by Stan Meissner
Forest Lake, Minnesota
June 23, 2013
Normally I would lead off my blog posts with photos of race cars (or Street Rods from Back to the 50's was the plan this weekend) but the weather has forced a change. How wet is it? The area where I live is mostly clay covered by six inches of black dirt. Consequently, when we get heavy downpours walking through my yard is like walking across a giant sponge, boots on the ground produce a squish, squish, squishing sound. In fact my back yard is so wet this weekend that a couple of ducks decided it was a great place to lounge around on Saturday afternoon.
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| Ducks in my back yard lake property |
I haven't been to any races since the Cedar Lake Triple on May 25, mostly by design but the weather has nixed any notion of adding any last minute races. I'm two and a half months behind on scheduled home projects on account of the wet weather and it has been a struggle lately to find a day it isn't raining with no standing water so I can mow the lawn. Fortunately looking at the advance outlook it appears that we'll settle into a more normal weather pattern by the end of next week.
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| Plans were to attend Back to the 50's but the weather dampened my enthusiasm |
There have been some interesting developments in the racing world during the past few weeks. The ugly side of the sport came to the forefront with the recent passing of Jason Leffler in a winged Sprint and most recently Allan Simonsen in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I did a quick scan of my photos to see if I could find any of Leffler but couldn't find any pics of Jason. Leffler left behind a five year old son and Kasey Kahne is selling "Lefturn" hats in honor of Jason with the proceeds going to Jason's son Charlie. I ordered my hat yesterday, here's the link to Kasey's site: http://www.kaseykahne.com/
I'm not going to evaluate what happened from a safety or mechanical standpoint in any of these incidents, that is best left to the experts. I don't have a need to know the details and I don't pretend to be an armchair crash investigator. What did disappoint me was the way some of the NASCAR scribes threw Sprint Car racing under the bus. A few wrote about dirt tracks not having the same safety features as NASCAR tracks and called for safer barriers on dirt tracks but that is akin to comparing apples to oranges. Dirt track racers don't attain the speeds that Cup cars reach on the big paved tracks and safer barriers would be redundant on most dirt tracks, the majority of which are 1/4 and 3/8 mile in length. Fact is that if safer barriers were mandated by insurance for dirt tracks I think a lot of them would have to shutter their gates as they're operating on a very thin margin and the expense would put them out of business. The bottom line as pointed out by Tony Stewart, is that racing is dangerous and sometimes bad things happen. This was borne out this weekend by the Allan Simonsen fatality at Le Mans. Certainly it would be assumed that Le Mans would incorporate the best safety technology available but the course was not spared from circumstance. In spite of their media members taking pot shots at Sprint Car racing NASCAR's top series is not immune to the potential for disaster, especially at places like Daytona where we saw the front half of a car including engine hurled into the grandstand side of the fence back in February. I hope I never have the opportunity to say "I told you so" to those arrogant and uninformed NASCAR writers but their form of the sport will never be 100% safe either. It would be arrogant to suggest otherwise and I suspect their real motive is to try and divert attention away from NASCAR while these tragedies are fresh in people's minds.
Here are a couple dirt track incidents I caught with my my camera at our local tracks. In spite of these being high flyers the drivers walked away. I have been fortunate to have never been in attendance at a race when a fatality occurred. For the most part injuries have been rare and the safety equipment has done it's job.
Never having witnessed a serious incident is significant because I have been attending dirt track races for a long time. This photo by Brian Skedgel was taken at the Twin City Speedway in Blaine, Minnesota, in 1965. When I look at this photo I see a lot of familiar cars and a very familiar scene looking off turn two towards where 35w and 85th Avenue are today. I spent many nights at Twin City during my youth and it's very cool to see photos like this posted online. These cars were called "Supermodifieds" and were mostly home built creations. There wasn't much in the way of chassis builders or parts suppliers in those days so the cars were home built creations that began life as pre-WWII coupes. They were cut and chopped down creations with open wheels similar to today's Sprint Cars. In fact the end of the Supermodified era was likely hastened by the emergence of former Sprint Cars with roll cages covered with makeshift bodies. The home built creations could no longer keep up with the lighter purpose built racers so that owners were forced to either get out of racing or keep up with the increasing costs of the evolving machines.
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| Twin City Speedway 1965, Brian Skedgel collection |
The reason I'm bringing this history up is that I think it has some bearing on where we're finding ourselves today with the lower car counts. For someone like me who's roots go back to those home built machines of the 1960's the word "industry" as applied to dirt track racing has always been a bit of an irritant. I realize that time marches on and that racing had to follow the money in order to survive in our modern times. Nevertheless, there was an innocence about the good ol' days and I think the racers got a lot of satisfaction out of drawing up a plan over the winter and building their own car. That was the draw of racing for one of my late uncles who was a tool and die maker at American Hoist. His sole attraction to racing was watching cars he designed and built perform well on the track.
Today we see tracks struggling with low car counts all over the country. People are quick to place the blame on rules, tires, sanctioning bodies, promoters and a host of other issues but they're ignoring the one common thread. If a certain sanction, track or tire were responsible it stands to reason that it would be an isolated problem. To the contrary, the central issue is that money is still tight, sponsors watch their money closer and many car owners have been forced out of the sport by the costs. In one recent message board post I referred to a tipping point for fans where car counts dwindle to the point where fans will lose interest. I've been watching results and a lot of tracks run six or seven classes with most divisions consisting of one or two Heats and a Feature. This is in classes that used to boast huge car counts a few short years ago. When I think of racing as an "industry" and hear those calling for cost cutting measures it's a bit of a dichotomy. Customer cost cutting measures are not in the vocabulary of most businesses. I don't offer a solution but I don't like the direction things are heading.
My plan next weekend is to kick start my racing season back into gear and attend three nights of racing in a row starting with the Open Wheel Nationals at Saint Croix Valley and culminating with the World of Outlaws at Cedar Lake. What a great way to kickoff a week of vacation. There are several home projects and possibly a night or two at the family lake home to be squeezed in as well.
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| Great place to nap |
My means to attend races have seen some ups and downs the past few seasons. Fortunately I'm beginning to see a glimmer of daylight and plan on doing my best to attend the following events:
Open Wheel Nationals St. Croix Valley Raceway June 28-29
World of Outlaws Sprint Cars Cedar Lake Speedway June 30
Cedar Lake Night of Destruction July 6
Thunder #4 Saint Croix Valley Raceway July 26
Cedar Lake Summer Sprint special (UMSS) July 27
Cedar Lake USA Nationals finale August3
Thunder #5 Saint Croix Valley Raceway August 17
Jerry Richert Sr. Memorial IRA Cedar Lake September 7
A couple of additional races I'd like to attend if everything works out are Jones Fleischer Memorial Challenge Series race at Ogilvie and the World of Outlaws at Deer Creek. Those two events are tentative but I think there's a pretty good chance I'll be able to attend.
Good equipment, a large budget, driving talent and a top notch crew are essential for success in racing. Some say that you make your own luck and that preparation + determination = success or something along those lines. Luck, the stars aligning and the Lord showing his favor are terms I have heard for to describe that elusive intangible fickle bitch we refer to as good luck. Whatever it is some seem to have an abundance of it and others sometimes don't get their full ration. One driver who is currently struggling to literally "stay on his feet" is Brooke Tatnell. Brooke blew a transmission on the way to Knoxville (not sure but I think it must have been their family vehicle), hit a deer with their motor home on the way to Knoxville and most recently dropped a board on his foot and broke four toes. Brooke is scheduled to have surgery on Tuesday June 25. This season, his 25th, started with high expectations with a weekly ride at Knoxville, his own car for nearby 410 races and some drives in the Nelson 14 at select 360 races. I wish him and his family the best and hope that he gets well soon. If anybody knows how to direct that fickle bitch called luck in Brooke's direction by all means please do so.
Recent rainouts have had one good effect in that they have allowed me to catch up a little on my racing budget. Gas has dropped by $1 per gallon from it's recent spike and I have gotten past some of the things that were nipping pieces out of my budget for the past several years. We're not completely out of the woods yet (and probably never will be) but I'm seeing a few more bucks left over at the end of the month so that's a good sign. It's too little too late for any big schedule boost this season but it's enough to make things a little easier to deal with going forward. Some things in life are cyclical and just have to play out. If one chases racing long enough there will be highs and lows along the path.
There are a couple big ticket items that are going to need updating during the coming year. One is my computer which is still running XP. Microsoft is providing critical update support for XP until April of 2014 at which time I'll have to migrate to a new OS. The computer seems to be running good so I'm leaning towards purchasing an OEM copy of Windows 7 (supported until 2020) and upgrading the memory to the maximum allowed by my motherboard. Also in the works will be a camera body upgrade to something a little more heavy duty. I don't need a lot of fancy bells and whistles or HD video capability so I'll probably buy a used/refurbished body, something like a D200 or D300, whatever the best deal is. I'm considering buying a new lens as well, something fast (f2.8) in the 70-200mm or 80-200mm range. I need to start using my flash bracket again so I'll need to pickup another sync chord as well. I'm into the photography for the long haul and I've gotten a lot of use out of both my D70 and D70s bodies so it's time to take it up a notch.
There's not much to report in the music area right now. I restrung my SG and adjusted the truss rod the other day so the action is great. A few weeks ago I picked up an electronic keyboard and have been fooling around with online piano tutorials. At the same time I purchased a glass slide and have been learning that technique as well. For a long time there I was posting every song I created but I'm not doing that so much anymore while I sequester myself and get up-to-speed with these new additions. It's tough to try and spend as much time playing music in the summer with so many other things going on. I practice almost every day so there will be some new tunes one of these days. I've got one with an AC/DC type groove that I'm playing around with in my practice sessions so that might be the next one I post.
Well, that's going to do it for now. See you at the races!
