Around the Track with Jalopy Jack
I might as well mention the date, it’s 6/1 and why not mention 2009. A long time since my last column. You can blame Mother Nature, but she wasn’t responsible for getting things back together. You see, a terrific rain storm knocked out all communications of Jalopy Jack Racing Entertainment. I even pointed out that the possibilities of this problem transpiring but when like when you need a cop, they don’t wanna know about it until it’s too late. So as a result, because of real men who had to do their real jobs, their computer crowd and the stuffy shirts that run them just didn’t give a flying “you know what” when my operation would be back. The final “tabulation”, no WLAR hotline as phone service was out for 17 days and this column even longer. And it’s no guarantee that this will not reoccur again. But enough of the gripes, let’s get on to some racing.
Most of my racing life I can’t be everywhere I’d like. Of course, often enough this would be the impossibility of 2 or more tracks at 1 time. Such as the case this past Saturday 5/30.
Bethel Motor Speedway continues to suffer low car counts in it’s weekly Stock Car classes. Their saving grace has been a generous sponsor who’s offering $500 to the winner of it’s Legends Car feature whenever they appear. Thankfully they’re there mostly every week. And also thankfully, they’ll be having their big race Saturday 8/15 which I believe will be paying a minimum of $1,500 to win. However, it wasn’t the Legends that saved the show this past Saturday. It was the 3/4 Midgets of the ATQMRA. They went up to White Lake 18 cars strong. Now I know that 18 cars don’t mean a world, however anywhere this club can go with 18 cars nowadays is more then pretty good. And even if it’s for $5.00 admission, which Bethel has stuck to their 2nd season back, when you’re sitting there watching an average of about 6 cars per division, 18 cars does look like the world. And a good show it was. I’ll not tell you the winner here. I could tell you that it was a bit of a surprise, especially considering they had to beat Lou Cicconi. The car they did it in was no surprise. And all this was because “The People’s Champion”, Mike Tidaback, tried to win the race towards the end and wound up looking at the track from the infield instead. The main thing though was that the TQ’s were well received by the fans, to the tune of the biggest house of the season thus far. Of course, too much of a good thing could dilute that type of thing, regardless, it’s too bad that season plans are all ready solidified. Hopefully, at least 1 more appearance by the TQ’s at Bethel can be arranged.
I was of course, at Wall Stadium. Before I get to this past Saturday’s show, I’ll briefly comment on the last 2 shows that I was unable to write about. I got to tell you that a lot of my writing plans got washed away with what that storm did to my operations. I can tell you though that the car counts could still be more healthy at Wall. The first 3 racing shows that the only division that had stayed above 20 cars is the Legends. Everything else has been between 15 and 19. If they all came at once we’d be in good shape. That goes for all 5 classes. The racing has been varied with emphasis on good to rough. On 5/23 for example, the only feature to go non-stop was the Factory Stocks. That doesn’t mean that they all behaved. But flagger Greg McGowen and other related officials didn’t deem a yellow flag necessary.
The biggest difference and conduct this year are the Street Stocks. For those of you who regularly attend Wall Stadium and for those of you who just rely on my writings, you know that the Street Stocks were something special concerning their conduct and respect for 1 another, as they flew around the high banks by putting on a great show. This season thus far, there’s been quite a bit of bonehead maneuvers and I owe this to some of the good drivers who’re not in that division anymore. Concerning that, I had to make a retraction here. I announced that John McCormack had Kevin Eyers spotting for him for the opening night 100 lapper for Modifieds. When I went back for the next show, I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that was not true. The reason I thought it was, it’s because a good friend of mine with a scanner told me so. When I told him the truth, he said “it sure sounded like Kevin Eyers”. So I apologize for that folks. I also apologize for not knowing that “Johnny Mack” has driven Modifieds in the past. He drove them at Wall in 2002 and his best finish was 5th. He did have some help then but for the most part, he’s teaching himself. This is very difficult in the temperamental world of Modified racing. Might as well give you progress since then. The only show for the Modifieds since then was 5/23 and that was Twin 30’s. They had Heat races for the Modifieds that evening and John finished 4th. I do know that he was unhappy with his #98 before and after that Heat. There was a problem that he knew existed but couldn’t diagnosed. He was a lot unhappier before the green flag waved for the first 30 lapper. Seems that during pre-race hot laps, somebody blew and of all the cars that fell victim, the #98 got the worst of it. He and 3 others didn’t take the green for that first 30 lapper. Even though he wasn’t racing this past Saturday, John was there and he told me that the Modified’s all ready to go, even though the next race for Wall Modifieds isn’t until 6/20. I’ll continue to relate the on track pursuits of Mr. John McCormack.
One other Modified driver that I want to mention, is 2nd generation racer Steven Reed. On 5/9 there was a 100 lapper for open tour type Modifieds and a walk through the pits before the show, found Steve’s beautiful #55 just sitting there doing nothing. Later on, I saw his regular #55 Wall Modified coming in. For some reason, tires and some other equipment was being transferred from the Tour Type car to the Wall car and Stevie wound up with a 5th in a 100 lapper. That race of course was taken by “Showtime” Jimmy Blewett, who started on the pole as per pre-race draw, but what me and several others marked out for was the man who finished right on his tail and that was Tony Ferrante Jr. And Jimmy paid Tony props in victory lane. I’ve seen a lot of luck determined the outcome of races lately, so a little bit of luck could’ve landed Tony and his great father, Tony Sr. in victory lane. These cars, hopefully all of them if not more will be back at Wall the next show 6/13. I’m not sure if they’ll go a straight 100 laps or divided into Twin 50’s this time. I hope it’s the Twin 50 format and all other Wall divisions will be there that night. While I’m at it, 6/20 the next appearance for the regular Wall Modifieds will be with all the usual Wall Stadium classes, plus it’ll be “Fan Appreciation Night”. From then on, Wall Stadium will be an operation every Saturday through 9/5. Getting back to Steve Reed, he wasn’t at Wall for the Twin 30’s. Steven Reed went to Oswego that night, but didn’t fair too well.
Getting back to this past Saturday, the show was the historic 1st ever Enduro at Wall together with a Legend cars. It was scheduled to be 100 lapper for the 4 Cylinder cars and a 100 lapper for the 6 and 8 Cylinder cars. At it was only 5 cars of the 4 Cylinder divisions showed up and they had a 25 lapper. Of the 3 divisions only 31 cars took the green. That doesn’t mean that the racing wasn’t good. For the Bakers Dozen that the 100 lapper and the 20 lap Legends feature started with, there was plenty of action. As far as I know, the show will be repeated 7/11. Why the poor turn out of Legends cars, after they consistently top the 20 mark in the previous 3 shows, I don’t know. They did show up with 16 cars however. Maybe too much practice time was more harmful then good. Something that wasn’t harmful was getting out of there at 8:30PM. Oh, I neglected to mention, because it was quite a while ago now, but on the night of 5/9 quite a few people were online at the last minute, 7PM and management decided to hold up the show until most people could get in. I thought that was a great idea and we all got rewarded as the show was over at 9:20PM. Remember what I mentioned in my 1st column, that Wall and a lot of other tracks are working very hard to run the shows efficiently and get people out early.
I want to come up with an idea, a revolutionary way to discipline rough drivers who think they can get away with it because the car counts are short. My idea, at least in the main event division, is to fine them $500. But here’s the important thing. NO SUSPENSION. This is not just a straight $500 fine however. The demand would be the driver’s not allowed contact with any other car or the wall inside or outside the track for a total of 5 weeks. Each week, he successfully negotiates a clean night of racing activity, he’d get $100 back. This way we still have the car and he doesn’t pay too dearly for his mistakes, which we hope he learns from, so he keeps his points and keeps on earning. And if by chance this driver decides not to go through with this, then guess what? He’s suspending himself. I’d think that after the time, money and work that goes into fielding a car every week, that 1 would choose the route that I prescribe. For the lower classes, the rate of the fine would be adjusted. Every now and then you’d get a track like Thunder Road in Vermont which don’t pay such a great purse, but it’s very top heavy on the points structure. In other words, they pay very healthy on points at the end of the season. Perhaps for a track like that, the fine can be in valuable points instead and the driver would get his points back for proper conduct in coming races instead of fine money. Just an idea folks, but I’d like to see the cars hitting the track every single week.
In light of the unfortunate circumstances involving Cup driver, Jeremy Mayfield and his positive result of a test for substance abuse. I want to further comment on something that was written in the current issue of Area Auto Racing News by somebody that I highly regard, Mr. John Snyder. Mr. Snyder’s certainly not your “cookie cutter” racing columnist. He started off this column asking if Short Track racing needs a drug policy. He made some very good points and among them, he wonders if local tracks and regional racing associations could afford to hire an outside drug testing outfit. It also sounds like John would be against the drivers paying for such a thing. Well I gotta tell you folks and some of you know what I do for a living, that I’m tested once a year. And I had to pay for that test. The test’s rather strict as an airlines pilot doesn’t even have to meet such strict requirements as I do. But I personally am wondering about here, is if this is too expensive for the tracks if they would want to share the costs with each other, to hire a central agency. I don’t know if such agencies or more local are widespread. As for the cost to the drivers, I know they’re getting nickeled and dimed to death. But all we need is 1 car in the grand stands and to find out it was caused by a driver who shouldn’t have been racing that night. If it’s no more then what I got to pay to do my job, then I think it’d be worth it for every driver to know that the sport and perhaps even his life, could be saved by this. John also brought 2 things up that kinda hit home. Of all the drivers around the country that take part in weekly racing and remembering that they’re people just like you and me, you must consider what percent of everybody’s abusing their bodies. That has to tell you that there’s a possibility of a danger here. The other aspect of this on John’s mind, is if a driver’s tested at the beginning of the season, does that guarantee that he’s good later on in the season? I can tell you from the experience in my line of work, that even though my cohorts know when they’re getting tested, some of them still fail. Some people can’t behave themselves unless they got a gun to their heads. So I’d purpose a test sometime around the start of the season, but not an exact time and test at random any other time. A lot of people are rather critical of the way NASCAR’s handling the Mayfield situation. However, this is an approximate time, especially when we look back at it in the future, that Carl Edwards’ car could’ve wound up in the stands at Talladega.
Speaking of NASCAR, I mentioned the last time about monkeys falling out of trees. I said that the next few races would be spent watching the monkey climb back up the tree. Except for the winners we’ve had, that’s just what has happened. But guess what folks? Not at the Short Tracks. That’s where the fun is, that’s where the real action is, that’s the place to be and that’s where the real racing is. Now I’m not going to be the 1 to tell you how much of a computer freak you should be. But if I don’t get out of here, you’re going to be on this computer forever. I really didn’t get a chance to get into any type of history today and for that I’m sorry. OK, just a little bit. I still call that race “The World 600”. So there you have it. I really can’t say the absolute delivery of my columns right now due to too many matters that seem less controllable then usual. I promise however that there’ll not be such a long gap until the next 1. Again thanks to Mr. Nick Teto for allowing my appearance here, so until next time, you do have my hotline to call and that’s WLAR [We Love Auto Racing] at 718-707-1052. I’ll be doing 3 more readings out of “Paved Track, Dirt Track” and then I’ll be reading out of the book “Steady Eddie:Memories of Eddie Flemke, Modified Racing’s Fastest Professor.”
Leaving you now until next time, keeping the fans in the stands and the cars on the track, this has been Jalopy Jack.