RICK @ the RACES (9/10 May 2009)

Saturday 9 May     Bensons Car Show, Cornwall

Sunday 10 May      Airborne Speedway, Plattsburgh Y

As usual, a late finish at work on Friday night, ruined any plans I had of going racing. I’m in the trucking industry and you can never be sure what time your day will end. These days, my Friday’s are always busy, and I’m now having to get used to the fact. Unless I get really lucky, racing is out. All this coincides with Fridays becoming the favorite race day for many promoters.

Any tracks located less than a two hour drive from home, I class as ‘local’ and on some Fridays this year there are five of them running on the same night. They are the Can Am Speedway (Lafargeville NY) Capital City Speedway (Ottawa,Ont) Autodrome Edelweiss (Cantley Que) , Autodrome Granby (Que) and the Mohawk International Raceway (Hogansburg NY).

Wednesday nights are the regular race nights for the Capital City Speedway but at the beginning and end of the season they switch to Friday. The season opener was last Friday night ( 8 May) , and until my work commitments intervened that was going to be my destination.

The Airborne Speedway at Plattsburgh , New York is another of my local tracks and on Saturday (9 May) they were staging a ‘double header’ consisting of Tom Curley’s,ACT Late Model Series and the DirtCar Modifieds. With favorable weather in the forecast I was looking forward to this one.

I awoke Saturday morning to a wet and miserable day, but the racing wasn’t due to start until the evening so there was plenty of time for it to clear up.

During the day, in between showers I went along to the Benson Auto Parts store located on Brookdale Avenue in Cornwall (Ont).

Bensons are one of the major sponsors at the Cornwall Motor Speedway and the track had presented a display of cars out side the store.

The # 55 Dirt Modified of Perry Francis was there as well as the DIRT Pro Stock of # 47 Dave Bissonette,

two cars from the Rookie division and a Kart from Cornwall’s Kids Karting club.

The black Chevy Speedway Pace Truck was there and promoter Ron Morin was helping to cook hamburgers.

After socializing there for a while it was time to drive half a mile down the road to the International Bridge and head off to Airborne. On arrival at the bridge I was greeted by a police barrier, where no cars were permitted to cross. One of the cops informed me that a protest was taking place on the bridge and it would be closed for at least another hour. Damn it , I thought !  I’ll have to cross into the USA via Montreal ( AutoRoute 15  to Lacolle and down I 87)

I made good time and the rain had stopped by the time I’d cleared Montreal , but the closer I got to the USA border, the darker the skies became. As I approached the last exit before the border the car started to snake, as I got a ‘blow out’ on one of my rear tires. I pulled on to the shoulder and went about fitting the spare. Just as I finished, the heavens opened and it was pouring with rain once more. Instead of continuing across the border I got off at the Lacolle exit and grabbed a coffee at the truck stop. I then rang the Airborne track and got the message that the show had been postponed until Sunday afternoon. So, it was back into the car for the drive back home.

The weather didn’t look much better when I got up on Sunday morning, but I was determined to get some racing in, and was willing to try again.

This time the International Bridge at Cornwall was open and I crossed in to the USA at around 10-00am. Before heading to Plattsburgh , I took a detour down the Frogtown Road in Hogansburg to check out reconstruction progress of the Mohawk International Raceway.

The new bleachers were in place and there were guys working on the main building. The 2009 opener is scheduled for May 22.

As I traveled towards Plattsburgh through the occasional rain shower, I must admit, I wasn’t too optimistic about the days racing. Strangely, as I approached the outskirts of the city the skies got brighter, not much, but enough to give me hope.

On arrival at the track the place was heaving with excited race goers and the cars were already out on the track doing hot laps. I met up with my buddy, track photographer, Mike Watts and joined him in the center to ‘snap’ some action. Topping the bill were the ACT Late Models with drivers from all over New England (USA) and Quebec ( Canada).

There were over 40 of them in the pits as well as 20 plus Modifieds and the three other domestic divisions at Airborne.

I was going to see the new Mini Modifieds for the first time.

The 100 lap ACT race was an excellent affair that provided an exciting finish that could not have been better, if it were ‘stage managed’.

Brad Leighton # 55NH led for the first half of the race with fellow New Hampshire driver Randy Potter # 02NH in hot pursuit. Potter edged past on a couple of occasions as Vermont’s Scott Payea # 89 moved up to make it a three way battle. With about five laps to go Payea made his move and relegated Potter and Leighton to the ‘chasers’. He then survived a late caution for the final run to the checkers. It was Great Stuff !

The Modified feature wasn’t quite so exciting, but it did provide a good battle for first and second between Napierville, Quebec’s Martin Roy # 90 and New York’s Patrick Dupree # 24.

The Canadian took the victory, his second consecutive win this year. Throughout the afternoon it stayed dry ( if not cold) it was a good days racing, and worth all the effort to get there.

Next weekend my three remaining local tracks stage their season openers, Autodrome Edelweiss (Fri) , Brockville Ontario Speedway (Sat) and the Cornwall Motor Speedway, Ont, (Sun). The Cornwall show has all the ingredients to be a great night with the opening 100 lap race in LUCAS OILS 358 MODIFIED CANADIAN DIRT SERIES.

OTHER STUFF

I’m sure there’s a few people out there who after reading my ‘stuff’ , have doubted my sanity, regarding the obsession I have for traveling to the races. Those that know me well, will tell you, I’ve always been this way. One crazy expedition I did in the late 1970’s went something like this. Two buddies, Martin Budgell , Nigel Harradine and myself started our road trip on a Saturday night watching the BriSCA F1’s at the ( long gone) Harringay Stadium in North London. When the racing was finished we drove down to Dover and caught the overnight ferry to Ostende in Belgium. On Sunday morning we drove through Belgium and the Netherlands to the Kaldenkirchen Speedway in Germany. We arrived around midday for the afternoon Superstox races. The next week or so was spent drinking beer and ‘chasing’ good looking Dutch girls before the F1 stock car Long Track World Final at the Baarlo AutoSpeedway. It was a great racing vacation and I’m still in contact today with Martin and Nigel. ‘Nige’ as we called him was a BriSCA F2 driver and after a long retirement has recently resumed racing.

He is back out this year in an F2/Superstox at his local Swaffham Stadium, close to his home in Norfolk (UK). He recently got a third in the Final/Feature. See attached photos.

Makes me think it’s about time I ventured out on the track again !

Coincidentally , Last time was at Airborne , driving Perry Winch’s Mustang in a Media Race.

As regular readers will know, I’m a member of the TRACKCHASERS forum and this past week we welcomed Nena a new member from Portugal , to our ranks. She is involved with ‘Offroad’, a motor sport concern, connected with AutoCross, RallyCross, Kart Cross and Truck Racing.

Check out their website www.offroadportugal.org

The video clips are excellent and makes me very envious. We don’t get RallyCross as exciting as this in North America. The Cross cars look good too, and are similar in appearance to BriSCA F2 stock cars.