Kudos to the two clubs as well asStafford Speedway for the recent story in the Travel Section of the NY Times, that liberal bastion of journalism.  It’s not often that racing gets favorable and knowledgeble treatment in the mainstream media.

Here’s a link:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/travel/escapes/24super.html?dpc

Of all the struggling racetracks in New England – and that’s most of them, I worry more about Waterford than any.

Terry Eames has now put himself back at the helm of the track he bought only a few years ago. That by itself creates a real uphill climb. It’s hard to justify (or afford) a modern mortgage on a shorttrack. The ones that seem to hang in there are the ones that have been in the family (whether personal or corporate) long enough to pay off their own notes. But Eames bought in at a particularly rough time – both for shorttrack racing and for the mortgage market.

Multiply all that with the mess he’s been left with after leasing the place off the last couple of years. There may not be a shovel big enough to pick up the garbage he’s left with.

I’ll give Terry the benefit of the doubt – he means well, even if he has promoter’s miopia when viewing the challenges he faces. So he better have a big benefactor up his sleeve, because the business will hit the fan in about five minutes, as measured when you don’t have enough time.  Believe me, I know of what I speak, and I won’t ever criticize anyone for not keeping a going concern going these days – not with my track record.

But I wish him well.

I just heard that Ralph Nason has decided he will not operate Unity Raceway this year, reportedly due to the economy.

I won’t offer an opinion over what this might mean to the bigger picture of racing in New England, as I believe it’s not necessarily reflective over the overall scene for promoters, as dire as that might be. I also won’t speculate about how the pending lawsuit against the track by Johnny Crawford might have been a factor.

I WILL ask where teams planning to run there can go at this late date ( it would have been nice if the decision was made sooner; maybe Ralph was hanging on trying to make the season happen) without having to make wholesale changes their cars. That’s the important issue of the moment.

This is what I just learned. I certainly question whether this is a wise move. First of all, you have to cultivate a corp of drivers who get used to your racetrack as home. Secondly, these entry-level divisions bring a lot of folks through the back gate. Lastly, the wild entry-level crap-wagons are favorites of many fans.

It’s great to have weekly mods, supers and pro stocks. But how many of those cars are out there? How many guys want to invest at hat level? Can All-Star, which remains a work in progress, attract enough fans to pay the purses these teams deserve?

We shall see.

So after one season of running the Speedbowl Bill Roth has headed for the hills. The Bowl continues to be popular with racers, but this the place remains a source of speculation, with almost-sales and new plans and no changes and…

What’s your speculation?

Had an interesting conversation with Greg Veinote of Spud Speedway at the Northeast Racing Expo in Augusta. It seems they’re doing a nice job making Spud a viable option both for racers and fans up in Caribou, where everyone in America is always interested in the temperature. They’ve rebuilt built a lot of the “infrastructure” and Greg claims the racing surface is surprisingly smooth. Pretty decent crowds came to Spud in ’07, and I’m hoping I can be among them this season. Of course, I’m standing there in Augusta, where the snow was piled so high I got lost in the shopping plaza parking lot across the srett from the Civic Center, and they’re telling me the place is 6 hours north of there!

I wonder if they’re are any motels up there.