Rick at the Races

RICK @ the RACES (29th June to 3 July)

29 June Capital City Speedway, Ottawa, Ont

1 July Mohawk International Raceway , Hogansburg , NY

2 July MOPAR Madness, Cornwall, Ont

2 July Autodrome St Eustache, Que

3 July Cornwall Motor Speedway, Ont. SUPER DIRT SERIES

After a number of weeks of being teased by Mother Nature , warmth and sunshine finally arrived. This week, I have a full agenda of racing to report about, and all of it was free from rain.

My racing week started on Wednesday (29 June) at Stittsville, Ontario , just outside Ottawa, at the Capital City Speedway.

It was dry and sunny for their regular weekly show, so attracted a decent crowd and a number of additional cars.

The Late Models which are considered by many as the headline division, often struggle with car counts, but this week there were 10 that took to the track.

So far this season, there has been a different Feature winner each week , and this time it was the turn of # 2 Kenny Baird.

The Legends also gave us a new name in Victory Lane when young Matt Haufe took the checkers.

It had been a good week for Matt, after he’d traveled to the Kawartha Speedway (Nr Peterborough) and got a win, the previous Friday.

Other winners included, Dave Stinson in the Thunder Cars, Tyler Cavanaugh in the MiniStocks and Ronald Dingwall who got his second 2011 victory in the Four For Fun entry class . Also in attendance that night was a party from the 101.9 Dawg FM Radio station.

They brought along their Dawg mascot to give CCS’s Thunder Cat a hard time. A fun ‘fight sketch’ was played out on the front straight where Thunder Cat required the attention of the ambulance crew.. It was a good job that cats have nine lives !

I was back at work on Thursday, and had already been told the bad news that I was scheduled to do a shift on Friday. The first of July is CANADA DAY, and no one likes to work that day !

It was also the day that newly wed , Will and Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Camebridge, were to be in Ottawa, on their first overseas visit to Canada. I’m an unashamed patriotic ‘Brit’ and a Canadian, so would like to have been there on Parliament Hill to see them . The Royal Family is all part of the national heritage of both of my two ‘home’ countries, and I have no time for people who criticize or protest ( People who can’t accept this fact should maybe consider moving somewhere else !) .

Like I said, I was scheduled to work on CANADA DAY and so my hopes were centered around getting an early finish and making it to the evening races at the Mohawk International Raceway.

As things turned out, I got a surprise phone call at home late on Thursday night, from my employers. Things were quieter than they expected, and they wondered if I’d like to volunteer to take Friday off ! … After giving it a lot of thought ( about 2 seconds ! ) I played the part of a good ‘team player’ and volunteered.

It was a bit late in the day to make plans to attend the celebrations in Ottawa, and figured that parking the car would be a night-mare… but at least I could definitely go racing !

It was nice to take a leisurely afternoon drive across the International Bridge in Cornwall to the ‘MIR’ . I left early enough to do a bit of shopping in Massena NY and visit the Ponderosa Buffet before the races started.

One of the first people I bumped into on my arrival was , friend and race fan Denis Back and a couple of his buddies. One of the first things he asked me, was, why wasn’t I in Ottawa to see the ‘royals’. I told him the reason why, and then joked with him, saying that I would be seeing them on Sunday. I mentioned to him that I’d heard from my UK friends that Kate used to be a race fan ( I still have to get this confirmed) and that the Royal newlyweds would be attending the Cornwall Motor Speedway for the SUPER DIRT SERIES race on Sunday and would be landing on the center in a helicopter. Of course I was ‘pulling his leg’.

Once the racing got under way I accompanied Andy Watts on the center to take some pics,

and we were joined by my buddy Mike Johnson and his son Joe. They both shoot pics at the Weedsport and Fulton tracks near Syracuse and were up in my area for a vacation.

The racing was pretty good with Chris Raabe taking the 50 lap Frenchies Chevy Revolution Series . Ernie Cree won in the Bandits , Dylan Evoy the Sportsman

and Dave Bissonnette in the ProStocks. The evening was then rounded off with a giant firework display.

The next day, I was back into work to do a Saturday morning shift before finishing at 1-30 pm, with two events on my agenda.

My first port of call was the Lamouroux Park beside the St Lawrence waterfront , just a five minute drive from my house in Cornwall.

The attraction was the MOPAR MAGIC car show , where classic vehicles of the Chrysler Corporation were highlighted. I’ve owned two MOPARS over the years, my first being a 1977 Chrysler Cordoba and the second was a humble 1984 Plymouth Reliant. There was plenty to see, but as a fan of racing ‘Modifieds’ fan , one of my favorites was an American Motors AMC Gremlin.

After taking a quick look around, I returned home for a quick ‘sh.. shave’n a shampoo’ before heading off to my next event.

Most Saturday evenings you will find me at the Brockville Ontario Speedway, but this week I had an engagement somewhere else. I was heading to the paved Autodrome St Eustache, 30 minutes north of Montreal for a special assignment. For quite a few years now, I’ve been doing a monthly column in called SHORT TRACK AMERICA in Britain’s glossy SHORT CIRCUIT MAGAZINE. I cover the short track happenings in North America for the UK oval racing fans. I consider myself a normal ‘healthy minded male’, so it hasn’t escaped my attention , the fact that Canada has a ‘pretty face’ making the racing headlines this year. Her name is Isabelle Tremblay and comes from St Hippolyte , Quebec.

Not only has she raced ( and won) in open wheeled single seater competition at the Gilles Villeneuve Circuit, but she’s a regular runner on the 2011 NASCAR Canadian Tire Series. When she’s not taking part in these races, she competes her Ford Mustang in the domestic Sportsman division at St Eustache. It’s not surprising that she is rapidly being tagged as Canada’s answer to Danica Patrick , so this week I set off for the Autodrome in search of a story.

I’d been in touch with Isabelle prior to my visit, and we’d met by chance a few weeks back, while she was on route to Mosport. I arrived at about 5-30 pm in good time for a chat and photo shoot before the serious business of racing got under way.

The Sportsman division are the premier class , with Legends and various other mini stock varieties as the supporting acts. This was the first time I’d seen Isabelle in action and she immediately impressed me with a convincing heat win. In the 100 lap feature she was doing well, until the car seemed to slow up, and she slipped down the field.

The race was over around 9-30 pm and the winner was Maxime Pelletier # 66. The features for the other divisions followed this , but with another busy day ahead, I made my exit.

As we were leading up to Sunday’s SUPER DIRT SERIES at Cornwall the weather forecast had not been good. The sunshine was supposed to end and we were due for a thunderstorm. Thankfully the meteorologists got it completely wrong , the sun and heat continued which gave race fans a great day to be at the races.

I was there nice and early to get my stuff in place and was soon joined up in the tower by SUPER DIRT SERIES announcer Shane Andrews.

I’ve done media stuff alongside Shane for number of years now, and he’s always lots of fun. The last time was at the DIRT TRACK WORLD FINALS at Charlotte NC last November.

The pit gates opened early and by 3-15 pm a steady flow of big race car haulers were arriving.The usual tour regulars were there as well as some new faces. They included, Australian visitor, Peter Britten #21A , as well as Series rookie Dan Humes # 0 of Canaan , Connecticut.

I chatted with my friend Gary Tomkins who’s won the race twice before at Cornwall, and the #673 car he was driving that day, became the latest to wear a ‘Rick at the Races’ sticker.

With it being a major event, I was joined on the centre by many of my visiting media friends. They included, Andy Watts, 360 Nitro, Dale Calnan of www.ontariooval.com and senior Dirt Car photographer Alex Bruce who had traveled up from St Catherines , Ont.

The Speedway was packed with excited fans and just as the show was about to start, I had a big surprise. A passenger carrying helicopter was seen in the sky, which hovered above the track and circled a few times, before it appeared to land somewhere about a mile away. I instantly thought about my conversation with Denis Back at the MIR on Friday night, and wondered if my ‘leg pulling’ about a royal visit was actually happening !

Did that helicopter drop off Will and Kate , in a nearby field to be met by undercover security agents for a ‘non official’ visit to the races ? I guess we will never know ! But it would of been a great story if it had turned out to be true.

The big race of the night was a really thrilling affair where local hero Danny O’Brien # 17D chased race winner Danny Johnson 27J across the line, just a car length behind .