HUMBERSTONE Speedway Fall Classic (4th Oct 2021 BLOG)

Humberstone  Speedway  Fall Classic Weekend 

The last seven days have been busy ones, with plenty to keep me occupied.

The Humberstone Speedway at Port Colborne , Ontario was holding a two day event  and that was my agenda.

Normally , I would be down at the Fulton Speedway in New York for the OUTLAW 200 , but the border closure kept me in Canada.

I had a quiet  start to the week by  adding to my diecast collection.

On Tuesday , a Dinky Toy Leyland Car Transporter came up for sale on Face Book Market Place at nearby Embrum .

I’d been been looking for one of these up for sale  at a sensible price for a long time, so off I went , chasing after it. 

On Wednesday ,  Don Simpson and me were invited over to the Corey Wheeler race shop for some Fat Les Pizza and Wings .

It was the teams regular night for car maintenance and the food was to celebrate Corey’s win at Apple Fest the previous Friday.

Thursday was spent getting my stuff ready for the weekend road trip .

The FALL CLASSIC at the Humberstone Speedway was being held on Friday and Saturday (1st/2nd October).

Two rooms were booked at the Glendale Hotel in Niagara , as there would be four of us heading down there, Ron Morin and his son in law Mark, Don and me.

My Impala was given a break for this weekend , so Don and me went in his Chevy Cruze and Ron and Mark went in his Lincoln .

On arrival at the track it was nice to be greeted by Brittany who was on traffic control.

The staff are very friendly there, as is the new promoter Terry Vince who made a point of coming up and thanking us for being there. 

Terry bought the track from the Cosco family at the start of the year. 

Once inside it was time for my usual pit walk-about.

It was good to see a few drivers from my area making the long haul down there.

From the Modifieds , there was Chris Raabe, J.F Corrivau and Steve Bernier.

Mat Williamson who was down at Fulton for the Out Law 200 , had his crew guys there, helping J.F and Steve.

William Racine was there too with his Sportsman as was Jordon Poirier  with his 360 Sprint Car.

While wandering around I bumped into two good friends from the Niagara area, 358 Modified driver, Mike Bowman and photographer Alex Bruce.

Alex has taken on the role of Official Track Photographer at Humberstone this year.

The Friday night program consisted of , Modifieds, Sportsman ,  360 Sprints , Action Sprints and Street Stocks.

The first of the features was for the Street Stocks . 

This was won by Peter Reid.

Next up was the Action Sprints.

This was won by Jacob Dykstra.

The Sportsman were up next.

Brad Rouse from nearby St Catharines took the checkers in this one.

The 360 Sprint Cars followed this.

Quebec’s Jordon Poirier was the winner .

They always say, you leave the best to last , and sure enough the Modified feature was the final race of the night.

This turned out to be a great win for my local driver Chris Raabe from Alexandria Ontario. 

Fred Carlton took the early lead but once Chris got past, the only one that could catch up with the #01  was Gary Lindberg, but not enough to steal a win.

I’ve known Chris and his family personally since the beginning of his racing career when he was in the Sportsman division and known as the ‘Teen-age Tornado’ .

Fifteen or more years later he is one of the leading drivers in the 358 Modified  division. 

During the last couple of years , he’s had a drought , in big wins, so this one was more than welcome.

In recent years Don has also become  good friends with the Raabe Team so both of us crashed  the Victory Lane celebration and let Alex take the souvenir picture.

The racing was done soon after 11-00 , so it was time for a bit of socializing in the pits.

I spent some time at the Brad Rouse hauler where his father in law Theo, introduced me to a local beer I’d never tried before.

During our chat,  we arranged a trip to his race shop the following day, and before the evenings races .

On Saturday we drove the short distance from Niagara Falls to Brad’s place in St Catharines.

I’ve known Brad for a few years when in 2013  he first got my attention after winning the Sportsman race at the Syracuse Super Dirt Week . 

Back then he was driving the # 30  St Amand Tribute car.

I got to know him a bit better when (by chance)  we were placed next to each other , on one of the guest tables at the DirtCar Banquet.

Since then , I’ve seen him win various Sportsman races all over the North East. So it seemed the right thing to do , to pay a visit to his shop.

Brad was there to meet us , along with his two daughters, Madison and Bryley , who sat patiently as Don asked a bunch of questions for a forthcoming media article.

 

After an hour or two , it was time to get going and start getting prepared for the Saturday night segment of the Fall Classic.

Day two of the Fall Classic had the same divisions as the opening night, with the addition of the 4 Cylinder Mini Stocks.

To accommodate the extra races, start time was earlier and the running order of the features slightly altered.

The Sportsman and  Modifieds were the closing races.

During my pit walk about , I had a good chat with Blake Outhouse from Windsor , Ontario .

When I attended the Southern Ontario Motor Speedway at South Buxton, Ont earlier in the year he was running the facility, but since then has departed for pastures new.

On this day he was helping out with the #  9B Sprint Car team

I tried a few other vantage spots for my picture taking , but after a few experiments returned to my preferred place on the exit of turn two.

Friday nights feature winner, Chris Raabe almost flipped , during the hot laps when he got a bit over enthusiastic going around turn 1 and 2.

 

The 4 Cylinders were the first to have their feature and this one went to Tyler Lafantalsie

The Action Sprint Cars were next , and Oh Boy !  this was a prime example of why I’m not a Sprint Car fan 

After a bunch of stoppages for ‘fall overs’ etc , the eventual winner was Allan Downey.

The Street Stocks were next

The winner of this one was Dave Bailey,  No not the famous photographer , I must add 🙂 

The second dose of Sprint Cars followed with the feature for the 360’s.

After more expected delays for stoppages , Jordon Poirier got his second win of the weekend.

One good thing about the downtime , was , I could follow the progress of the OUTLAW 200 from Fulton on my newly installed ‘Race Monitor’ App .

It was now the Sportsman Feature where our buddy  Brad Rouse got his second win of the weekend.

A cue for more celebration, I guess.  Here’s Brad and Theo. 

It was the 358 Modified feature that brought the Fall Classic to an end.

It wasn’t the most exciting race to watch , as Steve Bernier led from start to finish and completely dominated  , but it was great for us to witness.

Don has been involved with the media side of TBR , (the Bernier Brothers team ) for a couple of years, and I’ve joined him on a number of occasions to visit their shop in St Hyacinthe , Que.

So when he won the race by the length of half a straight, we once again had to ask Alex Bruce to take a keep sake momento photo for us.

The racing was all over at about the same time as the night before , so there was time for a bit of socializing.

Before leaving Victory Lane, we had another picture taken with our good friend Dale Calnan , who was also on the media team that weekend. Dale is the track photographer at the Ohsweken Speedway and on this occasion was taking pics for G Force TV who were covering the show.

At about the same time, we got the news that Mat Williamson had won the Outlaw 200 at Fulton, so it was happiness all round at the Corriveau/Bernier hauler.

After a Domino’s Pizza it was back to the Glendale Hotel for some shut eye before the long Sunday drive back to Eastern Ontario,

 

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