I understand the importance of sponsorship to racing, but isn’t it getting a little out of hand?

Here are the first two sentences of the race report on the Formula Atlantic race at Lime Rock Park July 18, 09. Of course, as you’ll see, it ain’t “Formula Atlantic” anymore.

The italics are mine:

“2009 Cooper Tires Presents The Atlantic Championship Powered by Mazda points leader Simona De Silvestro became the winningest woman driver in the 36-year of the series with another dominating performance at Lime Rock Park.

“Driving the No. 78 Stargate Worlds/Maakoa/Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment/FireSky/Cardinal Technologies machine for Team Stargate Worlds, De Silvestro started from the pole position and led every lap en route to a 10.004-second victory over John Edwards.”

And all for exposure in a series that barely garners coverage in oval-crazed America.  Impressive job by Simona, though.

It’s the week before the Lenox Tools 301 at NHMS and they’re advertising raceday tix for $39 on TV!  They’re highlighting the fact that Three-Dog-Night will be playing and that a monster will eat a truck.  Tix for the whole weekend reportedly are $99. Needless to say this doesn’t say much for the appeal of Cup racing these days.

I was watching the race from Bristol and realized suddenly that a big reason I don’t enjoy Sprint Cup coverage simply is because of how the racing’s covered.  To put it bluntly, these guys who do the commentary treat viewers like they’re ignorant.  I’ve always had a problem with “boogety, boogety, boogety” but it goes further than that. It’s the constant appeal to the lowest common denomonator among the viewers.  It’s the shilling that never stops (Can’t they just occasionally refer to fuel without calling it “Sunoco Racing Fuel?” I think they’d call it by its brand-name even if they were talking about a crewmember on fire)?  It’s the silliness – as opposed to humor.  And why does it takes five people to provide play by play? It’s beyond me what function Myers and Hammond serve from their control booth beyond telling you what you already know. And finally, the pumping up of the action is insulting.  If the sport is so exciting you don’t have to tell me to get excited.

I won’t even get started about “Digger…”

I thought people might be interested in the last column I wrote for Shorttrack Magazine, for the issue that never made it out of the printer’s alive. It’s tough for me to read, if only I knew just how prescient I was, but here it is.

Have you noticed times are kind of tough? Have you noticed my talent for stating the bleedingly obvious?

Every one of us involved in motor racing is worried about the future of our sport. We realize that even at its lowest levels it’s a cost-intensive pursuit. Almost invariably the amount of success a racer experiences is directly influenced by how much the racer spends.

It goes without saying that racers are looking to tighten their belts. So are tracks and promoters. Fans, too, even if that means packing a lunch instead of hitting the concessions. But it’s worrisome that many of us simply will pack it in. How far might car-counts drop? And attendance? And how many racetracks might simply lock their gates if the answers to these two questions become too depressing?

We all have to do our part to sustain racing through these difficult times (Now, there’s a couple of cliches packed into one sentence, eh?). At Shorttrack we’re doing what we can. We’ve offered a couple of deals to advertisers who might find it difficult to maintain their traditional ad budgets. Indeed, some advertisers have begun to realize that high-value in advertising increasingly is being found not in racing’s stratosphere but down here close to the roots of racing. Good for them, and good for us.

We also, with this issue, have lowered our standard subscription-rate to 14 bucks. We think that’s a pretty good deal and an inexpensive way to keep up with racing around the region. Hey, we’re committed to racing in New England and the Northeast, and we want to help you maintain your commitment, too.

Editorially we’re offering plenty of examples of how expense can be controlled. Walt Scadden offers some insightful suggestions in his column in this issue. Bill DeButler provides a forward-thinking example of what two Maine tracks are doing in his. And our Dirt, Cheap midget project is all about having a great racing experience for – well – dirt cheap.

It’s frustrating that Congress is falling all over itself to bail out the rich greedy fools who got us into this mess but have dragged their feet to assist folks of more modest means. C’mon, how can money from that humongous bailout go to NASCAR for track-development? Give me a break. Those who know have said for years that the Cup Series was growing way too fast. Now NASCAR sees the well drying out, with teams booting workers faster than GM. We’re just trying to have a little fun. Your guys probably work for free. They just want to make their mortgage payments. The nerve.

I do worry that NASCAR-style short-sightedness among shorttrack racing’s “haves” could hurt the efforts of shorttracks and promoters trying to make racing more affordable for the have-nots. For years I’ve witnessed race-teams with big budgets fight tooth-and-nail to maintain their right to outspend competitors or undermine any creative tinkerer who came up with a cheap way to be even almost competitive. Heaven help the guy who comes up with cheap power in a group where the top teams spend more for one motor than they make in a season of winning. That guy risks being run out of town on rails. Or maybe the back of his flatbed “transporter.”

Yet these are the guys who can do the most to sustain shorttrack racing. They’re the ones who stick around through thick and thin. No one would devote so much time and energy to such a hopeless pursuit if they could be scared away by economic concerns. Besides, there are five, maybe ten have-nots for every have in any division. The same is true of the country, by the way.

And yet in racing as in America, it’s the haves who have the power.

So here’s an appeal to all you haves. Have a heart. Take a look at your own operation, and compare it to the guys who fill your fields. If one of your motors costs more than everything the guy next to you just towed into the pits behind his clapped-out pick-up, maybe it’s time to write some more equality into the rules. If guys line up to buy tires you just peeled off your chrome rims, maybe the playing field is a bit tilted.

A level playing field is supposed to be the point, ain’t it? You can outspend your competition, but is that really what winning is about? Maybe, in these times, it could become the very definition of losing, for your whole club.

Who will you beat then?

It’s been a particularly disasterous  the last few months, but it seems that  the smoke finally has cleared from the devastation that was the demise of Shorttrack Magazine. And the personal shock from the whole sordid affair has disappated as well.

We have dome our best to inform subscribers, advertisers and others within the racing community of what happened. If you’re not aware, the jist of what was said in a mailing to all parties can be found on this website’s main page. Put simply – we ran out of money  – after the majority of our advertisers stopped paying for their ads. And as is typical in this business, without ad revenue we were dead in the water.

We know that many of you paid for subscriptions in good faith. We apologize again that we can’t reimburse you, but of course if we could afford that we’d have paid the printer. We’ve done what we could to offset the subscribers’ investments. Subscribers were offered substantial discounts on subscriptions to Late Model Racer, Dirt Late Model, Flat-Out Illustrated  and Dirt Mod magazines.  National Speed Sport News also is working to fulfill at least the spirit of our agreements. Our thanks to these worthy publications.

In the meantime, we plan to maintain the Shorttrack blog as well as doing the same and even expanding the Shorttrack website. While I still believe in the power of the press, it’s time to acknowledge the role of the net and sign on in a more active way as an online voice of racing.

To those of you who have asked, we are blessed (Okay, “I” am blessed) to be able to continue the plan to build and race a midget in Whip City’s Quad 4 division. Car owner Don Douville is letting us keep the grizzled old Gennerton chassis he loaned for the magazine’s “Dirt, Cheap” project, and my brother Ward is continuing to provide financing and sweat-equity as part of the youth-training porgram offered by his MTTI tech school.

For my effort I’ll plan now to try to pick up where we left off with the construction of the car here on the blog as well as continue to relate our effort campaigning the car in 2009. I’ve admittedly dropped the ball in that effort, but I’ll be getting back at it by the end of February and going from there.

What the future otherwise holds for me I won’t even venture to guess. But who among us would dare to speculate on their own prospects in these outragously horrible times?

The issue has a nice feature on Whelen (Opps, excuse me. “NASCAR Whelen”) Series trooper Wade Cole. Find out why Wade continues to try to play the high-stakes game of NASCAR-Tour racing. Fred Astle also is featured. It’s the least we could do after he won the pro stock titles at both Thompson and Seekonk Speedways. Travis Benjamin comments on the challenges of gassing up for racing – in more ways than one.

For tech stories, we introduce you to a bunch of racecar parts that we hope someday soon will be the “Dirt, Cheap” Quad-4 midget, and Joe Publicover asks why supermod car builders and owners wouldn’t be interested in trying out a wing designed in one of the foremost aerodynamics labs in the world.

Vintage fans will enjoy stories about two colorful characters from racing’s past, Henry “The Frozen Logger” Montandon and Al “Blackie” Crockett.

In it you’ll read about a couple of “diverse” drivers, NASCAR Camping World East’s Jonathan Smith, who is struggling for success as part of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program, and Lori Langevin, who is making dirt late model competition struggle up in Vermont and New York.

There’s also a feature on Canaan Dirt Speedway promoter Wally Brown, who’s not as dumb as he thinks he is, and a look back at the Bodine Brothers’ days in modifieds. Plus some advice to racers looking to make a “field trip” to race in a track’s big open-rules season-ending event.

In this issue you can read about two hot late model drivers, Thunder Road’s Joey Becker and Seekonk pro stocker Matt Hudon. RA Silva provides us with an opportunity to check out some four-door monsters that once roamed the shorttracks of New England, and Thompson racer Larry Barnett follows up on his advice for restart setups in our last issue with some tips on controlling race-starts from the driver’s seat.

I also share with you the experience of racing a midget on dirt, as Don Douville gave me a chance to race one of his quad-4 midgets at Whip City Speedway. It was a wild experience, to say the least. I have more to say in print.

But Don is going further than that. This longtime midget builder continually collects midget-components as he builds cars to race, rent and sell in this growing division. He’s offered Shorttrack the parts needed to put together our own midget. We’ll be sharing the process with you folks over the next few issues - from the first inventory of components to our education in racecar-setup on the dirt at Whip City. Read the story in this issue and you’ll see how far we have to go.

In this issue you can read about barnstormer Russ Hersey and his new perspective of racing, and Randy Potter, the overnight sensation of ACT who’s been at it for two decades. Or see the the summer project Derek Ramstrom and his dad put together for school.

Vintage fans enjoy the work of Steve Pellerin. The racing historian shares his memories of the amazing Homer Drew in his first contribution to our pages. Nice to have Steve aboard.

And Pete Zanardi shares a couple of his favorite stories about Bob Garbarino and the v-4 modified over the years.

Larry Barnett is back to share more insight into racing, this time explaining that winning restarts starts in the shop.

Here is the NEMA release regarding the crash that took the life of midget-driver Shane Hammond April 7 at Thompson Speedway. We present it here without comment or speculation beyond stating that the Connecticut DMV will assuredly investigate this accident and that in the meantime pointing fingers can only be premature at best and obstructive at worse.

Feel free, however, to share your own thoughts about Shane, his life and career.

“NEMA’s Shane Hammond Succumbs at Thompson

“Shane Hammond, one of the Northeastern Midget Association young stalwarts, died Sunday from “traumatic injuries” sustained in a crash at Thompson International Speedway’s season-opening Icebreaker. The crash occurred on the fourth lap of the scheduled 25-lapper.

“The last fatality for NEMA was Ed Clothier at Westboro Speedway on June 19, 1965.”