RICK @ the RACES (30 Oct to 1 Nov 2009)
1 Nov Five Mile Point Speedway , (Binghamton) NY
My weekend started with a unscheduled early finish from work at Friday Lunchtime. Earlier in the week during the course of my work day, I lost my footing on a piece of uneven ground and twisted my ankle. Usually , when things like this happen I assume it will be all OK once the initial soreness goes away, but not this time. By Thursday night I was having a hard time walking on it, so made hasty arrangements to finish work early on Friday and have it checked out at my local hospital. After spending most of Friday afternoon at the Cornwall (Ont) hospital, the X rays showed no broken bones , so it was strapped up and I was given a prescription for some anti-inflammatory pills. This meant my racing agenda for the weekend could go ahead as planned.
At 6-30 am my buddy Roger Aubin picked me up from my place in Cornwall in his Ford Escape and we set off for the US border and our destination, the Five Mile Point Speedway near Binghamton NY. It was the last big ROC DIRT SERIES race of the year and featured a 100 lapper for Modifieds.
Racing was set to begin at 5-00pm but we wanted to get there early. Once again it was another rain soaked journey down through Up State NY which only relented once we got south of Syracuse. We arrived at the track at 12-30, there were very few cars in the parking lot and the first person we bumped into was Andrew Harpell, the promoter.
He told us that the radar showed a big storm was on its way ( probably the one we drove through!) and the race had been postponed until 2-00pm on Sunday, when sunnier weather was predicted. This meant ‘plan B’ had to go into action, and we would now drive down to the Bridgeport Speedway in New Jersey. We would see the Saturday night racing there , then return to Five Mile Point on Sunday.
Andrew was very amiable and even phoned Bridgeport for us, to see if it was still running. The word was affirmative but he advised us to keep checking on the status as the forecast for that area was much the same. We left Five Mile Point and drove about 15 miles south into Pennsylvania to the Flying J Truck Stop at Gibson, where I checked on Bridgeport once again.
This time it was bad news, they had also decided to pull the plug , and postpone until the next day. We now had two choices, either return home ’empty handed’ or book into a cheap motel and wait it out.
From the Flying J , we returned to New York and a very helpful lady at the NY Welcome Center booked us into a good low budget motel in Binghamton. It turned out to be the perfect night to be stuck inside watching TV . At 8-00pm on the SPEED CHANNEL the RITE AID 200 from SUPER DIRT WEEK at SYRACUSE was being shown . It was followed at 10-00pm by the ‘Prelude to the Dream’ ( from Tony Stewart’s Eldora Speedway in Ohio, where some of the NASCAR SPRINT CUP drivers take part in a DIRT LATE MODEL race in aid of charity) It was all great stuff, and a good way to relax and rest my ankle !
On Sunday we were at the track by 10-30 and already the race haulers were starting to fill the pits. Early arrivals were Brett Hearn , The Gypsum Team (Pat Ward and Larry Wight) and Vinny Salerno with his # 4 car for Tim McCreadie.
Once the cars were ready for warm ups I found a comfortable spot on the center where I could sit while not taking photos. I bumped into Jeff Nichol a photographer I first met back in 2006 at ( what is believed to be) the first European Style RallyCross held in the USA which was staged at Glad Rag Speedway NY.
The ROC Modifieds were joined on the program by IMCA Mods and the 600cc Xcel Mods which I witnessed for the first time, last week at the Black Rock Speedway. I stayed on the center for the heats then retired to the stands to watch the rest of the show.
Sole Canadian driver Stewart Friesen from Niagara on the Lake, (Ont) started on the front row next to Rochester NY’s Danny ‘the Doctor’ Johnson.
The 100 lapper was split into two 50 lap segments with a mandatory fuel stop at the half way point. Instead of counting cautions after ‘x amount of laps’ which is the norm for extended length races, the laps become ‘live’ after the yellow’s had been displayed five times. I like this idea, it acts as a kind of ‘wake up call’ to the drivers when they can’t settle down and get on with ‘green flag’ racing.
The lead changed a number of times during the first 50 laps but Friesen was back at the front at the end of ‘part one’. Earlier hard chargers had been Hearn , Johnson, and local hero Bobby Pucket, but impressive moves up the pack had come from Mike Ricci, Matt Sheppard and Tim McCreadie.
The second half got underway with Friesen still dominating while ‘the Doctor’ tried everything he new to get passed. The Canadian was having nothing of it, and protected his lead, attack after attack. It was a really thrilling race which included plenty of ‘three car wide’ battles and as the checkers fell Friesen remained at the front. Still on his tail was Danny Johnson, while Tim McCreadie had moved into third.
At this point I left my seat by the start/ finish line to get some Victory Lane pictures . In NASCAR drivers style the ecstatic Friesen jumped out of his car and scaled the catch fencing to wave the checkers to the crowd. 
The sensible 2-00pm start, meant the show was over by 7-30pm, and we were soon on our way up I81 for the four hour drive home. I was back at my place in Cornwall, bang on Midnight.