett. "We ask a lot of questions. We've got a huge learning curve and the guys on the team are all volunteers. They all bought their own NASCAR licenses at $550 each, they paid for their own drug tests, and they took time off work and used up vacation days just to go to Martinsville."
Brackett fell victim to the NASCAR rulebook when qualifying was cancelled by rain, and as a first-timer with the series and no provisional starting spot to fall back on, he was sent home to Maine.
But, Brackett and his team came back with confidence. "We belong there," he said. "We have good equipment and we ran well. We have a ton of passion, focus, and determination, as corny as that sounds. We're hoping that [NASCAR, teams, and sponsors] will take us as seriously as we take it."
Brackett finshed 12th in the first leg of the five-race Pro All Stars Series National Championship at New Smyrna Speedway in Florida in January, but decided after Martinsville that he will forgo his plans to complete the entire PASS National schedule; he did not make the trip to Hickory, N.C., for last weekend's Easter Bunny 150. Instead, he will focus on returning to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in six more events: Dover Int'l Speedway (May 14), O'Reilly Raceway Park (July 23), Bristol Motor Speedway (Aug. 18), New Hampshire Motor Speedway (Sept. 18), a return trip to Martinsville (Oct. 23), and the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway on November 19.
"We're running Homestead so that NASCAR can hopefully declare us eligible to run the superspeedways," Brackett explained. "I don't want to be a big talker, and it all depends on sponsorship of course, but we're looking at racing the full schedule in 2011."
He said he is still considering running occasional PASS events this season, including the PASS North opener at Speedway 95 in Bangor, Me., on April 18.
Brackett understands that his goals are big, but he says he and his team are willing to work hard to find out what they're made of.
"We're trying to make our own opportunity here. It's a huge jump from where we've been, and we know that. There's no real way to prepare for it," he says. "But you've either got it or you don't."
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The Juice: Ahhh, Racing Season!
-by Justin St. Louis
VMM Editor
One down, 70-ish to go. VMM took in its first race of the year at Waterford Speedbowl last weekend, and witnessed a decent show by the Modified Racing Series troops, the NEMA Midgets, and Waterford's Late Models, Mini Stocks, and Street Stocks.
The MRS race had 11 cautions, but we're willing to forgive that and chalk it up to first-race growing pains. That and the fact that one of those cautions was for a spectacular seven-car crash at the flagstand that sent Jimmy Dolan flying through the air. If you're gonna wreck, boys, make it big and do it in front of the grandstands so the paying fans can see. Job well done. (We wouldn't be applauding the crash, of course, if anyone got hurt. Thankfully there were no injuries reported.)
Doug Coby was clearly very strong and deserved to win the race, but it would have been interesting to see if Rowan Pennink could have beaten him. Pennink changed an engine Sunday morning and was forced to come from 25th starting spot to rap on Coby's back bumper with ten laps remaining. Under caution on lap 90, though, Pennink's car shut down. Initial reports were that the car's fuel cell ran dry, but that was later discounted by Pennink's team members, who instead cited an unknown mechanical failure.
The Mini Stocks at Waterford are among the best four-cylinder divisions I've ever seen anywhere, bar none, and the Street Stocks going three- and four-wide around a track that isn't really built for that kind of racing was a lot of fun to watch. The Late Models were a bit strung out at times, but there were a few good battles and some key wrecks that changed the complexion of the race. The NEMA race wasn't much to write home about, but it took only five minutes from green to checkers, and it was cool to have a first-time winner in Chris Leonard.
All in all, it was a great way to begin the 2010 season, and we're looking forward to the American-Canadian Tour opener at Lee USA Speedway on April 18.
***
What was not great was the 60-lap, hour-long-plus SK Modified feature, one that featured no less than four different spins by Frank Mucciacciaro, and a ton of restarts that -- to this unbiased non-regular to the track -- looked a bit fishy.
Leader Keith Rocco jumped the start half the time, played jackrabbit half the time, and brake-checked the field before rocketing to the green the other half of the time. (There were so many restarts that there were actually three halves of the race. I counted.) I won't suggest that Rocco gets special treatment at Waterford, but it seemed fairly obvious that he was going to get away with whatever he wanted to when it was time to take the green flag.
Maybe that's the way Waterford does things, I don't know. It would be easier to point fingers if another driver had been the polesitter for any of the restarts, but Rocco led every lap and was therefore the point man the entire race. We just hope it was a one-race thing and that it's not a regular occurence.
For safety's sake, Mucciacciaro needs to either get a spotter, a mirror, or a big rubber ball to live inside. Maybe all three. I saw him chop down on other cars, I saw him drive directly into other cars, I saw him spin completely on his own, and I saw him end up in a pileup across the finish line when he was running in last place. And again, the officials need to say something. Let him ride around and make some laps and get seat time, but when he starts to ruin the race, put him on the trailer. Come back next week and try it again.
At the races I've always enjoyed seeing, there would have been one warning for Rocco's mind games, and no more than three strikes for Mucciacciaro's disregard for the race. Hopefully Waterford Speedbowl will catch on before I go back there in October.
***
At 6-2-2, the Habs have the best record in the East over the last ten games. We should just let those silly Bruins scoot by us for seventh place so they can get schlacked in four games by the Penguins in the playoffs, ya know, since the B's obviously won't put up a fight against them when it matters anyway.
And then there's Atlanta and the Rangers lurking back there just outside the cutoff. In reality, I said at the beginning of the season that I'd be surprised if my boys from Montréal made the post-season, so I'm pretty tickled that we're in a position to be there.
Hmm? What? This is a racing blog? Wow, my bad. Anywho...
***
The new three-track alliance between Bear Ridge, Canaan, and the new Big Daddy's Speedbowl can only be a good thing for dirt racers and fans in the area. With the headline Sportsman Modifieds running under a common rulebook, the popular Twin State Series has been recreated, and underwriting has been found in Gravco Janitorial Services.
With the momentum Bear Ridge Speedway gained last year in the Modifieds -- going from an average of 6 cars in 2008 to 25 by the end of 2009 -- and the promotional creativity of Canaan's Dick Therrien and the enthusiasm of Mike "Big Daddy" Rivers, we're expecting big things this season.
***
It was sure nice to be at a race track in March. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever witnessed a race in person during that particular month. I'm also not sure I'll ever want to again, at least not in New England. #freakingcold
Yes, that was a Twitter reference. #getonthebandwagon
***
The call by Mike Ford to bring Denny Hamlin out of the lead and into the pits was probably the gutsiest move a crew chief has made in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in a long time, and Hamlin's drive from ninth to the win in four laps was the paydirt. Don't ever again tell me short tracks don't belong in NASCAR. If you weren't excited about Martinsville you need your pulse checked.
***
We had heard some rumblings last year of Mike Bruno possibly coming back to ACT a little bit in 2010, and Saturday's open practice at Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta, N.Y., confirmed that for us. The Bomoseen racer was behind the wheel of Jacob McGrath's #72 car, joining Jamie Fisher in his familiar S.D. Ireland #18. (Click here for a photo of the two in action on the Champlain Valley Racing Association website.)
Bruno told us that he, McGrath, and Barney McRae have put a team together to run a handful of events, beginning with ACT's first-ever trip to Malta in April, and the special 100-lap Late Model event at Devil's Bowl in West Haven on May 23. He also said he may run the car once or twice on Thursday nights at Thunder Road.
Bruno plans to race his dirt-style Modified full-time at both Albany-Saratoga and Devil's Bowl, and will bring the car to Airborne Speedway for the big events.
"I want to get back to racing ACT within the next two or three years," Bruno said. "I had been trying to get a ride for this season, but when the CVRA paved both Malta and the Bowl, I figured I'd race my Modified here in my own back yard at my two home tracks. The deal with Jacob is going to be good -- he's going to work for me this summer on the Modified, and I'm going to help him with the Late Model. He'll drive it a few times and I'll drive it a few times."
Bruno said the the thing he looks forward to most about the partnership with McGrath is having a crew chief in McRae.
"Barney's a funny guy and people joke about him sometimes, but the truth is he really knows everything about these cars," Bruno said. "Having him at Malta was great. It was really nice for me to be able to get in the seat and just be a driver, rather than have to think about what the chassis needs, or this or that. I'm happy we've got him to help us out."
***
THIS WEEKEND: Seventeen year-old Steven Legendre of Danville takes on Maine powerhouses Ben Rowe and Johnny Clark, NASCAR's David Ragan, and the stars of the PASS South Super Late Models for the Easter Bunny 150 at the legendary Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway on Saturday. The race is Round #2 of five in the PASS National Championship.
Legendre finished third in his last outing at Dillon (S.C.) Motor Speedway on March 13, and was 6th in the PASS National opener at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway in January. He sits fourth in National points. Brad Leighton of Center Harbor, N.H., won at New Smyrna and leads the National standings, followed by Clark, New Brunswick's Lonnie Sommerville, Legendre, and Preston Peltier of North Carolina. Strong, Me.'s Dale Brackett sits seventh with Rowe in eighth.
VMM's favorite sandwich man, "Subway Dave" Parker will be at Hickory, and we'll have periodic updates as they are available on our Twitter page. Yup, I said it again. Twitter. #justdoit
Closer to home, New Hampshire Motor Speedway is holding an open house on Saturday and offering fans a chance to drive their own cars around the 1.058-mile speedway in the FANtasy DRIVE. Many racing oragnizations will be taking part in displays and fan-friendly promotions including the American-Canadian Tour with drivers John Donahue and Brent Dragon (that oughta be fun... Milk Bowl memories anyone?), Thunder Road's Nick Sweet, and Lee USA Speedway's Wayne Helliwell, Jr. Legendary media men Ken Squier and Dr. Dick Berggren will also be on hand for a fan Q&A session. Visit www.nhms.com for more details.
(PHOTOS: 1. Waterford's Street Stocks were fantastic; 2. Keith Rocco (#57) got this much of a jump more than a couple times; 3. Mike Bruno's gonna be busy this year. All photos by Justin St. Louis/VMM)
VMM Editor
One down, 70-ish to go. VMM took in its first race of the year at Waterford Speedbowl last weekend, and witnessed a decent show by the Modified Racing Series troops, the NEMA Midgets, and Waterford's Late Models, Mini Stocks, and Street Stocks.
The MRS race had 11 cautions, but we're willing to forgive that and chalk it up to first-race growing pains. That and the fact that one of those cautions was for a spectacular seven-car crash at the flagstand that sent Jimmy Dolan flying through the air. If you're gonna wreck, boys, make it big and do it in front of the grandstands so the paying fans can see. Job well done. (We wouldn't be applauding the crash, of course, if anyone got hurt. Thankfully there were no injuries reported.)Doug Coby was clearly very strong and deserved to win the race, but it would have been interesting to see if Rowan Pennink could have beaten him. Pennink changed an engine Sunday morning and was forced to come from 25th starting spot to rap on Coby's back bumper with ten laps remaining. Under caution on lap 90, though, Pennink's car shut down. Initial reports were that the car's fuel cell ran dry, but that was later discounted by Pennink's team members, who instead cited an unknown mechanical failure.
The Mini Stocks at Waterford are among the best four-cylinder divisions I've ever seen anywhere, bar none, and the Street Stocks going three- and four-wide around a track that isn't really built for that kind of racing was a lot of fun to watch. The Late Models were a bit strung out at times, but there were a few good battles and some key wrecks that changed the complexion of the race. The NEMA race wasn't much to write home about, but it took only five minutes from green to checkers, and it was cool to have a first-time winner in Chris Leonard.
All in all, it was a great way to begin the 2010 season, and we're looking forward to the American-Canadian Tour opener at Lee USA Speedway on April 18.
***
What was not great was the 60-lap, hour-long-plus SK Modified feature, one that featured no less than four different spins by Frank Mucciacciaro, and a ton of restarts that -- to this unbiased non-regular to the track -- looked a bit fishy.
Leader Keith Rocco jumped the start half the time, played jackrabbit half the time, and brake-checked the field before rocketing to the green the other half of the time. (There were so many restarts that there were actually three halves of the race. I counted.) I won't suggest that Rocco gets special treatment at Waterford, but it seemed fairly obvious that he was going to get away with whatever he wanted to when it was time to take the green flag.Maybe that's the way Waterford does things, I don't know. It would be easier to point fingers if another driver had been the polesitter for any of the restarts, but Rocco led every lap and was therefore the point man the entire race. We just hope it was a one-race thing and that it's not a regular occurence.
For safety's sake, Mucciacciaro needs to either get a spotter, a mirror, or a big rubber ball to live inside. Maybe all three. I saw him chop down on other cars, I saw him drive directly into other cars, I saw him spin completely on his own, and I saw him end up in a pileup across the finish line when he was running in last place. And again, the officials need to say something. Let him ride around and make some laps and get seat time, but when he starts to ruin the race, put him on the trailer. Come back next week and try it again.
At the races I've always enjoyed seeing, there would have been one warning for Rocco's mind games, and no more than three strikes for Mucciacciaro's disregard for the race. Hopefully Waterford Speedbowl will catch on before I go back there in October.
***
At 6-2-2, the Habs have the best record in the East over the last ten games. We should just let those silly Bruins scoot by us for seventh place so they can get schlacked in four games by the Penguins in the playoffs, ya know, since the B's obviously won't put up a fight against them when it matters anyway.
And then there's Atlanta and the Rangers lurking back there just outside the cutoff. In reality, I said at the beginning of the season that I'd be surprised if my boys from Montréal made the post-season, so I'm pretty tickled that we're in a position to be there.
Hmm? What? This is a racing blog? Wow, my bad. Anywho...
***
The new three-track alliance between Bear Ridge, Canaan, and the new Big Daddy's Speedbowl can only be a good thing for dirt racers and fans in the area. With the headline Sportsman Modifieds running under a common rulebook, the popular Twin State Series has been recreated, and underwriting has been found in Gravco Janitorial Services.
With the momentum Bear Ridge Speedway gained last year in the Modifieds -- going from an average of 6 cars in 2008 to 25 by the end of 2009 -- and the promotional creativity of Canaan's Dick Therrien and the enthusiasm of Mike "Big Daddy" Rivers, we're expecting big things this season.
***
It was sure nice to be at a race track in March. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever witnessed a race in person during that particular month. I'm also not sure I'll ever want to again, at least not in New England. #freakingcold
Yes, that was a Twitter reference. #getonthebandwagon
***
The call by Mike Ford to bring Denny Hamlin out of the lead and into the pits was probably the gutsiest move a crew chief has made in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in a long time, and Hamlin's drive from ninth to the win in four laps was the paydirt. Don't ever again tell me short tracks don't belong in NASCAR. If you weren't excited about Martinsville you need your pulse checked.
***
We had heard some rumblings last year of Mike Bruno possibly coming back to ACT a little bit in 2010, and Saturday's open practice at Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta, N.Y., confirmed that for us. The Bomoseen racer was behind the wheel of Jacob McGrath's #72 car, joining Jamie Fisher in his familiar S.D. Ireland #18. (Click here for a photo of the two in action on the Champlain Valley Racing Association website.)
Bruno told us that he, McGrath, and Barney McRae have put a team together to run a handful of events, beginning with ACT's first-ever trip to Malta in April, and the special 100-lap Late Model event at Devil's Bowl in West Haven on May 23. He also said he may run the car once or twice on Thursday nights at Thunder Road.
Bruno plans to race his dirt-style Modified full-time at both Albany-Saratoga and Devil's Bowl, and will bring the car to Airborne Speedway for the big events."I want to get back to racing ACT within the next two or three years," Bruno said. "I had been trying to get a ride for this season, but when the CVRA paved both Malta and the Bowl, I figured I'd race my Modified here in my own back yard at my two home tracks. The deal with Jacob is going to be good -- he's going to work for me this summer on the Modified, and I'm going to help him with the Late Model. He'll drive it a few times and I'll drive it a few times."
Bruno said the the thing he looks forward to most about the partnership with McGrath is having a crew chief in McRae.
"Barney's a funny guy and people joke about him sometimes, but the truth is he really knows everything about these cars," Bruno said. "Having him at Malta was great. It was really nice for me to be able to get in the seat and just be a driver, rather than have to think about what the chassis needs, or this or that. I'm happy we've got him to help us out."
***
THIS WEEKEND: Seventeen year-old Steven Legendre of Danville takes on Maine powerhouses Ben Rowe and Johnny Clark, NASCAR's David Ragan, and the stars of the PASS South Super Late Models for the Easter Bunny 150 at the legendary Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway on Saturday. The race is Round #2 of five in the PASS National Championship.
Legendre finished third in his last outing at Dillon (S.C.) Motor Speedway on March 13, and was 6th in the PASS National opener at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway in January. He sits fourth in National points. Brad Leighton of Center Harbor, N.H., won at New Smyrna and leads the National standings, followed by Clark, New Brunswick's Lonnie Sommerville, Legendre, and Preston Peltier of North Carolina. Strong, Me.'s Dale Brackett sits seventh with Rowe in eighth.
VMM's favorite sandwich man, "Subway Dave" Parker will be at Hickory, and we'll have periodic updates as they are available on our Twitter page. Yup, I said it again. Twitter. #justdoit
Closer to home, New Hampshire Motor Speedway is holding an open house on Saturday and offering fans a chance to drive their own cars around the 1.058-mile speedway in the FANtasy DRIVE. Many racing oragnizations will be taking part in displays and fan-friendly promotions including the American-Canadian Tour with drivers John Donahue and Brent Dragon (that oughta be fun... Milk Bowl memories anyone?), Thunder Road's Nick Sweet, and Lee USA Speedway's Wayne Helliwell, Jr. Legendary media men Ken Squier and Dr. Dick Berggren will also be on hand for a fan Q&A session. Visit www.nhms.com for more details.
(PHOTOS: 1. Waterford's Street Stocks were fantastic; 2. Keith Rocco (#57) got this much of a jump more than a couple times; 3. Mike Bruno's gonna be busy this year. All photos by Justin St. Louis/VMM)
Legendre Ready for Hickory, Eyes PASS South and National Series
HICKORY, N.C. -- Steven Legendre is quickly making his mark on the southern Super Late Model scene. After his first two starts in 2010, the 17 year-old Danville High School student is proving himself to be a contender in the Pro All Stars Series Super Late Model ranks against northern stars Ben Rowe, Johnny Clark, and Brad Leighton, and southern shoes Jeff Choquette, Preston Peltier, and Jay Fogleman.Despite their home base in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, Legendre and his crew chief-father, Kendell, have decided to tackle the PASS South schedule, running at tracks in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Tennessee. Steven is also chasing the five-race PASS National Championship from Maine to Florida, and will run a pair of PASS North events at his home track, White Mountain Motorsports Park in North Woodstock, N.H.
Legendre heads to North Carolina this week for Saturday's Easter Bunny 150 at the legendary Hickory Motor Speedway, a race that counts for both South and National points. In his two previous starts this year, Legendre drove from 20th to finish sixth in the National opener at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway and 18th-to-third in the South lid-lifter at Dillon (S.C.) Motor Speedway.
"Hopefully we can keep it going," Legendre says. "I've never been to Hickory. I guess it's pretty bumpy, sort of like Unity [Raceway in Maine]."
While Hickory and Unity may be rough, Legendre has been nothing but smooth since he first strapped in. He won more than a dozen times in White Mountain's youth division, took a win in only six Strictly Stock starts, and was a two-time Late Model winner and the Rookie of the Year in 2008. He posted a respectable three top-tens in his first PASS North season last year, and has aligned himself with Fogleman's Shark Racing Development for 2010. He's also the lead driver for Ford Racing's Detroit-based PASS crate engine program.
The teenager finds himself fourth in the PASS National Championship standings, third in PASS South, and potentially looking at a season's worth of headlines.
"We had a good run at Dillon and New Smyrna," Legendre said. "We're doing things a little differently, but it's working. Down south, everybody runs Hamke chassis and Chevrolet engines, but we've got a Jody Lavender chassis and a Ford. I haven't been to most of the tracks we're racing on this year, but we've made it work so far. We've had a lot of help from Jody Lavender, Jay Fogleman, and Mike Delahanty from Ford Racing."
Legendre said he wants to finish in the top-five in PASS South standings, but thinks he has an even better chance at doing well in the National points. Two of the National races are at Thompson, Conn., and Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough, Me., with the finale at Newport, Tennessee. Luckily for Legendre, the South schedule goes to Newport two months before the National event and he'll be able to get some good notes for his return.
"It was important to get a good start at New Smyrna. Since the National thing is only five races, one bad race will hurt you a lot," he said. "My first top-ten last year was at Thompson, and I was running second in the 300 at Beech Ridge before we had a tire problem. We're already planning on doing all the southern races anyway, so it's not like it's going to be a problem for us to get there.
"We're off to a good start. If we have one bad week we'll have a hard time playing catch-up, but I think if we can get through Hickory we'll be in good shape."
(PHOTO: Danville, Vt.'s Steven Legendre at Dillon Motor Speedway in South Carolina. Photo coutresy www.stevenlegendre.com)
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Maine Driver Brackett to Make Truck Debut at Martinsville
MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Dale Brackett has some lofty goals for the 2010 season, not the least of which include his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series debut at Martinsville Speedway on Saturday. The Strong, Me., driver will race in equipment purchased from Tim Bainey, Jr.Brackett made his Pro All Stars Series Super Late Model debut at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway in January, finishing in 12th place. He plans to contest the full five-race PASS National Championship schedule and attempt seven NCWTS events, beginning with Martinsville's Kroger 250.
"I haven't raced much up north since 2006, but I raced a lot up here before I went into the military," said Brackett en route to Virginia. "While I was stationed in North Carolina I raced on dirt and asphalt at places like Clary's Speedway, Orange County, and Wake County." Brackett has made occasional appearances in long-distance events at Unity (Me.) Raceway from 2007-09, and also raced with the former PASS Outlaw series in 2005."We came back this year full-bore," he said of his NCWTS and PASS plans. "We're ready to go."
Brackett, slated to drive the #06 Chevrolet, is one of nine drivers scheduled to make their NASCAR Truck debut at Martinsville, including former American-Canadian Tour winner D.J. Kennington of St. Thomas, Ontario.
(Photo courtesy www.brackettfamilymotorsports.com)
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Legendre 3rd in PASS South Opener at Dillon
DILLON, S.C. -- Steven Legendre just might be on to something. The 17 year-old from Danville finished third in the Pro All Stars Series South season opener, the South Carolina Clash 150 at Dillon Motor Speedway, on Saturday evening.Legendre, in his sophomore season, has been strong in his two starts thus far in 2010; at the PASS National Championship season opener at Florida's New Smyrna Speedway in January, he finished sixth. The Danville High School basketball player is the lead driver for Ford Racing's new crate engine program in the PASS Super Late Model series.
"It was good, really good. Better than I expected," Legendre said by phone. "We started 18th, but we were just picking them off one by one."
Legendre's team had help directly from Ford at Dillon Motor Speedway, in the form of Ford Racing Sportsman Circle Track Program Manager Mike Delahanty. "Mike was here working with us [on Friday] and giving us some help," said Legendre. "The Ford is great. It makes really good power against the Chevys.
"I think it's going to be a good year."
Sixteen year-old Ryan Blaney, son of NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Dave Blaney, notched his first career PASS South win, ahead of veteran racer Hal Goodson. Preston Peltier and Spencer Wauters completed the unofficial top five finishers.
UNOFFICIAL RESULTS -- South Carolina Clash 150
PASS South -- Dillon Motor Speedway, Dillon, S.C.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Pos.-Driver
1. Ryan Blaney
2. Hal Goodson
3. Steven Legendre
4. Preston Peltier
5. Spencer Wauters
6. George Gorham
7. John Batten
8. Cooper Fassen
9. Tayla Orleans
10. Duane Linville
11. Heath Hindman
12. Kenzie Ruston
13. Trey Mitchell
14. Joe Heigl
15. Jay Fogleman
16. Andy Loden
17. Dana White
18. Justin Wakefield
19. Jimmy Weller
20. Devin Jones
21. Tim Nooner
22. Joey Coulter
23. Dylan Presnelly
24. Alex Fleming
25. Chris Bowers
26. Clay Jones
27. Chris Bohlman
Monday, February 1, 2010
Leighton, North Tame PASS in Florida
St. Johnsbury teen Legendre sixth
NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. -- Brad Leighton led a strong contingent of northern drivers to win the inaugural PASS Winterfest 150 at New Smyrna Speedway on Sunday afternoon in his debut performance with Maine-based Richard Moody Racing. For Leighton, of Center Harbor, N.H., it was his first PASS victory and his first win in a Super Late Model car since 1995. The Winterfest 150 was the opening round of the five-race 2010 PASS National Championship.
The race was hotly contested, with Leighton, Johnny Clark, Ben Rowe, Preston Peltier, Sam Watts, and Jeff Choquette each leading laps. Rowe was eliminated from contention following two wrecks just past lap 100, and Leighton recovered from a flat tire with just 25 laps remaining to take the lead from Clark and speed to the win.
Following Leighton across the finish line were Clark, of Hallowell, Me., Floridians Watts and Choquette, and Canadian Lonnie Sommerville of New Brunswick. Seventeen year-old Steven Legendre of St. Johnsbury finished sixth after starting 20th in the 22-car field. The top-10 was completed by North Carolina racers Peltier and Jay Fogleman, Jared Foley of Kentucky, and Florida's Kyle Maynard.
UNOFFICIAL RESULTS -- PASS Winterfest 150
PASS National Championship -- New Smyrna Speedway, New Smyrna Beach, Fla.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Pos.-Driver-Hometown
1. Brad Leighton, Center Harbor, N.H.
2. Johnny Clark, Hallowell, Me.
3. Sam Watts, Winter Springs, Fla.
4. Jeff Choquette, Loxahatchee, Fla.
5. Lonnie Sommerville, St. John, N.B.
6. Steven Legendre, St. Johnsbury
7. Preston Peltier, Harrisburg, N.C.
8. Jay Fogleman, Durham, N.C.
9. Jared Foley, Williamsburg, Ky.
10. Kyle Maynard, Weirsdale, Fla.
11. Kevin Ingram, Auburndale, Fla.
12. Dale Brackett, Strong, Me.
13. Justin Larson, Clearwater, Fla.
14. Ben Rowe, Turner, Me.
15. Tim Russell, Apopka, Fla.
16. Devin Jones, Mooresville, N.C.
17. Joey Gase, Cedar Rapids, Ia.
18. Steve Nasse, Pinellas Park, Fla.
19. Brandon Ward, Winston-Salem, N.C.
20. Eddie Gainey, Fort White, Fla.
21. Mario Gosselin, Lake Wales, Fla.
22. Clay Jones, Goldsboro, N.C.
(PHOTOS: 1. (L-R) 3rd-place Sam Watts, winner Brad Leighton, runner-up Johnny Clark; 2. A mid-race restart with Clark (#54), Preston Peltier (#26), Jeff Choquette (#33), and Leighton (#55) up front. Photo 1 by Norm Marx/PASS, Photo 2 by Dave Parker for VMM)
NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. -- Brad Leighton led a strong contingent of northern drivers to win the inaugural PASS Winterfest 150 at New Smyrna Speedway on Sunday afternoon in his debut performance with Maine-based Richard Moody Racing. For Leighton, of Center Harbor, N.H., it was his first PASS victory and his first win in a Super Late Model car since 1995. The Winterfest 150 was the opening round of the five-race 2010 PASS National Championship.
The race was hotly contested, with Leighton, Johnny Clark, Ben Rowe, Preston Peltier, Sam Watts, and Jeff Choquette each leading laps. Rowe was eliminated from contention following two wrecks just past lap 100, and Leighton recovered from a flat tire with just 25 laps remaining to take the lead from Clark and speed to the win.Following Leighton across the finish line were Clark, of Hallowell, Me., Floridians Watts and Choquette, and Canadian Lonnie Sommerville of New Brunswick. Seventeen year-old Steven Legendre of St. Johnsbury finished sixth after starting 20th in the 22-car field. The top-10 was completed by North Carolina racers Peltier and Jay Fogleman, Jared Foley of Kentucky, and Florida's Kyle Maynard.
UNOFFICIAL RESULTS -- PASS Winterfest 150
PASS National Championship -- New Smyrna Speedway, New Smyrna Beach, Fla.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Pos.-Driver-Hometown
1. Brad Leighton, Center Harbor, N.H.
2. Johnny Clark, Hallowell, Me.
3. Sam Watts, Winter Springs, Fla.
4. Jeff Choquette, Loxahatchee, Fla.
5. Lonnie Sommerville, St. John, N.B.
6. Steven Legendre, St. Johnsbury
7. Preston Peltier, Harrisburg, N.C.
8. Jay Fogleman, Durham, N.C.
9. Jared Foley, Williamsburg, Ky.
10. Kyle Maynard, Weirsdale, Fla.
11. Kevin Ingram, Auburndale, Fla.
12. Dale Brackett, Strong, Me.
13. Justin Larson, Clearwater, Fla.
14. Ben Rowe, Turner, Me.
15. Tim Russell, Apopka, Fla.
16. Devin Jones, Mooresville, N.C.
17. Joey Gase, Cedar Rapids, Ia.
18. Steve Nasse, Pinellas Park, Fla.
19. Brandon Ward, Winston-Salem, N.C.
20. Eddie Gainey, Fort White, Fla.
21. Mario Gosselin, Lake Wales, Fla.
22. Clay Jones, Goldsboro, N.C.
(PHOTOS: 1. (L-R) 3rd-place Sam Watts, winner Brad Leighton, runner-up Johnny Clark; 2. A mid-race restart with Clark (#54), Preston Peltier (#26), Jeff Choquette (#33), and Leighton (#55) up front. Photo 1 by Norm Marx/PASS, Photo 2 by Dave Parker for VMM)
Friday, January 29, 2010
PASS WinterFest: Update #1
As promised, our man Dave Parker has delivered a little parcel from Florida, giving us the first look at the inaugural PASS WinterFest 150 at New Smyrna Speedway.
As of 12:15pm on Friday, the bad weather is holding off -- it's 72 degrees and partly cloudy, with practice scheduled for 2:00-7:00pm. Keep checking in, we'll have a few more updates throughout the weekend.
Brad Leighton's new Richard Moody Racing #55 Ford Fusion, sponsored by Subway of Barre, Montpelier, Waterbury, and Northfield, Vt.
A crew member makes a change on the left-rear corner of Leighton's car
Four-time and defending PASS North champion Johnny Clark's #54
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Juice: The All-Star Showdown Ain't About All-Stars Anymore
-by Justin St. Louis
The season-long hype surrounding the inaugural ACT Invitational at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was a pretty cool thing for the fans and teams of the American-Canadian Tour. The pressure bearing down on 300 or so Late Model drivers to win a race and get invited to compete at the "Magic Mile" nearly broke some of the toughest men in the sport, while for others, the feeling of overcoming that pressure, getting that big win, and stamping their tickets to The Big Dance was pure utopia.
It reminds us of something: The NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale, in the glitz and glam of suburban Los Angeles, live on SPEED TV. A national stage for the local heroes. The Super Bowl of NASCAR short track racing. The highlight of the whole year.
It was a simple and wonderful concept in 2003: race your heart out all year long, and if you finish in the top-15 in points in what are now the K&N Pro Series East and West divisions, you'll get rewarded with an invitation to race on national television at what may be the nicest short track facility in the country. No points on the line, just money, bragging rights, a really nice trophy, and a chance to maybe turn yourself into the next hot prospect in the NASCAR garage.
Californian Austin Cameron stole the hearts of America as he came back from cancer to win the inaugural 125-lap event. In 2004, Massachusetts underdog Mike Johnson set the world on its ear with his victory. David Gilliland won in 2005, and just another year later found himself winning a Nationwide Series race at Kentucky and a Sprint Cup Series pole at Talladega. Matt Kobyluck brought the trophy back to New England in 2006. Everyone gathered around their TVs to watch -- even us East Coasters who had to stay up way past our bedtimes. The were times when the racing got a little chippy and cars got torn up, but the idea was that we were watching the 30 best short trackers in the country.
Then NASCAR went ahead and ruined it.
Beginning in 2007, ten starting spots and 100 more laps have been added to the race (only 225 laps for this year's edition, however), and qualifying is open to anyone approved by NASCAR to run on a half-mile or longer track. The top-15 from both the East and West divisions are still invited, but only the champions and race winners are automatically qualified for the race. In addition, the champions from the northern and southern Whelen Modified Tours, the Canadian Tire Series, the Corona Mexico Series, and the Whelen All-American Series (read: drivers that have nothing to do with the East and West divisions) are guaranteed starters, provided they can find a ride. And since the only East/West drivers guaranteed to start are the champions and winners, the potential exists for a championship runner-up to travel to California only to not qualify for the All-Star (!!!) race.
"That race had tremendous potential when it was first announced," said reigning American-Canadian Tour champion Brian Hoar, a three-time Toyota All-Star Showdown participant. Hoar, of Williston, ran full-time in the Busch North/Busch East/Camping World East/K&N Pro Series East/What'll It Be Next Year Series from 2001-2006, and was a top-10 finisher in all three of his starts at Irwindale.
"When it first started, that race was huge for our group of drivers that, at the time, was still centered here in the northeast, and it was just as big for the group of guys regionalized out west. The East versus West thing was a neat format, and we beat those guys on their own turf two out of the three years I went out there. It's totally different now, and not only do I not have the answers for [why NASCAR changed it], I don't care. It still has the potential to be great again if they fix it."
Hoar points to NASCAR's recent penchant to seemigly try and reinvent the wheel as the blame for the change in the Showdown. "NASCAR changed the event when they changed the series [from Busch North to Busch East in 2006]," he said. "By 2006 things had really started to change, and by 2007 everything had changed. Now anyone can get in the race and win. Look at Joey Logano last year."
Logano, the 2007 Busch East Series champion (and eventual 2009 Sprint Cup Series Rookie of the Year), won the Showdown following his championship season. In last year's event, he brought his Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide Series team to Irwindale and was dominant -- in his one and only race in the East/West divisions the entire year, mind you -- before ultimately being disqualified from the win following a last-lap wreck with Peyton Sellers, who at the time was a high-talent, low-budget full-timer with the East Series. Multi-time Camping World Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday was also in the race and wrecked several cars. Matt Crafton, another Truck Series racer, finished fifth, one spot better than Hornaday.
Logano has a ride (and backing from his Sprint Cup sponsor The Home Depot and Nationwide crew chief Kevin Kidd) in the Fadden Racing entry fielded by ACT driver and former Busch North/Busch East champion Mike Olsen of North Haverhill, N.H. Olsen will also enter a car for -- get this -- 18 year-old Willy Boucenna, a road course racer from France who has zero history with NASCAR.
"It's all buy-a-ride now," says Hoar. "You can't blame Mike for taking the money that [Logano and Boucenna] bring with them, he races for a living and has to do what he can to survive. But it's sad that the regulars of the series can go out there and get their butts handed to them [by outsiders]. Say they have a bad qualifying lap, that's it. They can support the series all year long and look forward to [Irwindale], and then not make it in. It's too bad. I'm excited to see this year's race, I always am, but I'm not excited to see guys like [Logano] in the race."
Hoar also said that in the formative years of the Showdown, the East and West series regulars really were the stars, and that having drivers like Logano and Hornaday in the race now takes away from the original purpose of the event. "We had all kinds of support and exposure from NASCAR for the whole week we were out there. The TV crews were there, and their job was to make us stars, and they did it. Last year it was all Joey Logano, and he wasn't even part of [the series]."
The similarities between the first Irwindale event and September's ACT Invitational at NHMS were many, says Hoar, and going through the same type of experience brought back a lot of memories. It also reminded Hoar of the changes the old Busch North Series went through once the Loudon, N.H., mile became a part of the series. "Absolutely, to a great degree," he said. "We had exposure all year, and it was all anyone talked about, just like Irwindale [in 2003]. Will the second one be the same feel? I don't know. But I hope the race doesn't get out of control. As long as ACT stays on top of it, I think it will be good.
"Running races at Loudon singlehandedly changed the Busch North Series [in the early 1990s], and everyone thought they had to go out and get superspeedway bodies and superspeedway cars and spend lots of money. Then the series became what it is now. And it's already started in ACT -- Patrick Laperle had a car built specifically for Loudon before he was even invited. Ricky Rolfe tested well there in August, and put his car up on jackstands and pulled out a back-up car for the rest of the races until the Invitational. Guys are figuring out that aerodynamics have never been as important on a Late Model as they are at Loudon. It's up to ACT to clamp down on it."
Brian Hoar is right. The Toyota All-Star Showdown was an outstanding event at one time, and it still could be if it went back to the basics. Now it's just another race. For that matter, the K&N Pro Series East was an outstanding series at one time, too.
Let's hope the ACT Invitational doesn't go down the same path. We don't think it will.
***
Speaking of the Showdown, there's a touch of local flavor headed for L.A. this weekend -- Colchester's Sam Caron, a part-time ACT competitor, will head to the event as crew chief for driver Steve Park and owner Bob Torriere's NDS Motorsports, working under the #35 Whelen Engineering team based in Georgia, Vt., and Barre native Matt Goslant will be the crew chief for two-time West Series champion Eric Holmes and the #20 NAPA Toyota, fielded by California powerhouse Bill MacAnally Racing.
Catch the Toyota All-Star Showdown live on SPEED TV or Sirius NASCAR Radio at 10:00pm, Friday and Saturday.
***
How does anyone not love Robby Gordon?
***
Remember those old commercials with the egg and the frying pan?
"This is your brain." ---SMASH!--- "This is your brain on drugs."
Well that's what I feel like when I watch Madhouse. It's not real racing. It's WWE with nerf bars and a southern accent.
Here's my expert analysis after three shows:
1. Burt Myers is a moron. And a hot-head. I can't imagine what's gonna happen to that poor little baby he has at home the first time he spills his Cheerios.
2. Chris Fleming is a moron. Some people get it, some people don't. Guess which category he falls under.
3. Junior Miller is a total moron. I have nothing else to say about him.
4. Jason Myers might be a moron, but they don't show him enough for me to be able to tell.
5. Tim Brown isn't a moron, but he is a total jerk. His wife hates him, but hey, look at the publicity Michael Waltrip Racing is getting from that crew shirt!
6. Eric Stigall is a special kind of moron. Far and away my favorite character on television right now. In fact, his personality is so addictive, even I twitch when he talks.
7. I am a moron, because I can't freaking wait for the next episode. And I guaran-damn-tee you I'll buy the DVD after the season is over.
***
By the way, Irwindale isn't the only place running this weekend. The Pro All Stars Series heads for sunny... er, not... Florida this weekend for the first annual WinterFest 150 at New Smyrna Speedway.
VMM will have a correspondent at the track in Dave Parker, who will be taking notes all day and giving us occasional updates during the event. It looks like rain might play into the schedule, which may postpone the event from Saturday to Sunday.
The WinterFest 150 is the first PASS National Championship event for 2010. Drivers expected to compete include 2009 PASS North champion Johnny Clark, Danville youngster Steven Legendre, Québec native Mario Gosselin, and the new teams pairing owner Richard Moody with driver Brad Leighton, and owner Scott Mulkern with driver Ben Rowe.
We're not entirely sure how close to the computer we'll be all weekend -- ya know, real world commitments and all -- but we can Tweet with the best of 'em! Keep a watch on the VMM Twitter page at twitter.com/VtMotorMag, or "@VtMotorMag" for those of you that already know what the heck a Twitter is.
The season-long hype surrounding the inaugural ACT Invitational at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was a pretty cool thing for the fans and teams of the American-Canadian Tour. The pressure bearing down on 300 or so Late Model drivers to win a race and get invited to compete at the "Magic Mile" nearly broke some of the toughest men in the sport, while for others, the feeling of overcoming that pressure, getting that big win, and stamping their tickets to The Big Dance was pure utopia.
It reminds us of something: The NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale, in the glitz and glam of suburban Los Angeles, live on SPEED TV. A national stage for the local heroes. The Super Bowl of NASCAR short track racing. The highlight of the whole year.
It was a simple and wonderful concept in 2003: race your heart out all year long, and if you finish in the top-15 in points in what are now the K&N Pro Series East and West divisions, you'll get rewarded with an invitation to race on national television at what may be the nicest short track facility in the country. No points on the line, just money, bragging rights, a really nice trophy, and a chance to maybe turn yourself into the next hot prospect in the NASCAR garage.
Californian Austin Cameron stole the hearts of America as he came back from cancer to win the inaugural 125-lap event. In 2004, Massachusetts underdog Mike Johnson set the world on its ear with his victory. David Gilliland won in 2005, and just another year later found himself winning a Nationwide Series race at Kentucky and a Sprint Cup Series pole at Talladega. Matt Kobyluck brought the trophy back to New England in 2006. Everyone gathered around their TVs to watch -- even us East Coasters who had to stay up way past our bedtimes. The were times when the racing got a little chippy and cars got torn up, but the idea was that we were watching the 30 best short trackers in the country.
Then NASCAR went ahead and ruined it.
Beginning in 2007, ten starting spots and 100 more laps have been added to the race (only 225 laps for this year's edition, however), and qualifying is open to anyone approved by NASCAR to run on a half-mile or longer track. The top-15 from both the East and West divisions are still invited, but only the champions and race winners are automatically qualified for the race. In addition, the champions from the northern and southern Whelen Modified Tours, the Canadian Tire Series, the Corona Mexico Series, and the Whelen All-American Series (read: drivers that have nothing to do with the East and West divisions) are guaranteed starters, provided they can find a ride. And since the only East/West drivers guaranteed to start are the champions and winners, the potential exists for a championship runner-up to travel to California only to not qualify for the All-Star (!!!) race.
"That race had tremendous potential when it was first announced," said reigning American-Canadian Tour champion Brian Hoar, a three-time Toyota All-Star Showdown participant. Hoar, of Williston, ran full-time in the Busch North/Busch East/Camping World East/K&N Pro Series East/What'll It Be Next Year Series from 2001-2006, and was a top-10 finisher in all three of his starts at Irwindale.
"When it first started, that race was huge for our group of drivers that, at the time, was still centered here in the northeast, and it was just as big for the group of guys regionalized out west. The East versus West thing was a neat format, and we beat those guys on their own turf two out of the three years I went out there. It's totally different now, and not only do I not have the answers for [why NASCAR changed it], I don't care. It still has the potential to be great again if they fix it."
Hoar points to NASCAR's recent penchant to seemigly try and reinvent the wheel as the blame for the change in the Showdown. "NASCAR changed the event when they changed the series [from Busch North to Busch East in 2006]," he said. "By 2006 things had really started to change, and by 2007 everything had changed. Now anyone can get in the race and win. Look at Joey Logano last year."
Logano, the 2007 Busch East Series champion (and eventual 2009 Sprint Cup Series Rookie of the Year), won the Showdown following his championship season. In last year's event, he brought his Joe Gibbs Racing Nationwide Series team to Irwindale and was dominant -- in his one and only race in the East/West divisions the entire year, mind you -- before ultimately being disqualified from the win following a last-lap wreck with Peyton Sellers, who at the time was a high-talent, low-budget full-timer with the East Series. Multi-time Camping World Truck Series champion Ron Hornaday was also in the race and wrecked several cars. Matt Crafton, another Truck Series racer, finished fifth, one spot better than Hornaday.
Logano has a ride (and backing from his Sprint Cup sponsor The Home Depot and Nationwide crew chief Kevin Kidd) in the Fadden Racing entry fielded by ACT driver and former Busch North/Busch East champion Mike Olsen of North Haverhill, N.H. Olsen will also enter a car for -- get this -- 18 year-old Willy Boucenna, a road course racer from France who has zero history with NASCAR.
"It's all buy-a-ride now," says Hoar. "You can't blame Mike for taking the money that [Logano and Boucenna] bring with them, he races for a living and has to do what he can to survive. But it's sad that the regulars of the series can go out there and get their butts handed to them [by outsiders]. Say they have a bad qualifying lap, that's it. They can support the series all year long and look forward to [Irwindale], and then not make it in. It's too bad. I'm excited to see this year's race, I always am, but I'm not excited to see guys like [Logano] in the race."
Hoar also said that in the formative years of the Showdown, the East and West series regulars really were the stars, and that having drivers like Logano and Hornaday in the race now takes away from the original purpose of the event. "We had all kinds of support and exposure from NASCAR for the whole week we were out there. The TV crews were there, and their job was to make us stars, and they did it. Last year it was all Joey Logano, and he wasn't even part of [the series]."
The similarities between the first Irwindale event and September's ACT Invitational at NHMS were many, says Hoar, and going through the same type of experience brought back a lot of memories. It also reminded Hoar of the changes the old Busch North Series went through once the Loudon, N.H., mile became a part of the series. "Absolutely, to a great degree," he said. "We had exposure all year, and it was all anyone talked about, just like Irwindale [in 2003]. Will the second one be the same feel? I don't know. But I hope the race doesn't get out of control. As long as ACT stays on top of it, I think it will be good.
"Running races at Loudon singlehandedly changed the Busch North Series [in the early 1990s], and everyone thought they had to go out and get superspeedway bodies and superspeedway cars and spend lots of money. Then the series became what it is now. And it's already started in ACT -- Patrick Laperle had a car built specifically for Loudon before he was even invited. Ricky Rolfe tested well there in August, and put his car up on jackstands and pulled out a back-up car for the rest of the races until the Invitational. Guys are figuring out that aerodynamics have never been as important on a Late Model as they are at Loudon. It's up to ACT to clamp down on it."
Brian Hoar is right. The Toyota All-Star Showdown was an outstanding event at one time, and it still could be if it went back to the basics. Now it's just another race. For that matter, the K&N Pro Series East was an outstanding series at one time, too.
Let's hope the ACT Invitational doesn't go down the same path. We don't think it will.
***
Speaking of the Showdown, there's a touch of local flavor headed for L.A. this weekend -- Colchester's Sam Caron, a part-time ACT competitor, will head to the event as crew chief for driver Steve Park and owner Bob Torriere's NDS Motorsports, working under the #35 Whelen Engineering team based in Georgia, Vt., and Barre native Matt Goslant will be the crew chief for two-time West Series champion Eric Holmes and the #20 NAPA Toyota, fielded by California powerhouse Bill MacAnally Racing.
Catch the Toyota All-Star Showdown live on SPEED TV or Sirius NASCAR Radio at 10:00pm, Friday and Saturday.
***
How does anyone not love Robby Gordon?
***
Remember those old commercials with the egg and the frying pan?
"This is your brain." ---SMASH!--- "This is your brain on drugs."
Well that's what I feel like when I watch Madhouse. It's not real racing. It's WWE with nerf bars and a southern accent.
Here's my expert analysis after three shows:
1. Burt Myers is a moron. And a hot-head. I can't imagine what's gonna happen to that poor little baby he has at home the first time he spills his Cheerios.
2. Chris Fleming is a moron. Some people get it, some people don't. Guess which category he falls under.
3. Junior Miller is a total moron. I have nothing else to say about him.
4. Jason Myers might be a moron, but they don't show him enough for me to be able to tell.
5. Tim Brown isn't a moron, but he is a total jerk. His wife hates him, but hey, look at the publicity Michael Waltrip Racing is getting from that crew shirt!
6. Eric Stigall is a special kind of moron. Far and away my favorite character on television right now. In fact, his personality is so addictive, even I twitch when he talks.
7. I am a moron, because I can't freaking wait for the next episode. And I guaran-damn-tee you I'll buy the DVD after the season is over.
***
By the way, Irwindale isn't the only place running this weekend. The Pro All Stars Series heads for sunny... er, not... Florida this weekend for the first annual WinterFest 150 at New Smyrna Speedway.
VMM will have a correspondent at the track in Dave Parker, who will be taking notes all day and giving us occasional updates during the event. It looks like rain might play into the schedule, which may postpone the event from Saturday to Sunday.
The WinterFest 150 is the first PASS National Championship event for 2010. Drivers expected to compete include 2009 PASS North champion Johnny Clark, Danville youngster Steven Legendre, Québec native Mario Gosselin, and the new teams pairing owner Richard Moody with driver Brad Leighton, and owner Scott Mulkern with driver Ben Rowe.
We're not entirely sure how close to the computer we'll be all weekend -- ya know, real world commitments and all -- but we can Tweet with the best of 'em! Keep a watch on the VMM Twitter page at twitter.com/VtMotorMag, or "@VtMotorMag" for those of you that already know what the heck a Twitter is.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
PASS Champions Rowe, Clark Team Up for National Race
(From team press release)
FARMINGDALE, Me. -- With 10 championships between them, Maine racers Ben Rowe and Johnny Clark are teaming up for a winter road trip.
A long winter road trip -- to Florida.
Rowe, who has four PASS North Series championships as well as PASS South and PASS National championships on his resume, and Clark will field a joint effort for the inaugural PASS Winterfest 150 at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway on Jan. 29-30. The event is the first of five PASS National Championship races scheduled for the 2010 season.
"We wanted to go down and support this race, because we think it could grow into something really big in the future," said Clark, a four-time PASS North champion, including the last two series titles. "If everything goes well, we should both have a chance to win this one."
Clark's race hauler will carry both his familiar Clark's Car Crushing No. 54 and Rowe's new Community Pharmacies No. 48. The deal to pool the resources of Johnny Clark Motorsports and Mulkern Racing was finalized at last weekend's Northeast Motorsports Expo held at the Augusta Civic Center.
Rowe was named Touring Series Driver of the Year at the Expo.
"I think it's going to be a lot of fun," said Rowe, who will debut with his new team and new crew chief, Seth Holbrook, at New Smyrna. "Me and Johnny have never teamed up before, so it's going to be a blast."
Of the two drivers, only Clark has New Smyrna experience, having competed on multiple occasions in the annual New Smyrna World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing held each February.
He compared New Smyrna's high-banked half-mile layout to Thompson (Conn.) International Speedway, a track familiar to PASS North Series competitors.
"It's a lot like Thompson," Clark said. "It's big and fast, and it's definitely a fun and challenging track. It's extremely hard on brakes, and you need one of the biggest motors you can find there."
Rowe said he'll take Clark's word for it, having never raced at New Smyrna himself. He has, however, watched a number of races there from the pit area.
"It does race a lot like Thompson -- at least that's what Johnny tells me," Rowe said. "Hopefully he'll help me out when we get there and we can go from there.
"We're going to take a bunch of guys from the north down there and see what we can do together."
Teams hit the track on Friday, Jan. 29 for an extended practice session. Qualifying and feature racing will be held on Saturday, Jan. 30. The Winterfest 150 is tentatively scheduled for a 7:30 p.m. green flag.
FARMINGDALE, Me. -- With 10 championships between them, Maine racers Ben Rowe and Johnny Clark are teaming up for a winter road trip. A long winter road trip -- to Florida.
Rowe, who has four PASS North Series championships as well as PASS South and PASS National championships on his resume, and Clark will field a joint effort for the inaugural PASS Winterfest 150 at New Smyrna (Fla.) Speedway on Jan. 29-30. The event is the first of five PASS National Championship races scheduled for the 2010 season.
"We wanted to go down and support this race, because we think it could grow into something really big in the future," said Clark, a four-time PASS North champion, including the last two series titles. "If everything goes well, we should both have a chance to win this one."
Clark's race hauler will carry both his familiar Clark's Car Crushing No. 54 and Rowe's new Community Pharmacies No. 48. The deal to pool the resources of Johnny Clark Motorsports and Mulkern Racing was finalized at last weekend's Northeast Motorsports Expo held at the Augusta Civic Center.
Rowe was named Touring Series Driver of the Year at the Expo.
"I think it's going to be a lot of fun," said Rowe, who will debut with his new team and new crew chief, Seth Holbrook, at New Smyrna. "Me and Johnny have never teamed up before, so it's going to be a blast."
Of the two drivers, only Clark has New Smyrna experience, having competed on multiple occasions in the annual New Smyrna World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing held each February.
He compared New Smyrna's high-banked half-mile layout to Thompson (Conn.) International Speedway, a track familiar to PASS North Series competitors.
"It's a lot like Thompson," Clark said. "It's big and fast, and it's definitely a fun and challenging track. It's extremely hard on brakes, and you need one of the biggest motors you can find there."
Rowe said he'll take Clark's word for it, having never raced at New Smyrna himself. He has, however, watched a number of races there from the pit area.
"It does race a lot like Thompson -- at least that's what Johnny tells me," Rowe said. "Hopefully he'll help me out when we get there and we can go from there.
"We're going to take a bunch of guys from the north down there and see what we can do together."
Teams hit the track on Friday, Jan. 29 for an extended practice session. Qualifying and feature racing will be held on Saturday, Jan. 30. The Winterfest 150 is tentatively scheduled for a 7:30 p.m. green flag.
(PHOTO: Ben Rowe (left) and Johnny Clark at the Northeast Motorsports Expo; JohnnyClarkMotorsports.com photo)
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The Juice: Madhouse, Schmadhouse
-by Justin St. Louis
Seriously. Seriously? Do you expect me to just accept "Madhouse"? No sir.
Fantastic on-track and in-car footage, great behind-the-scenes profiles, and intense shots of passionate fans in the grandstands cheering on their drivers.
The racing, however, is garbage.
I've been told for years by a bunch of folks that Bowman-Gray Stadium down in Winston-Salem, N.C. is as crazy as it looked in the series premiere of The History Channel's newest television show. But that's ONE track. There are a thousand others in the country that are nothing like that, and hopefully never will be. For whatever its reasons, the team of officials at Bowman-Gray seem to think that that style of racing -- which is shown on TV to be nothing more than seeing how hard one guy can drive into another and wreck him, and then punch his lights out after the race -- works.
But let's see Burt Myers and Junior Miller, bitter rivals and arguably the two most intriguing characters on "Madhouse", come to any track up here in the northeast, or even any other track
in the south, and try to get away with wailing on each other over and over and over and over and over. And over. The clip of Myers ramming Miller intentionally in 2008 -- then backing up and doing it again twice more, with an official standing just a couple of feet from the cars -- is great for entertaining a bunch of idiots. But it is absolutely deplorable antics for a semi-professional sporting event. What's even more embarrassing is that the country's most powerful auto racing organization -- NASCAR, Bowman-Gray Stadium's governing body -- not only turns a blind eye to it, but allows it to be the main draw for a freaking television show!
Does anyone remember in 2006, when Robin Blake put on a similar act at Twin State Speedway in Claremont, N.H. (which was a NASCAR-sanctioned track at the time) in 2006? Blake has been through two trials for assault with a deadly weapon as a result of the incident, and pending further litigation (which is supposedly continuing this month), Blake is facing up to seven years in prison. So, Bowman-Gray, am I missing something here? Or is it just you?
The show's five main characters -- multi-time champions Miller and Tim Brown, low-buck underdog Chris Fleming, and Myers and younger brother Jason Myers -- are all totally arrogant, and seem to have nothing but disdain for each other. Trash-talk is the rule, and fistfights seem to be the law. Bowman-Gray's officials -- whether intentional or not -- are seen as totally out of control of their drivers, and none worse than track manager Gray Garrison. The pre-season meeting shown between Garrison, Miller, and Burt Myers is laughable. And not in a "Seinfeld" kind of way.
The reality of the thing is this: I've got my DVR set to record every episode of "Madhouse" and I completely intend to watch the entire series. It's winter, and I want to see race cars on TV. But I'm not watching the show because of the racing itself. I'm a moron that gets duped into catchy, compelling, drama-laden shows, and "Madhouse" fits the bill. If you're a bloodlust, or a non-race fan that loves junk TV, then The History Channel has what you're looking for at 10:00pm every Sunday.
But know this: the short track fan in me cries a little every time I watch.
***
Looking through Alan Ward's photos of the Pre-Hangover 150 at Riverside Speedway, I counted at least three Cadillacs (almost 10% of the starting field), two Junkyard Warriors from Thunder Road including the championship car, more than a few "borrowed" road cones on cars, and a Christmas tree sticking through the roof of a race car.
Awesome.
***
According to the Champlain Valley Racing Association's website, the Tiger Sportsman division will now be its own seperate entity, and the former Limited division is now the Renegades, a la Airborne Speedway. It was previously announced that the Limiteds would be grandfathered in to the new Tiger Sportsman class. Also, the division will run only at Devil's Bowl Speedway in West Haven, and not at sister track Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta, N.Y.
This move may actually be a little troublesome. While the idea of keeping the Limited/Renegade division close to its roots is appealing and certainly not a bad move, there may have also been a good case for having the grandfather clause in place, simply in terms of car counts. My fear is that the DBS Tigers won't have the strength in numbers initially, and that the division will end up like the one at Canaan Fair Speedway in 2005 -- with around five or six cars a night, and cancelled after one season.
I hope for the sake of the track and of the sport that teams from Thunder Road and Airborne will support the Devil's Bowl Tigers enough until a solid home base is built up for the division that has been so successful for Tom Curley and Mike Perrotte. I believe White Mountain Motorsports Park will have less trouble building its Tiger spinoff "Super Sportsman" division than Devil's Bowl, due to the fact that the Super Street class it replaces is no longer running (and therefore has a dozen or so teams looking for something to do with their race cars), and the fact that Thunder Road teams have raced at White Mountain before and seem to enjoy the place. Devil's Bowl -- as of this writing -- has no official Thunder Road-, Airborne-, or ACT-sanctioned Tiger Sportsman events. Hopefully teams will be enticed to try something new and will travel to Rutland County without being required to do so.
Asking Devil's Bowl drivers to convert from dirt to asphalt is a big enough challenge. A slow conversion from the old Limiteds to the Tigers might have worked. Keeping the Limiteds as they are will most likely work. But keeping the existing division and creating a totally new division? There exists the potential for some Limited/Renegade teams to convert their cars to Tigers, which in turn lowers the car count for the Renegades and negatively affects that division. There exists the potential for absolutely nobody to support the new Tigers. And, of course, there exists the potential for nobody to support Devil's Bowl at all.
Only time will tell. Keep your fingers crossed and your chins up. We need this to work.
***
The USA/Canada games in the recent IIHF World Junior Championship tournament were without question two of the very best hockey games I've ever seen. The NHL is going to see some talented kids in the next couple of years. Wow.
And for what it's worth, the Habs are above .500 for the moment. We'll see how things look after the All-Star break.
***
Here are some odds and ends we've picked up recently:
-- NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Rookie of the Year Joey Logano will return to the NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale (Calif.) on Jan. 29-30, driving for Fadden Racing and car owner Mike Olsen, based out of tiny North Haverhill, N.H. Logano will carry the sponsorship of The Home Depot, his Sprint Cup sponsor. The Toyota All-Star Showdown is regarded as the "Daytona 500" of NASCAR's Camping World Series East and West divisions.
Olsen, a former Thunder Road standout and grandson of the late multi-time track champion Stub Fadden, won the CWSE championship in 2001 and 2006 as a driver. Logano won the Showdown in 2007, and was the apparent winner last year until he was penalized for rough riding with Peyton Sellers on the final lap.
-- Williamstown youngster Jimmy Hebert has his Tiger Sportsman cars for sale, and hopes to make a jump to the ACT Late Model division for 2010. Hebert, 18, became Thunder Road's youngest Tiger Sportsman champion last year.
-- Ben Rowe teaming up with Scott Mulkern can only mean trouble for the PASS North Series. Rowe, a four-time champion of the series, is obviously quite talented, and Mulkern has deep pockets and likes to spend money on racing. The team has four cars at their disposal, with a pair of Chevy engines and another pair of Dodges. And for the record, Mulkern knows what it takes to win, having won a PASS North race and a pair of features on the former PASS Outlaw tour himself. Watch out, Johnny Clark.
-- Eric and Tucker Williams each have new race cars for 2010, but aren't sure if they'll be able to race them. Eric, a two-time ACT Late Model Tour winner last season, was offered "a deal he couldn't refuse" according to Tucker, and is having a new Howe Racing Enterprises house car being built at Howe headquarters in Beaverton, Mich. Tucker, the Thunder Road Street Stock Rookie of the Year, has acquired a Tiger Sportsman car formerly driven to a bunch of wins on either side of Lake Champlain by Robin Wood and Joey Becker. How often the cars race depends on sponsorship funding, Tucker says.
-- We're headed to the ACT/Thunder Road Banquet of Champions on Saturday to hob-knob and bench-race. Keep your eyes peeled for news and things coming soon after.
(PHOTOS: 1. Burt Myers (#1) and Junior Miller (#69) sure do put on a show at Bowman-Gray. A bad one. 2. Ho! Ho! Ho! It's an Enduro! Photo 1 by Eric Hylton; Photo 2 by Alan Ward)
Seriously. Seriously? Do you expect me to just accept "Madhouse"? No sir.
Fantastic on-track and in-car footage, great behind-the-scenes profiles, and intense shots of passionate fans in the grandstands cheering on their drivers.
The racing, however, is garbage.
I've been told for years by a bunch of folks that Bowman-Gray Stadium down in Winston-Salem, N.C. is as crazy as it looked in the series premiere of The History Channel's newest television show. But that's ONE track. There are a thousand others in the country that are nothing like that, and hopefully never will be. For whatever its reasons, the team of officials at Bowman-Gray seem to think that that style of racing -- which is shown on TV to be nothing more than seeing how hard one guy can drive into another and wreck him, and then punch his lights out after the race -- works.
But let's see Burt Myers and Junior Miller, bitter rivals and arguably the two most intriguing characters on "Madhouse", come to any track up here in the northeast, or even any other track
in the south, and try to get away with wailing on each other over and over and over and over and over. And over. The clip of Myers ramming Miller intentionally in 2008 -- then backing up and doing it again twice more, with an official standing just a couple of feet from the cars -- is great for entertaining a bunch of idiots. But it is absolutely deplorable antics for a semi-professional sporting event. What's even more embarrassing is that the country's most powerful auto racing organization -- NASCAR, Bowman-Gray Stadium's governing body -- not only turns a blind eye to it, but allows it to be the main draw for a freaking television show!Does anyone remember in 2006, when Robin Blake put on a similar act at Twin State Speedway in Claremont, N.H. (which was a NASCAR-sanctioned track at the time) in 2006? Blake has been through two trials for assault with a deadly weapon as a result of the incident, and pending further litigation (which is supposedly continuing this month), Blake is facing up to seven years in prison. So, Bowman-Gray, am I missing something here? Or is it just you?
The show's five main characters -- multi-time champions Miller and Tim Brown, low-buck underdog Chris Fleming, and Myers and younger brother Jason Myers -- are all totally arrogant, and seem to have nothing but disdain for each other. Trash-talk is the rule, and fistfights seem to be the law. Bowman-Gray's officials -- whether intentional or not -- are seen as totally out of control of their drivers, and none worse than track manager Gray Garrison. The pre-season meeting shown between Garrison, Miller, and Burt Myers is laughable. And not in a "Seinfeld" kind of way.
The reality of the thing is this: I've got my DVR set to record every episode of "Madhouse" and I completely intend to watch the entire series. It's winter, and I want to see race cars on TV. But I'm not watching the show because of the racing itself. I'm a moron that gets duped into catchy, compelling, drama-laden shows, and "Madhouse" fits the bill. If you're a bloodlust, or a non-race fan that loves junk TV, then The History Channel has what you're looking for at 10:00pm every Sunday.
But know this: the short track fan in me cries a little every time I watch.
***
Looking through Alan Ward's photos of the Pre-Hangover 150 at Riverside Speedway, I counted at least three Cadillacs (almost 10% of the starting field), two Junkyard Warriors from Thunder Road including the championship car, more than a few "borrowed" road cones on cars, and a Christmas tree sticking through the roof of a race car.Awesome.
***
According to the Champlain Valley Racing Association's website, the Tiger Sportsman division will now be its own seperate entity, and the former Limited division is now the Renegades, a la Airborne Speedway. It was previously announced that the Limiteds would be grandfathered in to the new Tiger Sportsman class. Also, the division will run only at Devil's Bowl Speedway in West Haven, and not at sister track Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta, N.Y.
This move may actually be a little troublesome. While the idea of keeping the Limited/Renegade division close to its roots is appealing and certainly not a bad move, there may have also been a good case for having the grandfather clause in place, simply in terms of car counts. My fear is that the DBS Tigers won't have the strength in numbers initially, and that the division will end up like the one at Canaan Fair Speedway in 2005 -- with around five or six cars a night, and cancelled after one season.
I hope for the sake of the track and of the sport that teams from Thunder Road and Airborne will support the Devil's Bowl Tigers enough until a solid home base is built up for the division that has been so successful for Tom Curley and Mike Perrotte. I believe White Mountain Motorsports Park will have less trouble building its Tiger spinoff "Super Sportsman" division than Devil's Bowl, due to the fact that the Super Street class it replaces is no longer running (and therefore has a dozen or so teams looking for something to do with their race cars), and the fact that Thunder Road teams have raced at White Mountain before and seem to enjoy the place. Devil's Bowl -- as of this writing -- has no official Thunder Road-, Airborne-, or ACT-sanctioned Tiger Sportsman events. Hopefully teams will be enticed to try something new and will travel to Rutland County without being required to do so.
Asking Devil's Bowl drivers to convert from dirt to asphalt is a big enough challenge. A slow conversion from the old Limiteds to the Tigers might have worked. Keeping the Limiteds as they are will most likely work. But keeping the existing division and creating a totally new division? There exists the potential for some Limited/Renegade teams to convert their cars to Tigers, which in turn lowers the car count for the Renegades and negatively affects that division. There exists the potential for absolutely nobody to support the new Tigers. And, of course, there exists the potential for nobody to support Devil's Bowl at all.
Only time will tell. Keep your fingers crossed and your chins up. We need this to work.
***
The USA/Canada games in the recent IIHF World Junior Championship tournament were without question two of the very best hockey games I've ever seen. The NHL is going to see some talented kids in the next couple of years. Wow.
And for what it's worth, the Habs are above .500 for the moment. We'll see how things look after the All-Star break.
***
Here are some odds and ends we've picked up recently:
-- NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Rookie of the Year Joey Logano will return to the NASCAR Toyota All-Star Showdown at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale (Calif.) on Jan. 29-30, driving for Fadden Racing and car owner Mike Olsen, based out of tiny North Haverhill, N.H. Logano will carry the sponsorship of The Home Depot, his Sprint Cup sponsor. The Toyota All-Star Showdown is regarded as the "Daytona 500" of NASCAR's Camping World Series East and West divisions.
Olsen, a former Thunder Road standout and grandson of the late multi-time track champion Stub Fadden, won the CWSE championship in 2001 and 2006 as a driver. Logano won the Showdown in 2007, and was the apparent winner last year until he was penalized for rough riding with Peyton Sellers on the final lap.
-- Williamstown youngster Jimmy Hebert has his Tiger Sportsman cars for sale, and hopes to make a jump to the ACT Late Model division for 2010. Hebert, 18, became Thunder Road's youngest Tiger Sportsman champion last year.
-- Ben Rowe teaming up with Scott Mulkern can only mean trouble for the PASS North Series. Rowe, a four-time champion of the series, is obviously quite talented, and Mulkern has deep pockets and likes to spend money on racing. The team has four cars at their disposal, with a pair of Chevy engines and another pair of Dodges. And for the record, Mulkern knows what it takes to win, having won a PASS North race and a pair of features on the former PASS Outlaw tour himself. Watch out, Johnny Clark.
-- Eric and Tucker Williams each have new race cars for 2010, but aren't sure if they'll be able to race them. Eric, a two-time ACT Late Model Tour winner last season, was offered "a deal he couldn't refuse" according to Tucker, and is having a new Howe Racing Enterprises house car being built at Howe headquarters in Beaverton, Mich. Tucker, the Thunder Road Street Stock Rookie of the Year, has acquired a Tiger Sportsman car formerly driven to a bunch of wins on either side of Lake Champlain by Robin Wood and Joey Becker. How often the cars race depends on sponsorship funding, Tucker says.
-- We're headed to the ACT/Thunder Road Banquet of Champions on Saturday to hob-knob and bench-race. Keep your eyes peeled for news and things coming soon after.
(PHOTOS: 1. Burt Myers (#1) and Junior Miller (#69) sure do put on a show at Bowman-Gray. A bad one. 2. Ho! Ho! Ho! It's an Enduro! Photo 1 by Eric Hylton; Photo 2 by Alan Ward)
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Ben Rowe to Seek Fifth PASS North Title with Mulkern
(From Mulkern Racing press release)
FALMOUTH, Maine -- Championship-caliber equipment now has a championship-caliber driver to call its own. A 4-time championship driver, that is.
Mulkern Racing LLC has announced Ben Rowe, the all-time winningest driver in PASS history, will drive the Community Pharmacies No. 48 full-time on the PASS North Series in 2010. With team owner Scott Mulkern, Rowe will attempt to win a record fifth PASS North title.
"It's exciting for me all over again. Anytime you start something new, it's pretty exciting to me," said Rowe, who has 39 career combined victories in PASS North and PASS South and is coming off a season in which he won both the PASS South and PASS National championships in 2009.
"Scott's just a great guy to be around, and he knows what it takes to win."
Rowe will debut with Mulkern Racing this weekend at the Northeast Motorsports Expo at the Augusta Civic Center, where he will sign autographs both Friday night and Saturday afternoon.
Mulkern is no stranger to victory lane himself, with three career wins in PASS-sanctioned events and 19 career top-5 finishes in PASS North. He's competed part-time as a driver with his own team over the last few seasons, but this year has made the commitment to a full-time operation as an owner with his wife, Vickie.
"The real focus for us now is on Ben and trying to win a championship for Ben in PASS North," Mulkern said.
Accomplished crew chief Seth Holbrook, who has ties to both Kyle Busch Motorsports and veteran New England racers like Mike Rowe, Joey Laquerre and Tim Brackett, has been hired by Mulkern to lead the No. 48 team. Tony Ricci works full-time at the Mulkern Racing shop preparing and maintaining the team's cars.
Already, Rowe said he believes the new No. 48 is capable of contending for the PASS North title.
" I think we can go to (Speedway 95) and win the first race of the year," Rowe said of the April 18 season opener in Hermon, Maine. "Scott wants to do it, and he wants to do it right. He wants to go for the North championship, and it gets him all pumped up talking about it.
"Seeing him get so pumped up gets me wound up to get going again, too, so it's good for me. I think it's going to be a fun year."
Mulkern said the team is concentrating on racing here in the North Series, with an eye on a possible race or two in PASS South.
"We may do some," said Mulkern, who also plans to run a couple of PASS North races himself in a team car. "If everything goes well, we might run a race down south early before the North season starts."
Mulkern Racing has four cars, including a Lefthander Chassis, two Junior Hanley-prepared cars and a new Howe chassis from Distance Racing. The team will use both Chevrolet engines prepared by Butler-MacMaster Automotive and Dodge engines from Performance Automotive Machine.
FALMOUTH, Maine -- Championship-caliber equipment now has a championship-caliber driver to call its own. A 4-time championship driver, that is.Mulkern Racing LLC has announced Ben Rowe, the all-time winningest driver in PASS history, will drive the Community Pharmacies No. 48 full-time on the PASS North Series in 2010. With team owner Scott Mulkern, Rowe will attempt to win a record fifth PASS North title.
"It's exciting for me all over again. Anytime you start something new, it's pretty exciting to me," said Rowe, who has 39 career combined victories in PASS North and PASS South and is coming off a season in which he won both the PASS South and PASS National championships in 2009.
"Scott's just a great guy to be around, and he knows what it takes to win."
Rowe will debut with Mulkern Racing this weekend at the Northeast Motorsports Expo at the Augusta Civic Center, where he will sign autographs both Friday night and Saturday afternoon.
Mulkern is no stranger to victory lane himself, with three career wins in PASS-sanctioned events and 19 career top-5 finishes in PASS North. He's competed part-time as a driver with his own team over the last few seasons, but this year has made the commitment to a full-time operation as an owner with his wife, Vickie.
"The real focus for us now is on Ben and trying to win a championship for Ben in PASS North," Mulkern said.
Accomplished crew chief Seth Holbrook, who has ties to both Kyle Busch Motorsports and veteran New England racers like Mike Rowe, Joey Laquerre and Tim Brackett, has been hired by Mulkern to lead the No. 48 team. Tony Ricci works full-time at the Mulkern Racing shop preparing and maintaining the team's cars.
Already, Rowe said he believes the new No. 48 is capable of contending for the PASS North title.
" I think we can go to (Speedway 95) and win the first race of the year," Rowe said of the April 18 season opener in Hermon, Maine. "Scott wants to do it, and he wants to do it right. He wants to go for the North championship, and it gets him all pumped up talking about it.
"Seeing him get so pumped up gets me wound up to get going again, too, so it's good for me. I think it's going to be a fun year."
Mulkern said the team is concentrating on racing here in the North Series, with an eye on a possible race or two in PASS South.
"We may do some," said Mulkern, who also plans to run a couple of PASS North races himself in a team car. "If everything goes well, we might run a race down south early before the North season starts."
Mulkern Racing has four cars, including a Lefthander Chassis, two Junior Hanley-prepared cars and a new Howe chassis from Distance Racing. The team will use both Chevrolet engines prepared by Butler-MacMaster Automotive and Dodge engines from Performance Automotive Machine.
(Photo by Justin St. Louis/VMM)
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The Juice: Brushing the Snow Off
-by Justin St. Louis
You didn't think I was going to stay shut up the whole off-season, did you?
As you're probably aware, there's been a lot going on behind the scenes here at VMM HQ. I've been away from the website for a while, but definitely not away from racing. I've collected some loose ends that were sort of flapping in the breeze, many of which you've, again, probably heard about already. But the itch to ramble on at length in a column here has been too big to not scratch. So let's get the snow brush out and dust off the car for a couple laps.
***
First of all, a major (albeit a bit belated) congratulations goes out to Tom Placey, winner of the first-ever Vermont Motorsports Magazine Driver of the Year Award presented by Subway! The DOTY thing was a lot of fun for me to watch during November and early December, and we'll do something similar to it again in 2010, for sure.
Many congrats also to Tim LaDuc on his Devil's Bowl Speedway award, Tucker Williams on his Thunder Road Int'l Speedbowl award, Eric Williams for his "On The Road" award, and to Placey for also winning the Bear Ridge Speedway award.
Thanks to all 6,350 of you that voted, and to Subway of Barre, Montpelier, Waterbury, and Northfield for supporting the Driver of the Year program.
***
The Tigers are catching on like wildfire. In less than two months' time, news has broken about the division coming to four new tracks in 2010. New Hampshire's White Mountain Motorsports Park announced in early November that it will drop its Super Street division in favor of a new "Super Sportsman" class using the American-Canadian Tour/Thunder Road/Airborne Speedway Tiger Sportsman rulebook.
Soon after, news came that the ACT Tiger Sportsman Series would return to another New Hampshire track, Riverside Speedway, for an event in October. Last week, Champlain Valley Racing Association president Bruce Richards announced on his organization's website that in the wake of a switch from dirt to asphalt at its two tracks, Devil's Bowl Speedway in West Haven and Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta, N.Y., the former Limited division has been replaced by the Tiger Sportsmen. (Thunder Road's Junkyard Warrior rulebook has also been phased in at both CVRA tracks, in favor of the former Mini Stock class.)
This all brings me to formulation of several theories, although none of them have been confirmed by, denied by, or discussed with any track or series officials. Okay, ready?
1. ACT will almost certainly add a Tiger Sportsman Series event at either Devil's Bowl, Albany-Saratoga, or both, or will at least stage a stand-alone event for the division at one of the two tracks in 2010, a la the May 23 Late Model event at Devil's Bowl.
2. With promoter Dick Therrien now at Canaan Fair (N.H.) Speedway and the Leblanc family taking over operations at Riverside, expect ACT to have a growing presence at Riverside in the coming years. It's no secret that ACT boss Tom Curley has a soft spot for the tiny, high-banked Riverside track and its tendency to throw off a good race, and it's also no secret that Therrien and Curley don't exchange Christmas cards. With Therrien out, you'll probably see Curley there more often.
2a. I say here and now that Riverside will probably bring the Tigers into its weekly program by 2011, and that the ACT-type Late Model rulebook now in place at nine tracks in New England and Canada will be in place at Riverside no later than 2012. And, um, Riverside has decided to close its gates on the weekend of Thunder Road's -- read: Curley's -- Milk Bowl, so as not to have competing events. In this day and age, that's pretty unheard of.
2b. I have no idea how well the Leblanc regime will or won't perform at Riverside, but Canaan needs a bull-in-a-china-shop personality like Therrien to get the ship righted. He'll be good for the place.
3. If the CVRA is using the Junkyard Warrior rulebook -- and this is a total off-the-wall guess -- then the Thunder Road Warriors are not dead. As the car counts shrink, the speculation grows that the entry-level class will be cut from the program at Thunder Road, possibly as soon as next season. The CVRA move suggests maybe a sliver of hope for the division to turn itself around. It's worth noting that the Bomber division -- a class very similar to the Warriors that runs at Airborne in Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- is very successful.
***
Speaking of promoters, I was a little bummed to hear that Arnie Malcolm is gone from Capital City Speedway in Ottawa. Arnie is a funny dude, and has an obvious passion for racing. He also has one hell of a temper if you mess up his show. Here's hoping that the powers that be at CCS can get the right person to replace him.
***
Hey, did you know VMM is on Facebook? It's true. And Twitter is a lot of fun, too. I'm constantly fooling around with my Blackberry while I'm at my real job, or when I'm driving, or at any other inappropriate time when I should be paying attention to something else, so that means there are usually a few updates a week away from the VMM main page. So go ahead and check 'em out.
***
Don't ever buy a 1997 Toyota Corolla, unless you plan to buy something else to replace it soon after. Same goes for 1999 Plymouth Neons. ---Cue NBC's "The More You Know" theme---
***
Ben Rowe is out of Richard Moody Racing's PASS #4 Super Late Model and Brad Leighton is in. Rowe and Moody teamed up to win three PASS championships and 11 main events, along with successful outings at races from the Canadian Maritimes to Florida and Alabama. The Rowe-Moody split breaks up one of the most potent and most marketable short track teams in the country.
Rowe told Speed51.com that if he is unable to find a full-time PASS ride, he believes he "could do the full [ACT] schedule" in David Avery's #10 car.
Leighton is expected to run the entire 2010 PASS North schedule with Moody, while still racing the Pete Duto-prepared #55 car in up to six events on the ACT Late Model Tour; he won events at Lee USA (N.H.) Speedway and Kawartha (Ont.) Speedway in 2009 in the Duto car.
Leighton has made a handful of PASS appearances over several seasons. His last full-time season in a Super Late Model/Pro Stock-type car was in 1995, when he won the final ACT-sanctioned championship for the division.
***
Finally, one quick, but very heartfelt "Thank You!" to the racing world. The outpouring of support my family received -- and continues to receive -- following my father's passing has been just... wow, unbelievable.
Dad and I have made many good friends through motorsports, and have each supported a few of them during their own tough times. And while not everyone likes me, EVERYONE liked him. And it shows, big time. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone that has left a comment, sent a card or an email or a text message, or called the house -- and that number is quite literally in the hundreds. Our family is so grateful for your compassion.
It's times like these that make me so proud to be part of the racing community. Happy holidays to you all.
You didn't think I was going to stay shut up the whole off-season, did you?
As you're probably aware, there's been a lot going on behind the scenes here at VMM HQ. I've been away from the website for a while, but definitely not away from racing. I've collected some loose ends that were sort of flapping in the breeze, many of which you've, again, probably heard about already. But the itch to ramble on at length in a column here has been too big to not scratch. So let's get the snow brush out and dust off the car for a couple laps.
***
First of all, a major (albeit a bit belated) congratulations goes out to Tom Placey, winner of the first-ever Vermont Motorsports Magazine Driver of the Year Award presented by Subway! The DOTY thing was a lot of fun for me to watch during November and early December, and we'll do something similar to it again in 2010, for sure.
Many congrats also to Tim LaDuc on his Devil's Bowl Speedway award, Tucker Williams on his Thunder Road Int'l Speedbowl award, Eric Williams for his "On The Road" award, and to Placey for also winning the Bear Ridge Speedway award.
Thanks to all 6,350 of you that voted, and to Subway of Barre, Montpelier, Waterbury, and Northfield for supporting the Driver of the Year program.
***
The Tigers are catching on like wildfire. In less than two months' time, news has broken about the division coming to four new tracks in 2010. New Hampshire's White Mountain Motorsports Park announced in early November that it will drop its Super Street division in favor of a new "Super Sportsman" class using the American-Canadian Tour/Thunder Road/Airborne Speedway Tiger Sportsman rulebook.
Soon after, news came that the ACT Tiger Sportsman Series would return to another New Hampshire track, Riverside Speedway, for an event in October. Last week, Champlain Valley Racing Association president Bruce Richards announced on his organization's website that in the wake of a switch from dirt to asphalt at its two tracks, Devil's Bowl Speedway in West Haven and Albany-Saratoga Speedway in Malta, N.Y., the former Limited division has been replaced by the Tiger Sportsmen. (Thunder Road's Junkyard Warrior rulebook has also been phased in at both CVRA tracks, in favor of the former Mini Stock class.)
This all brings me to formulation of several theories, although none of them have been confirmed by, denied by, or discussed with any track or series officials. Okay, ready?
1. ACT will almost certainly add a Tiger Sportsman Series event at either Devil's Bowl, Albany-Saratoga, or both, or will at least stage a stand-alone event for the division at one of the two tracks in 2010, a la the May 23 Late Model event at Devil's Bowl.
2. With promoter Dick Therrien now at Canaan Fair (N.H.) Speedway and the Leblanc family taking over operations at Riverside, expect ACT to have a growing presence at Riverside in the coming years. It's no secret that ACT boss Tom Curley has a soft spot for the tiny, high-banked Riverside track and its tendency to throw off a good race, and it's also no secret that Therrien and Curley don't exchange Christmas cards. With Therrien out, you'll probably see Curley there more often.
2a. I say here and now that Riverside will probably bring the Tigers into its weekly program by 2011, and that the ACT-type Late Model rulebook now in place at nine tracks in New England and Canada will be in place at Riverside no later than 2012. And, um, Riverside has decided to close its gates on the weekend of Thunder Road's -- read: Curley's -- Milk Bowl, so as not to have competing events. In this day and age, that's pretty unheard of.
2b. I have no idea how well the Leblanc regime will or won't perform at Riverside, but Canaan needs a bull-in-a-china-shop personality like Therrien to get the ship righted. He'll be good for the place.
3. If the CVRA is using the Junkyard Warrior rulebook -- and this is a total off-the-wall guess -- then the Thunder Road Warriors are not dead. As the car counts shrink, the speculation grows that the entry-level class will be cut from the program at Thunder Road, possibly as soon as next season. The CVRA move suggests maybe a sliver of hope for the division to turn itself around. It's worth noting that the Bomber division -- a class very similar to the Warriors that runs at Airborne in Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- is very successful.
***
Speaking of promoters, I was a little bummed to hear that Arnie Malcolm is gone from Capital City Speedway in Ottawa. Arnie is a funny dude, and has an obvious passion for racing. He also has one hell of a temper if you mess up his show. Here's hoping that the powers that be at CCS can get the right person to replace him.
***
Hey, did you know VMM is on Facebook? It's true. And Twitter is a lot of fun, too. I'm constantly fooling around with my Blackberry while I'm at my real job, or when I'm driving, or at any other inappropriate time when I should be paying attention to something else, so that means there are usually a few updates a week away from the VMM main page. So go ahead and check 'em out.
***
Don't ever buy a 1997 Toyota Corolla, unless you plan to buy something else to replace it soon after. Same goes for 1999 Plymouth Neons. ---Cue NBC's "The More You Know" theme---
***
Ben Rowe is out of Richard Moody Racing's PASS #4 Super Late Model and Brad Leighton is in. Rowe and Moody teamed up to win three PASS championships and 11 main events, along with successful outings at races from the Canadian Maritimes to Florida and Alabama. The Rowe-Moody split breaks up one of the most potent and most marketable short track teams in the country.
Rowe told Speed51.com that if he is unable to find a full-time PASS ride, he believes he "could do the full [ACT] schedule" in David Avery's #10 car.
Leighton is expected to run the entire 2010 PASS North schedule with Moody, while still racing the Pete Duto-prepared #55 car in up to six events on the ACT Late Model Tour; he won events at Lee USA (N.H.) Speedway and Kawartha (Ont.) Speedway in 2009 in the Duto car.
Leighton has made a handful of PASS appearances over several seasons. His last full-time season in a Super Late Model/Pro Stock-type car was in 1995, when he won the final ACT-sanctioned championship for the division.
***
Finally, one quick, but very heartfelt "Thank You!" to the racing world. The outpouring of support my family received -- and continues to receive -- following my father's passing has been just... wow, unbelievable.
Dad and I have made many good friends through motorsports, and have each supported a few of them during their own tough times. And while not everyone likes me, EVERYONE liked him. And it shows, big time. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone that has left a comment, sent a card or an email or a text message, or called the house -- and that number is quite literally in the hundreds. Our family is so grateful for your compassion.
It's times like these that make me so proud to be part of the racing community. Happy holidays to you all.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The Juice -- Why the World Needs Eric Williams, and a Big, Fat Thank You
-by Justin St. Louis
I was never a big fan of Eric Williams when I was a kid sitting in the grandstands at Thunder Road. I didn't hate him -- I booed Clem Despault and Dwayne Lanphear a lot more, for some unknown reason -- but I can't remember ever thinking he was "my guy" to cheer for.
He was exciting to watch, that's for sure: Like on the night he pushed someone (maybe Tom Tiller?) totally sideways -- and I'm talking nose-in-the-driver's-door-at-a-90-degree-angle sideways -- for more than a quarter of a lap, or the year he won almost half of the Flying Tiger features from the rear of the field, or all those nights he was black-flagged for whacking someone else for no apparent reason. It was long-known that Williams operated his team on a shoestring budget, hauling his car on an open trailer for longer than almost every other Late Model team. His cars almost never looked show-ready, although they were fast. And his fan club was notoriously loud, sometimes nasty, and always controversial.
As I grew up and eventually became a racer myself, I still watched and marveled at Williams, as he started becoming a constant threat for victory lane, no matter where he went. And the excitement continued: His year-long championship battle with Brian Hoar in 1999 that ultimately came down to Hoar's final-corner pass of Jamie Fisher to win the Milk Bowl and the "King of the Road" title by one point, his razor-close finish in an ACT Late Model Tour race at Canaan Fair Speedway with Dave Pembroke, his opening-day battle with Dale Shaw in 2004, his season-long confrontations with John Donahue the next year. The cars were still ugly and the fan club still cheered.
And in the last few years as I've gotten to know Williams on a bit more of a personal level through work, at least through interviews and whatnot, I've come to this conclusion: Thunder Road International Speedbowl needs Eric Williams. The American-Canadian Tour needs Eric Williams. The northeast is lucky to have him.
When Williams pulls into a race track, he's an immediate darkhorse for the win. He is certainly one of the most feared Late Model drivers at Thunder Road. He's a major threat at White Mountain Motorsports Park. And this year, he certainly stepped up his game on the flatter tracks at Oxford Plains Speedway and Beech Ridge Motor Speedway. Due to his limited budget, Williams missed three of the 13 ACT events on the schedule, and was forced to use each of his finishes to count toward the ACT championship in the "Pick 10" points format. So while Brian Hoar was able to drop his 22nd-place finish at White Mountain, Scott Payea scratched a 19th from Oxford in May, and John Donahue excluded a 20th at Thunder Road, Williams had no choice but to use his 27th-place finish at Twin State and two bad showings at Airborne Speedway. And he still finished seventh in points, better than eight teams that went to every race.
The Eric Williams mystique goes way beyond that, though; he is a true character, and the catalyst for anyone with a dream. Williams owns and operates a small, one-man auto repair shop in his home town of Hyde Park, up in far-from-everything Lamoille County. With the modest income that shop creates, he and wife Lisa tackle the regular chores of owning a home, putting their daughter Lacey through college, and preparing for son Tucker's entry into school next year. Health issues involving Williams' brother and parents have been a recent distraction, and two years ago, a mudslide threatened to wash away the family's home. Tucker, 18, has a race car and is a multi-sport athlete in high school, which, again, takes time and money. It's a snapshot of small-town Vermont working hard to make a living and still have some fun on the side.
And Williams himself is a relic of small-town Vermont. The 46 year-old stands like a piece of rough-cut lumber, and speaks like a guy that might have chopped the tree down. "Thunder Road," he once told me, with the type of native Vermont accent found closer to the Canadian and northern New York borders than to the Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire borders, "is a whole diff'rent breed'a cat. If you can win here, I guess you can prob'ly win anywhere."
He speaks deliberately, which can be funny, even if he's not trying to be funny. Maybe that's the Chittenden County "city boy" in me giggling over the words he says, knowing they're on purpose, although my own accent has thickened of late, and my Vermontisms (I caught myself saying "move it just a frogskin more" the other day) have picked up. Williams looks at you when he talks, and has a piercing gaze in his eyes. He smiles, a little, when he speaks, and it's obvious that even though he's probably tired, he's enjoying himself.
His line following his win at Oxford last week: "I figured as long I didn't do anything mentally challenged I'll be just fine," will forever live in my mind as one of my favorite interview quotes. But he's had some other good ones recently, too.
The 11-second summary of his third-place finish in the Milk Bowl: "We had a piece of crap in the first segment, had a really good car in the second segment but got boxed in, and then the third, the car was so-so but just worked out. Did alright."
At Thunder Road's pre-season practice session in April, speaking about losing his sponsor despite winning the track championship the year before: "I don't race to prove things, I race because I like to race. I'm glad that I had a good year, if that happens to be my last full-time year, you never know. I'd like to think the economy will turn around. If I hang around at least some, maybe something will come along. I certainly ain't saying I'm all done racing, it's just as of right now I don't have the funds to race full-time."
On the possibility that he might race full-time after winning the Merchants Bank 150 season opener at Thunder Road in May: "I can't really comment and give you anything other than baloney right now, I just don't know. To be honest with you, the first thing that crossed my mind was 'Hey, I can go to Airborne now.' I had a good day, I got some money for tires, so we're headed across the lake next Saturday and give that new pavement a whirl."
On how small his team feels compared to those of the high-budget ACT Late Model Tour operations: "We come down here every year to the first big race, we pull in with our little hauler and trailer. Some of these rigs I could park my hauler and truck inside their rig and still have a picnic underneath it, you know? And you stand there and you look around and you almost say, 'Man, what am I doing? This is crazy.'"
Regarding ACT president Tom Curley: "I'd like to finish top-ten in points. We'd get a check anyway, and I wouldn't mind a little bit more of ol' T-Bone's money. It spends nice."
Eric Williams is maybe the hardest racer in the last 20 years at Thunder Road. He fights for every spot, he isn't afraid to move people if he has to, and he works on his own equipment with his own money. His reputation preceeds him, too.
Nick Sweet at White Mountain in June: "I hate seeing that black bumper in my mirror. He's always run me clean, but I still let him go if he wants a spot."
Scott Payea, after rough-housing Williams a little at Thunder Road on the last lap of a Labor Day qualifying heat: "He would have done it to me, too. He has."
John Donahue, after winning the Milk Bowl: "You don't want to piss Eric off, because he gets mad and he don't forget."
No driver creates more controversy at Thunder Road these days than Eric Williams. No driver gets more of a rise -- good or bad -- out of the spectators than Eric Williams. No driver in the ACT ranks gets booed more than Eric Williams. No driver wins big races on a short budget like Eric Williams. And you'd be hard-pressed to find many drivers saying the things Eric Williams says. He might be a hero to only a select group of family and friends wearing red #7 shirts, a villain to everyone else. But he's a wonderful character for the sport.
We need him around.
***
Still all wound up about that Hart 100 thing. Good lord was that fun. We're contemplating doing the Hangover Enduro thing at Riverside in January on New Year's Day. Guess that means we'd have to go dig the car out of the ditch at Bucktona then, eh? Speaking of which, Riverside has the annual "Frostbite" Enduro on Saturday at 1:30pm, along with the PASS Sportsman Series finale.
***
There's a pretty large contingent of northern racers headed to Dixie for the PASS South Mason-Dixon Meltdown at South Boston Speedway in Virginia this weekend, including Danville racer Steven Legendre, ACT Rookie of the Year Joey Doiron, and jack-of-all-trades D.J. Shaw. Legendre, we think, is the PASS North Rookie of the Year, but there's been nothing made publicly official about that. Even Legendre said he doesn't know if he won it or not, because PASS isn't saying anything. Either way, he grabbed three top-tens in a dozen starts in his freshman season en route to 11th place overall, and those are better numbers than some of the series' veterans put up. Doiron finished 12th in ACT points with a fourth-place run at Twin State Speedway and an impressive outing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last month, and also had a great PASS effort at Beech Ridge earlier in the year. Shaw had five top-fives in 11 PASS starts this year, and also ran well in select ACT and NASCAR Camping World Series East races.
***
Peanut butter and jelly on white bread just isn't the same. And for that matter, Smuckers needs to step up its game. Even the Shaw's generic store brand stuff is better.
***
Ascutney's Dwight Jarvis was the runner-up behind Mike Stefanik in the True Value Modified Racing Series event at Seekonk Speedway last Sunday. What, I say, what does Jarvis have to do to win a race these days? Seekonk was Jarvis' fifth second-place run of the year. I'm guessing when you've won 19 championships in your career like Jarvis has, second place gets old after a while. The TVMRS bunch has one more stop on the schedule at Lee USA Speedway in coastal New Hampshire on Oct. 24/25 before the year is out.
***
I've come across a bit of a dilemma here, now that racing season is all but over in these parts. I'm not really sure what VMM will be up to in the next few days, weeks, or months, but I'll think of something. And when I do, you'll read about it here. Because there's kinda nowhere else to read it.
But I do want to thank each and every one of the readers to visit this little blog this year. I started a hit counter on April 1st and saw the 50,000th visitor come through last month, not quite six months into the count. I have no idea if that's a good number or not, but it sure sounds like a lot, so thank you for reading. And a huge thank you to the groups that have joined on recently to support us: RPM Racing Engines in Georgia, Vt., Burnett Scrap Metals in Williston, and C&S Screenprinting in Richmond.
The MotorMag hit 48 races this year (55 if you count rainouts), and I'm thinking about getting to one or two more before the calendar changes. I made a lot of friends, ruffled a few feathers, and saw some great racing. I developed a new appreciation for dirt racing, and although I still don't totally understand it, I like it and want to see more of it. There are some plans for VMM for the future, and they'll come along in time.
I want to send a special thank-you to the folks that do this job a lot better than I do, including but certainly not limited to Travis Barrett of Green-White-Checker, Seth Leavitt of WCAX-TV Channel 3, Big Bigelow of the Caledonian-Record, Tom Herzig of the Times Argus and the Union Leader, Mike Twist of Speed51.com, T.J. Michaels of Frank 107.1 FM, Lee Kittell of WDEV Radio Vermont, and Phil Whipple of the Lewiston (Me.) Sun Journal.
A HUGE thanks to photographers Leif Tillotson and Alan Ward for their help this year, and also to Jamie Williams.
Thanks to Pete Hartt for being there. Anna Grearson, too.
Thanks to my old man, Ron, and my friends Eddy and Jeff Companion for helping out with a few things this summer, and to both Gene Gagnes (Lil and Big) for sharing a tank of gas here and there.
Thanks to John O. Casey, Dave Moody, Cho Lee, the legends of Thunder Road, the staff at Queen City Printers, and the fans that have so enthusiastically supported "Fifty Years of Excitement".
I would be forgetting myself if I didn't thank the promoters and staff at the following tracks and series for their help, cooperation, and belief that VMM is worthwhile to them: Thunder Road Int'l Speedbowl, Bear Ridge Speedway, Airborne Speedway, Northeastern Speedway, White Mountain Motorsports Park, Oxford Plains Speedway, Fred Neergaard and New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Twin State Speedway, Riverside Speedway, Canaan Fair Speedway, the American-Canadian Tour, the True Value Modified Racing Series, and the Sprint Cars of New England.
Thanks to the drivers and teams for letting me get in their faces all year, and for not punching my lights out when they probably wanted to a couple times. (I'll probably have to thank them for that a few times over the years.)
But most of all, again, thank YOU, the readers of Vermont Motorsports Magazine. I've had comments and emails come in from everywhere all year thanking me for the stuff I've written. Folks, don't thank me, thank the drivers and the promoters for making all this happen. All I do is write down what they say and give you a place to read it. I can't tell you how flattered I am to hear someone at Thunder Road or Bear Ridge tell me that they read VMM "two or three times a day" -- say nothing of the folks that say it that are from New Hampshire or New York or Maine -- even a racer from Rhode Island once this summer!
The first year was rocky at times, but I feel like it was a positive one, overall. Here's hoping the next one or two or 17 will be even better.
Thank you, everyone, and winter well.
I was never a big fan of Eric Williams when I was a kid sitting in the grandstands at Thunder Road. I didn't hate him -- I booed Clem Despault and Dwayne Lanphear a lot more, for some unknown reason -- but I can't remember ever thinking he was "my guy" to cheer for.
He was exciting to watch, that's for sure: Like on the night he pushed someone (maybe Tom Tiller?) totally sideways -- and I'm talking nose-in-the-driver's-door-at-a-90-degree-angle sideways -- for more than a quarter of a lap, or the year he won almost half of the Flying Tiger features from the rear of the field, or all those nights he was black-flagged for whacking someone else for no apparent reason. It was long-known that Williams operated his team on a shoestring budget, hauling his car on an open trailer for longer than almost every other Late Model team. His cars almost never looked show-ready, although they were fast. And his fan club was notoriously loud, sometimes nasty, and always controversial.
As I grew up and eventually became a racer myself, I still watched and marveled at Williams, as he started becoming a constant threat for victory lane, no matter where he went. And the excitement continued: His year-long championship battle with Brian Hoar in 1999 that ultimately came down to Hoar's final-corner pass of Jamie Fisher to win the Milk Bowl and the "King of the Road" title by one point, his razor-close finish in an ACT Late Model Tour race at Canaan Fair Speedway with Dave Pembroke, his opening-day battle with Dale Shaw in 2004, his season-long confrontations with John Donahue the next year. The cars were still ugly and the fan club still cheered.
And in the last few years as I've gotten to know Williams on a bit more of a personal level through work, at least through interviews and whatnot, I've come to this conclusion: Thunder Road International Speedbowl needs Eric Williams. The American-Canadian Tour needs Eric Williams. The northeast is lucky to have him.
When Williams pulls into a race track, he's an immediate darkhorse for the win. He is certainly one of the most feared Late Model drivers at Thunder Road. He's a major threat at White Mountain Motorsports Park. And this year, he certainly stepped up his game on the flatter tracks at Oxford Plains Speedway and Beech Ridge Motor Speedway. Due to his limited budget, Williams missed three of the 13 ACT events on the schedule, and was forced to use each of his finishes to count toward the ACT championship in the "Pick 10" points format. So while Brian Hoar was able to drop his 22nd-place finish at White Mountain, Scott Payea scratched a 19th from Oxford in May, and John Donahue excluded a 20th at Thunder Road, Williams had no choice but to use his 27th-place finish at Twin State and two bad showings at Airborne Speedway. And he still finished seventh in points, better than eight teams that went to every race.
The Eric Williams mystique goes way beyond that, though; he is a true character, and the catalyst for anyone with a dream. Williams owns and operates a small, one-man auto repair shop in his home town of Hyde Park, up in far-from-everything Lamoille County. With the modest income that shop creates, he and wife Lisa tackle the regular chores of owning a home, putting their daughter Lacey through college, and preparing for son Tucker's entry into school next year. Health issues involving Williams' brother and parents have been a recent distraction, and two years ago, a mudslide threatened to wash away the family's home. Tucker, 18, has a race car and is a multi-sport athlete in high school, which, again, takes time and money. It's a snapshot of small-town Vermont working hard to make a living and still have some fun on the side.
And Williams himself is a relic of small-town Vermont. The 46 year-old stands like a piece of rough-cut lumber, and speaks like a guy that might have chopped the tree down. "Thunder Road," he once told me, with the type of native Vermont accent found closer to the Canadian and northern New York borders than to the Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire borders, "is a whole diff'rent breed'a cat. If you can win here, I guess you can prob'ly win anywhere."
He speaks deliberately, which can be funny, even if he's not trying to be funny. Maybe that's the Chittenden County "city boy" in me giggling over the words he says, knowing they're on purpose, although my own accent has thickened of late, and my Vermontisms (I caught myself saying "move it just a frogskin more" the other day) have picked up. Williams looks at you when he talks, and has a piercing gaze in his eyes. He smiles, a little, when he speaks, and it's obvious that even though he's probably tired, he's enjoying himself.
His line following his win at Oxford last week: "I figured as long I didn't do anything mentally challenged I'll be just fine," will forever live in my mind as one of my favorite interview quotes. But he's had some other good ones recently, too.
The 11-second summary of his third-place finish in the Milk Bowl: "We had a piece of crap in the first segment, had a really good car in the second segment but got boxed in, and then the third, the car was so-so but just worked out. Did alright."
At Thunder Road's pre-season practice session in April, speaking about losing his sponsor despite winning the track championship the year before: "I don't race to prove things, I race because I like to race. I'm glad that I had a good year, if that happens to be my last full-time year, you never know. I'd like to think the economy will turn around. If I hang around at least some, maybe something will come along. I certainly ain't saying I'm all done racing, it's just as of right now I don't have the funds to race full-time."
On the possibility that he might race full-time after winning the Merchants Bank 150 season opener at Thunder Road in May: "I can't really comment and give you anything other than baloney right now, I just don't know. To be honest with you, the first thing that crossed my mind was 'Hey, I can go to Airborne now.' I had a good day, I got some money for tires, so we're headed across the lake next Saturday and give that new pavement a whirl."
On how small his team feels compared to those of the high-budget ACT Late Model Tour operations: "We come down here every year to the first big race, we pull in with our little hauler and trailer. Some of these rigs I could park my hauler and truck inside their rig and still have a picnic underneath it, you know? And you stand there and you look around and you almost say, 'Man, what am I doing? This is crazy.'"
Regarding ACT president Tom Curley: "I'd like to finish top-ten in points. We'd get a check anyway, and I wouldn't mind a little bit more of ol' T-Bone's money. It spends nice."
Eric Williams is maybe the hardest racer in the last 20 years at Thunder Road. He fights for every spot, he isn't afraid to move people if he has to, and he works on his own equipment with his own money. His reputation preceeds him, too.
Nick Sweet at White Mountain in June: "I hate seeing that black bumper in my mirror. He's always run me clean, but I still let him go if he wants a spot."
Scott Payea, after rough-housing Williams a little at Thunder Road on the last lap of a Labor Day qualifying heat: "He would have done it to me, too. He has."
John Donahue, after winning the Milk Bowl: "You don't want to piss Eric off, because he gets mad and he don't forget."
No driver creates more controversy at Thunder Road these days than Eric Williams. No driver gets more of a rise -- good or bad -- out of the spectators than Eric Williams. No driver in the ACT ranks gets booed more than Eric Williams. No driver wins big races on a short budget like Eric Williams. And you'd be hard-pressed to find many drivers saying the things Eric Williams says. He might be a hero to only a select group of family and friends wearing red #7 shirts, a villain to everyone else. But he's a wonderful character for the sport.
We need him around.
***
Still all wound up about that Hart 100 thing. Good lord was that fun. We're contemplating doing the Hangover Enduro thing at Riverside in January on New Year's Day. Guess that means we'd have to go dig the car out of the ditch at Bucktona then, eh? Speaking of which, Riverside has the annual "Frostbite" Enduro on Saturday at 1:30pm, along with the PASS Sportsman Series finale.
***
There's a pretty large contingent of northern racers headed to Dixie for the PASS South Mason-Dixon Meltdown at South Boston Speedway in Virginia this weekend, including Danville racer Steven Legendre, ACT Rookie of the Year Joey Doiron, and jack-of-all-trades D.J. Shaw. Legendre, we think, is the PASS North Rookie of the Year, but there's been nothing made publicly official about that. Even Legendre said he doesn't know if he won it or not, because PASS isn't saying anything. Either way, he grabbed three top-tens in a dozen starts in his freshman season en route to 11th place overall, and those are better numbers than some of the series' veterans put up. Doiron finished 12th in ACT points with a fourth-place run at Twin State Speedway and an impressive outing at New Hampshire Motor Speedway last month, and also had a great PASS effort at Beech Ridge earlier in the year. Shaw had five top-fives in 11 PASS starts this year, and also ran well in select ACT and NASCAR Camping World Series East races.
***
Peanut butter and jelly on white bread just isn't the same. And for that matter, Smuckers needs to step up its game. Even the Shaw's generic store brand stuff is better.
***
Ascutney's Dwight Jarvis was the runner-up behind Mike Stefanik in the True Value Modified Racing Series event at Seekonk Speedway last Sunday. What, I say, what does Jarvis have to do to win a race these days? Seekonk was Jarvis' fifth second-place run of the year. I'm guessing when you've won 19 championships in your career like Jarvis has, second place gets old after a while. The TVMRS bunch has one more stop on the schedule at Lee USA Speedway in coastal New Hampshire on Oct. 24/25 before the year is out.
***
I've come across a bit of a dilemma here, now that racing season is all but over in these parts. I'm not really sure what VMM will be up to in the next few days, weeks, or months, but I'll think of something. And when I do, you'll read about it here. Because there's kinda nowhere else to read it.
But I do want to thank each and every one of the readers to visit this little blog this year. I started a hit counter on April 1st and saw the 50,000th visitor come through last month, not quite six months into the count. I have no idea if that's a good number or not, but it sure sounds like a lot, so thank you for reading. And a huge thank you to the groups that have joined on recently to support us: RPM Racing Engines in Georgia, Vt., Burnett Scrap Metals in Williston, and C&S Screenprinting in Richmond.
The MotorMag hit 48 races this year (55 if you count rainouts), and I'm thinking about getting to one or two more before the calendar changes. I made a lot of friends, ruffled a few feathers, and saw some great racing. I developed a new appreciation for dirt racing, and although I still don't totally understand it, I like it and want to see more of it. There are some plans for VMM for the future, and they'll come along in time.
I want to send a special thank-you to the folks that do this job a lot better than I do, including but certainly not limited to Travis Barrett of Green-White-Checker, Seth Leavitt of WCAX-TV Channel 3, Big Bigelow of the Caledonian-Record, Tom Herzig of the Times Argus and the Union Leader, Mike Twist of Speed51.com, T.J. Michaels of Frank 107.1 FM, Lee Kittell of WDEV Radio Vermont, and Phil Whipple of the Lewiston (Me.) Sun Journal.
A HUGE thanks to photographers Leif Tillotson and Alan Ward for their help this year, and also to Jamie Williams.
Thanks to Pete Hartt for being there. Anna Grearson, too.
Thanks to my old man, Ron, and my friends Eddy and Jeff Companion for helping out with a few things this summer, and to both Gene Gagnes (Lil and Big) for sharing a tank of gas here and there.
Thanks to John O. Casey, Dave Moody, Cho Lee, the legends of Thunder Road, the staff at Queen City Printers, and the fans that have so enthusiastically supported "Fifty Years of Excitement".
I would be forgetting myself if I didn't thank the promoters and staff at the following tracks and series for their help, cooperation, and belief that VMM is worthwhile to them: Thunder Road Int'l Speedbowl, Bear Ridge Speedway, Airborne Speedway, Northeastern Speedway, White Mountain Motorsports Park, Oxford Plains Speedway, Fred Neergaard and New Hampshire Motor Speedway, Twin State Speedway, Riverside Speedway, Canaan Fair Speedway, the American-Canadian Tour, the True Value Modified Racing Series, and the Sprint Cars of New England.
Thanks to the drivers and teams for letting me get in their faces all year, and for not punching my lights out when they probably wanted to a couple times. (I'll probably have to thank them for that a few times over the years.)
But most of all, again, thank YOU, the readers of Vermont Motorsports Magazine. I've had comments and emails come in from everywhere all year thanking me for the stuff I've written. Folks, don't thank me, thank the drivers and the promoters for making all this happen. All I do is write down what they say and give you a place to read it. I can't tell you how flattered I am to hear someone at Thunder Road or Bear Ridge tell me that they read VMM "two or three times a day" -- say nothing of the folks that say it that are from New Hampshire or New York or Maine -- even a racer from Rhode Island once this summer!
The first year was rocky at times, but I feel like it was a positive one, overall. Here's hoping the next one or two or 17 will be even better.
Thank you, everyone, and winter well.
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