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The senior tour for stock car drivers
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Location: Blogs Running Wide Open |
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| Posted by: Joe VanHoose |
11/8/2007 3:12 PM |
This is the coolest idea I've ever seen for a race series. I present to you the Old School Racing Champions Tour, which starts its 12-race schedule in May.
Gene and Norm Weaver's brainchild will put old-time stock car drivers in identically prepared cars, just like the defunct IROC series. They'll race at short tracks all over the Southeast, including a stop at New Smyrna Speedway in February 2009.
Check out some of the names that will race in this series: David Pearson, Jack Ingram, Harry Gant, Geoff Bodine, Dave Marcis, Phil Parsons, Derrike Cope and Andy Hillenburg. It's like a dream team of old NASCAR stars mixed in with a few who weren't worth too much to begin with.
As hyped as I am to see Pearson, who in my opinion is the best stock car driver of all time, I have some doubt as to whether this series will ever take a green flag. For one, Pearson is 72, and Gant and Marcis are both 67. Do these guys really need to be hauling it around a racetrack?
Then there's the "tentative" schedule, which starts in May, takes November through January off, and ends in February. That's a mess.
While the Champions Tour has been a success story for golf, let's not forget that driving a racecar requires a lot more physically and is inherently dangerous. All it would take to kill this series is an old driver to break a hip, something folks in their 60s do anyway.
But alas, I am again optimistic just by looking at the schedule. These guys will race everywhere from the dirt at Eldora to the hallowed grounds of Hickory and South Boston. Please, Weaver family, make this thing happen.
Racing back at 'The Rock'
The aforementioned Andy Hillenburg has locked up promoter of the year honors in my book, and his track hasn't hosted a race yet.
Hillenburg's track, Rockingham Speedway (formerly North Carolina Speedway), shouldn't even be around right now. Many in the racing community wrote off the one-mile high-banked oval when it lost its NASCAR dates in 2004. The track hasn't held a race since.
Hillenburg set out to change that when he bought the track for $4.4 million at auction last month. With the ink still drying on the contract, Hillenburg's already scheduled an ARCA race for May and a USAR race in November.
Everyone in the racetrack business will be watching Hillenburg's experiment. For years, it has been commonly believed that larger tracks could not sustain themselves without a NASCAR race, that no one would turn out to see a standalone "minor league" race without Nextel Cup's superstars.
But Hillenburg is making a go for it, and I think the racing-starved population in the sand hills of North Carolina will support him. I've already bought my tickets.
Sprint cars everywhere
If you like winged sprint cars, this weekend is for you. The TBARA will race at Ocala Speedway Friday night and at Citrus County Speedway Saturday evening. If you're a dirt sprint car fan, East Bay Raceway in Tampa hosts a two-day ASCS sprint car show tomorrow and Saturday.
If you're at Ocala Speedway tomorrow, keep an eye on the flagpole during the sprint car feature. The vortex those cars create is strong enough to wrap the flag around its pole several times. In a word, cool.
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ocala speeday live |
By racefanfl on
11/9/2007 11:47 AM |
| is there to be live blog from ocala speedway friday nov 10 |
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