It seems like I barely had time to unpack the car from the final trip of the 2019 racing season when the 2020 season suddenly is ready to start.
But first, a paragraph or two to wrap up the 2019 season. I was able to attend one hundred and sixty four race events in 2019, a nice increase over the rain plagued 2018 season and one that put me back on my average for the last fifteen years or so. Even though there was plenty of rain in 2019 also(in fact, record one year precipitation totals for our local area), I was more fortunate in finding alternate racing programs and not quite so many last minute or at the track rain outs that just kill an evening.
I now have attended at least one hundred nights of racing for thirty nine straight years. However, for the second year in a row I wasn't able to attend any new tracks, a situation that I hope to take care of for 2020 in the next twenty four hours with both a new track and another new state.
I did see racing at fifty eight different tracks in 2019 in fourteen states plus one Canadian Province. With no new tracks to add to the list, I remain at three hundred and eight different tracks attended in twenty nine states and three Canadian Provinces.
But enough of 2019, let's move on to 2020 which I hope will be even better in many regards for all of us. The new event at the Vado Speedway Park starts this weekend with a three night run at this new facility which was just opened up last Summer. A multi million dollar project and the brain child of owner Royal Jones, this facility was well thought out and combines many of the best points of some of the finest race tracks in America.
I was told it was modeled after and has infused some of the ideas of Lucas Oil Speedway, Kentucky Lake Motor Speedway and Knoxville Raceway and when you tour the grounds, you can see some of those tracks reflected in what has been constructed here.
Now granted, I have yet to see a competitive race run here so I'm basing all my observations on a practice night, but it looks to me like a well planned facility with just about all the required check boxes taken care of.
The grandstands appear to have a nice sight line so every seat is a good one, the walkways are wide and well lit. There are multiple concession stand windows and bathrooms on both ends of the track. There is plenty of seating with the grandstands running the full length of the front chute and a lawn chair area also on the bank surrounding the track. The track lighting seems very good with no shadows and the cars can be seen clearly on the back chute. The pa system also seems to be very good. There is only one gate for all traffic, including pit traffic to both enter and leave the grounds, so we'll have to see how smoothly that flows when the parking lots and pits are both full. The spectator parking lot is kind of creative, much like the one at U.S.A. Raceway in Arizona so we will have to see how well that works.
The pit area is spacious and has concrete slabs running the whole length of the track so most of the cars can pit on concrete. Everything appears to have been well thought out in terms of where everything is placed and the track is literary right on I-10 so getting to the track is easy. The only thing probably not appreciated by the drivers of the big toters is that there is a double round a bout that has to be navigated to get back on the freeway and that was a bit interesting the first time I tried that. I did manage, however, to get on the freeway and going in the right direction thankfully.
Something that must be in great supply around here is razor wire and literally, every fence line on the property, and trust me, that is a lot of fence, is topped with razor wire. I haven't seen that much razor wire since my last visit to the state penitentiary. Folks in this area are certainly lucky to have had someone spend the kind of money that Royal did on this track to make it so fine. Heck, most tracks unfortunately consider it a major revamp if they throw a can of paint at the bleachers.
The track itself is very wide with medium banking. I believe they call it a three eighth mile but it looks a little bit less than that to me. For practice night it was quite tacky and the cars seemed to be flying around the track, once some of them got the push out of their cars as many were running a tight condition early. Tomorrow with a full program we will see just how well it races.
Practice for the World of Outlaw Late Models saw forty two of them take to the track in sessions of four to six cars. The track was smooth right from the get-go and no more than just a few laps to roll it in were required before the cars were able to go full speed. I believe Brandon Sheppard and Scott Bloomquist led the speed charts at the end of the night although there were about a dozen cars that weren't being recorded by the transponders so it's a little hard to tell just how fast everyone was.
Three full programs await the Late Model drivers as a new point season unrolls with plenty of new race cars, new sponsors and new looks for many of the teams. With this major event coming this early in the season and one that likely will be huge success, we have now managed to make the race season nearly around the calendar with just Christmas to interrupt the action.
The open wheel cars are the support classes this weekend with both USRA Mods and X Mods to be in action all three nights too. Between the two classes, there were about thirty of them practicing on Thursday and it was just a bit impossible to give a complete breakdown by class because many of the drivers were unfamiliar to me and nearly impossible to determine for some just which class they were racing in with just a cursory look.
I thought that the B Mods were to be USRA sanctioned but that is clearly not the case as the local X Mods are running big spoilers and there are a few IMCA Sport Mods all in action so we have ourselves a conglomeration or X Mods for simplicity sake. Without transponders working, it was tough to tell just who was turning in the best laps but it appeared that Rodney Sanders and Modified rookie Calvin Iverson were among the quick Mods while no one really stood out in the X Mods. This track has solid fields of these two classes on a regular basis and I would expect that many more will be in the pits as the weekend filters on.
Stay tuned tomorrow as we drop the first green flag to officially start the 2020 racing season.
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