Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / A view from behind the Microphones (Racing Announcers)

Transcript

A view from behind the Microphones (Racing Announcers) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
• 0:04
  by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
• 0:07
  Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
• 0:11
  Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
• 0:16
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 0:18
  I wanted to give you a heads up before we head into this episode that we did have
• 0:23
  some technical issues with the audio.
• 0:25
  We've done our best to make corrections so that it's easier to listen to, but
• 0:29
  unfortunately, you know, there's always challenges with internet connection,
• 0:33
  the different systems that people are using, the audio quality itself.
• 0:37
  Please, by all means, sit back and enjoy this episode.
• 0:40
  The content in is amazing, but our apologies for the quality right up front.
• 0:45
  My name is Tom Wiedeman and I'm the new executive director at the Motor Racing
• 0:49
  Research Center, still under warranty.
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  I'm incredibly impressed and incredibly excited about today's conversation.
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  To see these six gentlemen all together here to talk about their
• 1:03
  careers in racing is pretty amazing.
• 1:05
  And so it's my honor to introduce our speakers today.
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  We've got Joe Morata, we've got Roy Silva, Gary Montgomery, Greg Ricks,
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  Mike Paz, and Frank DelVecchio.
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  What a team.
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  And now, Kip.
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  We advertise this as the men behind the mics.
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  You're going to have the six real good men behind the mics
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  and the novice behind the mics.
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  My dad took me to Watkins Glen when I was a kid.
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  That was my first race and I was hooked right from the start.
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  If you would ask me when I got home, what I wanted to be when I grew up, it
• 1:42
  would be a race car driver, flat out.
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  No questions asked.
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  As I got older, it became easily apparent that that was a career
• 1:50
  path I would not be taking.
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  I had no real mechanical aptitude.
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  Eyesight isn't the greatest and most importantly, I had no money.
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  What I decided to do instead.
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  Because it was imminently cheaper, was to become a real good spectator.
• 2:03
  And over the years I've become a real good spectator.
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  But what appealed to me about racing from day one is the same
• 2:10
  stuff that appeals to me now.
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  It's the whole visceral approach to racing.
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  It's the image of the cars, both on the pace lap as they come around the
• 2:18
  grandstand, as well as flat out racing.
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  It's the sound of a race engine at full song.
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  It's the smell of the racing fuel.
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  Give me five hours in the grandstands at Oswego smelling methanol fumes.
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  I am a very, very happy kid.
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  If I get back home at two in the morning and my ears are still ringing
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  and I can still smell methanol, it has been a very good night.
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  And it was also that Voice from above the announcer, the guy who was telling
• 2:45
  me what was happening on the track, but probably equally as importantly,
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  what was happening off the track, the fellow who was weaving this whole
• 2:53
  storyline for the balance of the day or the evening, whatever the case may be.
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  We don't have six good announcers up here.
• 3:01
  We have six great announcers up here.
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  Joe Morata, the voice of Syracuse for 44 years at Super Dirt Week.
• 3:10
  Roy Silva, beginning his 52nd year.
• 3:13
  Think about that.
• 3:14
  Oswego is beginning their, what Roy, 66th year?
• 3:17
  66 years Oswego has run.
• 3:20
  for 52.
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  And I will tell you honestly, Roy sounds the same today as he did 45 years ago.
• 3:31
  Why does that make me feel old?
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  Anyway, Roy sounds the same today as he did 45 years ago when I went
• 3:35
  to that track for the first time.
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  Gary Montgomery, who for a number of years was the voice, or one of the
• 3:40
  voices, on the Motor Racing Network.
• 3:42
  And you do not get on the Motor Racing Network without
• 3:45
  being excellent at your craft.
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  Mike Paz, someone named him the Voice of God, who announced at nine
• 3:52
  different NASCAR tracks over the years.
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  Apparently Mike can't hold a job, so he's announced it.
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  Frank DelVecchio, who is actually more our racer turned announcer.
• 4:02
  He's going to speak about that.
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  But Frank DelVecchio, and last but certainly not least, Greg
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  Ricks, the voice of Lime Rock.
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  I have never been to Lime Rock, but, Trust me, sitting here as I do, we get
• 4:12
  people in here all the time who, it's always a toss up between WGI or Lime
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  Rock as to what their favorite track is.
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  Greg's not simply the voice of Lime Rock because he's announced
• 4:21
  a number of other tracks as well.
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  When we first set this up, I emailed each of these gentlemen
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  half a dozen different questions.
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  So I thought we'd kind of start out by doing my questions.
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  So we'll get that out of the way.
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  We'll open it up for stories.
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  I know that's why you came here is to hear stories from all these guys, and
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  then we'll throw it open to you folks.
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  So to begin the day, let's um, start with my first question.
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  That was, how did you initially get into the sport?
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  How many years have you been doing it?
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  Was there any mentor or gentleman that you tried to model
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  your announcing style after?
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  And what keeps you in the sport?
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  So why don't we start with Mike?
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  We'll just go down the road.
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  It came from public address announcing for football and
• 5:05
  basketball at my hometown high school.
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  I was PA announcer for those two, had started in 70 and 71.
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  And from an announcing standpoint for racing, I would go to the Crawford
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  County fairgrounds, which is in Meadville, Pennsylvania, my hometown.
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  Joey Chitwood was there.
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  How many people got into racing or automobile stuff?
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  Because they didn't show.
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  He was there.
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  I've made it every year.
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  They had a star car race and I was in PA.
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  Well, like I said, they brought me up to this crazy fairgrounds.
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  Well, I called the crow's nest inside this huge grandstand.
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  Not as big as Syracuse, obviously, but.
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  They put me out there for my first race.
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  And from there it was DJ of music.
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  I didn't get a chance to get back into racing until about 14, 15 years later.
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  Okay.
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  And how many years have you been race announcing?
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  Did you try to adapt anybody's style or have any kind of mentor when you first
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  got in and what keeps you involved today?
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  I don't think there was any one person.
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  They tried to mimic, there were several obviously, but here's the deal.
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  I'm a car guy and have been, so I was three years old.
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  So with car love usually comes racing.
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  It has to follow.
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  It was a natural put two things together.
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  Okay.
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  Excellent.
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  Right.
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  I started in racing when I was seven.
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  My uncle owned a race car and ran at the Oswego Speedway back in
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  the old A and B modified days.
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  I went every week with him.
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  I don't think over the course of the time I started to go there, I probably
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  haven't missed 12 races in my entire life.
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  First race I announced there was in 1964.
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  I was working at one of the local radio stations, WOSC.
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  They decided they were going to do a live coverage of the
• 6:39
  International Classic that year.
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  Well, Roy knows racing, so we'll have Roy do the race.
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  I had never done a sports event at all.
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  I did the race from the inside of turn number one, standing on top of a cube van.
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  200 laps of turning around.
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  I was substantially ill by the time it was over.
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  The next year, Harry Caruso, who owned the track, decided he was going
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  to Institute and infield announcer.
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  And again, I was still working at WOAC and I had kind of a guardian angel
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  there by the name of Wally Tucker.
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  And Harry went to Wally and said, We want to have an infield
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  announcer, we want you to do it.
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  And Wally said, I don't know much about racing, how about having
• 7:20
  Roy do it, cause he knows racing.
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  And so I became the infield announcer at the Oswego Speedway along with Wally.
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  Harry decided to hire both of us.
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  We wore these stupid little blue blazers and a narrow little tie
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  and white shirts and blue slacks.
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  The next year, Jack Burgess was going to go on vacation.
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  He had an announcer upstairs with him, his second banana by the name
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  of Pauly Legault, Leo Legault.
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  They went to Wally and said, Jack's going to be on vacation.
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  We want you to come upstairs and be the co announcer with Pauly.
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  And Wally said, I don't know much about racing, have Roy do it.
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  So I went upstairs, and that night I was doing the co announcing.
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  We alternate races.
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  There were three heat races at the time, two semi finals, the
• 8:00
  consolation event, and a feature.
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  Just one classic car.
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  So, at the end of the heat races, Harry came in and said, Poli,
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  you're gonna do the consolation, I'm always gonna do the feature.
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  And the next year, Polly became an usher, and I moved upstairs,
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  and Wally Tucker left the infield.
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  In the 52 years, this is my 52nd year announcing there.
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  The year I started to announce there, I moved out of Oswego.
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  I moved to Ithaca, then I moved to Millport, uh, down into the
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  Binghamton area, the Hudson Valley.
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  Spent 10 years in North Carolina.
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  Seven years on Cape Cod, finally moved back to the Oswego area in 2007.
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  In my 51 total years announcing there, I've missed two races.
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  One due to a family situation and one due to a business situation.
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  The person that obviously had the most effect on me was Jack Burgess.
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  Jack was the announcer there.
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  The thing about Jack was he didn't try to He let you learn from him.
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  He was, he was wide open to giving you suggestions, whether
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  you patterned yourself after him or just learned from him.
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  He was very, very good, very, very talented at helping other
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  people become announcers.
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  So that's the guy that, if I emulated anybody, would be Jack.
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  He was a sensational announcer.
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  And what keeps you there?
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  Hot dogs.
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  Hot dogs.
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  She had a lot of hot dogs.
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  Hot dogs.
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  Hot dogs.
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  That's it.
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  There have been several times over the course of the time I've been there that
• 9:22
  I have given serious consideration to not being there anymore, and the two
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  worst cases were the deaths of Gary Witter, which was the most violent.
• 9:33
  Long lasting crash I've ever seen in my life and the death of Jimmy Champine.
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  In the case of Gary Witter I had to continue announcing the race
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  even though we knew at the time he had perished in the crash.
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  In the case of Jimmy we knew he had been taken to the hospital when
• 9:48
  I found out overnight after the races were over that he had passed.
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  In both of those cases if I had not had to go back and finish the next
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  day I probably would have quit, then I had the off season and was
• 9:58
  able to regroup and stayed with it.
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  I say that because I love it.
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  I'm a great race fan, whether I'm announcing the race or like tomorrow
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  I'm going to Utica Long for the 2020s.
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  I'm just a good race fan.
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  To me, to get paid to go and watch a race, you don't get any better than that.
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  Shh, don't give our secret away.
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  That's right.
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  I will say one thing.
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  I have never announced a race without getting paid.
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  With two exceptions.
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  And that's when the promoter sniffed me,
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  Mr.
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  Murata.
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  I got started in 1949.
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  My dad took me to the wasn't called the Moody mile back then.
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  It was called New York state fair mile and went to the triple A championship races.
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  And wow, I didn't know anything existed beyond baseball,
• 10:41
  football, hockey, whatever.
• 10:44
  And I saw these champ cars out on the speedway and I said, this is unbelievable.
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  But then I heard this voice.
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  And this guy's name was Chrissy Konivacki.
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  And I says, wow, this guy is really great.
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  I didn't know what he was talking about.
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  But boy, I gotta tell ya, I just swallowed up everything on that day.
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  And I guess I wanted to become a race driver at the end of that day.
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  But that Chrissy Konivacki voice continued for many, many years.
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  Many years later, I was a sophomore in high school.
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  I had a high school teacher by the name of Mrs.
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  LaCasse.
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  And Mrs.
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  LaCasse said to me, she says, you know, you've got a good voice.
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  You are going to be in the Optimist Oratorical Contest.
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  And I says, no I'm not.
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  And she says, oh yes you are.
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  She said, you're going to be in the auditorium at 7am tomorrow
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  morning for your first rehearsal.
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  So, I didn't say nothing.
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  I come home.
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  My mother says to me, So, you're going to be in the oratorical contest.
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  No, I'm not.
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  And she said, Yes, you are.
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  Now, that was the year I was scheduled.
• 11:47
  I was going to turn 16 a couple months later, and I was going
• 11:50
  to get my driver's permit.
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  And there wasn't anything more than I wanted than getting that driver's permit.
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  I had to move those wheels.
• 11:58
  My mother said, if you're not in that auditorium tomorrow, you
• 12:01
  don't get your driver's permit.
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  Well, the next morning at 7 a.
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  m.
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  I'm in there and everybody is lined up.
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  There were folks going to talk about the future of a nursing
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  career, future of space, future of a doctor's degrees, and all this stuff.
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  And I had to pick a topic.
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  So I picked a topic called Organized Hot Rod Clubs.
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  And everybody looked at me and laughed at me.
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  I said, okay, I'm going to fix you.
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  So I appeared on a stage very, very similar to this.
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  And I won it and I won the regional contest and I finished out on fourth
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  or fifth in the state contest.
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  But I liked the sound of my voice and I love talking about hot rods . So
• 12:42
  anyways, I still had that dream that I was gonna become a race car driver.
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  And I did build a race car, but I was terrible.
• 12:49
  I think I would go down a lap every three laps when I ran at Weeds Sport,
• 12:53
  and maybe a lap every two laps when I ran at Fulton, which was then asphalt.
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  So one Sunday night I went to Weeds, sport Speedway.
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  And as they were starting to run the qualifying heats, it started to rain.
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  And they brought out all the equipment.
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  So I went over and I brought a Gator Racing News and I read it.
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  And I was also going to put it on my head for a protector.
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  And I had hair back then, by the way.
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  I open up the column and I see under Dave Wright's column.
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  Wanted.
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  Announcer.
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  Fulton Speedway.
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  Call 592 7005.
• 13:25
  Bub Benway.
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  Wow, I can do that.
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  Well, my car needed a new motor, and I says, you know, maybe this is the
• 13:31
  time I'll just sit out for the next part of the year and save up my money,
• 13:35
  because I wanted to get paid too, right?
• 13:37
  So I call up Bob Benway, and I said to him, Bob, I says, I saw your
• 13:42
  ad in the Gator News, and he says, have you ever announced before?
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  Sure, he swear, oh I'd never been in the service and I was never in Alaska,
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  but I told him, yeah when I was in the Air Force, I was stationed in Alaska
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  and I announced that a track up there.
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  So he says, come on up.
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  So I went up there on a Monday night, turned on the PA system, gave me
• 14:02
  something to read, he walked back inside, he says, how much do you want?
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  I says, what do you pay?
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  Now, if you knew Bob Benway, he says, I didn't ask you that.
• 14:12
  I said, well, I don't know what you, he says, how about if I pay
• 14:15
  you 25 bucks a night to announce, wow, I get in for free too?
• 14:19
  Maybe a hot dog.
• 14:21
  And he says, and I'll pay you 10 a night to do the story.
• 14:24
  Do the story.
• 14:25
  He says, yeah, write it all up and then my wife will type it up and it'll
• 14:28
  be in the Gator in the area in the National Speed Sport News the next week.
• 14:32
  I said, well, okay, I'll do that.
• 14:34
  So the following Saturday night I show up and I still
• 14:38
  remember who won the first race.
• 14:39
  Dutch Hold won the modifieds.
• 14:41
  Jimmy Colvell won the late model race and who did I pattern myself after
• 14:45
  a guy by the name of Jack Burgess.
• 14:46
  I remember the way he used to do lineups and the way he
• 14:49
  called the race and everything.
• 14:50
  So I called the race and at the end of the night, Buck Benway came in
• 14:55
  and he handed me that free hot dog.
• 14:57
  And he said, you did a good job, kid.
• 14:59
  And handed me the 25 bucks, that was the most important.
• 15:03
  So from there I went on and I finished a year out there and continued to
• 15:07
  announce there for the next 7 8 years.
• 15:09
  I announced at Spencer Speedway.
• 15:11
  And then I ran into a guy by the name of Glenn Donnelly.
• 15:13
  That started our marriage on the dirt circuit.
• 15:17
  In between that time, I started announcing at Rolling Wheels Raceway.
• 15:21
  I was the first announcer ever at Rolling Wheels.
• 15:23
  That got me started between Chrissy Konamacki, Jack Burgess,
• 15:26
  and my good friend Roy Sova.
• 15:28
  That got me going into the world of announcing.
• 15:30
  So 25 bucks and a free hot dog.
• 15:33
  25 bucks, a free hot dog, and yeah, that was it.
• 15:36
  It was a cheap date.
• 15:38
  Yes, that was a cheap date.
• 15:39
  Well, I bought your breakfast this morning, so quiet.
• 15:42
  Laughter
• 15:47
  I came in absolutely backwards to the rest of these guys.
• 15:51
  I did my first driver's school in 1968.
• 15:55
  My first race is in 1969.
• 15:57
  I've been running formula cars about 1980.
• 16:01
  The track announcer at Briar Motorsport Park, which is now New Hampshire
• 16:05
  International, didn't show up.
• 16:07
  So they tagged me to About half of the races, I was politically incorrect
• 16:12
  enough so that it was ended by announcing career for the next 15 or 20 years or so.
• 16:18
  In the 90s I started running the Firehawk series along with the Escort
• 16:22
  series, some Formula cars, some GT.
• 16:25
  Guys that are here today ended up being my mentors.
• 16:29
  Al Robinson, Mike Paz, Jim Mueller, who's not here.
• 16:33
  What I learned from Jim is, you can't say that on the mic.
• 16:38
  That's mostly what I learned from Jim.
• 16:40
  A couple of guys from Canada, Tom Natchew and his sidekick Jim Martin.
• 16:44
  And I'd go up to the booth and I would do a little color commentary,
• 16:47
  get out of the race car and kind of fill in with what was going on.
• 16:51
  That grew until about the late nineties.
• 16:54
  In fact, you weren't there that weekend.
• 16:56
  I don't think it was the Lime Rock.
• 16:58
  It was the Trans Am race that Lou Gelati won.
• 17:01
  I was there.
• 17:02
  Okay.
• 17:02
  Well, you just didn't notice me.
• 17:05
  I was the guy holding the microphone for you.
• 17:07
  No, no.
• 17:07
  Tom Natchew was actually announcing that race because he was, I guess,
• 17:12
  the series announcer at the time.
• 17:13
  Come on up in the booth and, you know, we'll tell everybody you
• 17:17
  don't have a ride this weekend.
• 17:18
  I remember that in Lime Rock it always rains, and it doesn't rain for very long.
• 17:23
  Rain started as soon as the race started.
• 17:25
  The guy that I had raced with a lot of years, Paul Hacker, is up on the
• 17:29
  hill, and he's got a headset, and he's talking to Lou Gelati, and I know that.
• 17:33
  I'm saying to the crowd and to naturalize it all right now is telling
• 17:38
  Lou to come in and change two tires.
• 17:40
  Even though they got rain tires, that's because you can only change two
• 17:43
  at a time and he's going to come in.
• 17:44
  He's going to change the two dry tires.
• 17:46
  It's going to go out a couple more laps.
• 17:49
  He's going to come in and change the other two tires.
• 17:51
  Now he's got four dry tires on.
• 17:53
  It's a wet track.
• 17:54
  And he's going to win the race by three quarters of a lap.
• 17:57
  The rest is history.
• 17:58
  The rest is history.
• 17:59
  The track dried out.
• 18:00
  He won the race by three quarters of a lap.
• 18:02
  And Natchel goes, well, you've got to be in the booth.
• 18:05
  So, from that, it just kind of expanded.
• 18:08
  We ended up doing a lot of races all over the country, not only
• 18:12
  driving the race cars, but whatever I could, I'd actually try and do both.
• 18:16
  A lot of times I'd jump out of the car and go up into the booth with Al Robinson.
• 18:20
  A lot of nights we did the Daytona 24 hour together.
• 18:24
  Al the Prince of Darkness would handle the whole night shift.
• 18:27
  I'd go up there and hang around with him and do a little bit of announcing
• 18:30
  and the phone would ring right out and said, Gee, everybody's asleep.
• 18:34
  So can you come down and drive?
• 18:36
  I'll be right back.
• 18:38
  I'll and a half.
• 18:39
  So I'd go dow car and come on back.
• 18:42
  I k when I said frank was our that is really true.
• 18:47
  Frank
• 18:51
  500 races and in 114 different cars.
• 18:55
  While Mike can't hold a job at any one NASCAR track, Frank wads up
• 19:00
  about a bunch of cars or something.
• 19:02
  Anyway, he can't hold a steady ride.
• 19:03
  But that's a pretty illustrious career.
• 19:05
  Easy to see how you have the insight into doing color commentary.
• 19:09
  Mr.
• 19:10
  Limerock, Greg.
• 19:11
  I'm not convinced yet that I am not a failed racing driver.
• 19:14
  I still harbor illusions.
• 19:17
  My talent will be discovered, but like everybody else, I
• 19:20
  wanted to be a race driver.
• 19:22
  I came from a family that had no interest in automobiles.
• 19:25
  My mechanical ability now is marginal and was even worse when I was younger.
• 19:30
  In high school, though, I discovered the Sports Car Club of America.
• 19:34
  Drove my first autocross in 1967.
• 19:38
  in a four door, six cylinder Chevelle with an automatic transmission.
• 19:42
  Not exactly the height of performance cars, but it got me involved.
• 19:47
  And shortly thereafter, I had my first article published.
• 19:50
  Thought I was on my way to a great career in automotive journalism.
• 19:53
  That was in the high school newspaper.
• 19:55
  The local Sports Car Club of America region had a newsletter.
• 19:57
  I started writing for them.
• 19:59
  A fellow by the name of John Peckham was a noted automotive artist.
• 20:02
  He also produced a car.
• 20:03
  The program for the races at Lime Rock Park, he picked up a few of
• 20:06
  my articles, and so I, I was going down this road of the written word.
• 20:11
  Jim Haynes was the track promoter at that time, and he said, you know, you
• 20:14
  ought to try announcing, you know, you've got a good handle on what's going on.
• 20:18
  And there was a gentleman by the name of Art Peck, who was Lime Rock's
• 20:21
  regular announcer, and Art was from CBS.
• 20:24
  He was a serious professional commentator.
• 20:27
  But he let me try out.
• 20:29
  Then eventually Art decided that he wanted to pursue some other opportunities,
• 20:33
  and I was the last guy left standing.
• 20:35
  So at 22 years old, I became the announcer at Weimark Park.
• 20:39
  I've been there ever since.
• 20:41
  They keep inviting me back, and I'm honored to be able to do that,
• 20:44
  as I'm honored to be here with this distinguished group today.
• 20:47
  What keeps me coming back is the people.
• 20:49
  At one time it was the cars and the technology, but now it's really the
• 20:53
  opportunity I have to interact with people that keeps me coming back.
• 20:56
  Gary.
• 20:57
  Uh, what got me started was my love of auto racing.
• 21:00
  I remember the first race I went to, it was 51 or 52, Wellsville, New York.
• 21:05
  That year I would have been 10 or 12 years old, whatever else.
• 21:07
  And Lorne Dillon won the race.
• 21:09
  And they tore his car down and all that stuff.
• 21:11
  But so I remember the first race.
• 21:13
  But that started a lot of fear.
• 21:14
  And I really never had any visions of driving.
• 21:16
  That wasn't my thing.
• 21:17
  And I didn't have any visions of anything.
• 21:18
  I was just a race fan.
• 21:20
  The first time I actually announced was in 1959 at Bradford Speedway.
• 21:24
  Now called the old Radford Speedway.
• 21:26
  It was actually brand new then.
• 21:28
  It was his last race of the season, and the regular announcer, whoever he or she,
• 21:32
  he would have been a he, was neglected to tell the promoter that he had gone back to
• 21:36
  college, wouldn't be around that weekend.
• 21:38
  There they were with a race program planned and no announcer.
• 21:41
  And I don't know how it was that I had the nerve to go up and tell the
• 21:45
  guy what I would announce, but I did.
• 21:47
  I don't remember much about that event either, but So that was 1959.
• 21:52
  Then I went off to college and so forth and really got started
• 21:55
  in 1971 at Spencer Speedway.
• 21:57
  And that's an interesting story.
• 21:59
  Jimmy Bollinson was the promoter and he had hired a fellow by the name of Dale
• 22:02
  Hartnett who was a disc jockey with the country radio station in Rochester.
• 22:06
  Who was out to make money and had a great voice and all the rest of it, but he
• 22:09
  didn't have any passion for the sport.
• 22:11
  I don't think he'd ever been to a race before.
• 22:13
  But he was announcing and muddling his way through the season.
• 22:15
  Late in the season, I said to Bollinson, that guy doesn't know what
• 22:18
  he's talking about, he needs help.
• 22:20
  didn't know me, but did agree that that guy needed help.
• 22:24
  So I helped him out for a few weeks.
• 22:26
  And then he had the nerve to get married and take the weekend off.
• 22:29
  And that was late in the season.
• 22:31
  And a race I will never forget, of course, is that that was the
• 22:34
  night that the car, Gary Cornelius, went into the pit grandstand.
• 22:37
  At the end, four people were killed.
• 22:39
  It could have been 40 people or it could have been a lot more than that.
• 22:41
  We didn't know.
• 22:42
  My wife and kids were there.
• 22:43
  My brother was there.
• 22:44
  And everybody was expecting a grandstand except my brother, who was in the pits.
• 22:48
  And again, you didn't have any idea how bad this situation was, but
• 22:51
  you could tell it was pretty bad.
• 22:53
  So I was most concerned about my brother and the whole situation.
• 22:56
  My brother was alright, as it turned out.
• 22:58
  That started a career at Special Speedway, which really got
• 23:01
  me going in this whole deal.
• 23:02
  Because I went back for the next, I don't know how many years, continuously.
• 23:05
  And that just really led to a lot of things.
• 23:08
  I'll touch on the MRN situation.
• 23:09
  How I got involved with those folks would have been late 70s, early 80s.
• 23:13
  And Dave Despain was on their team, and he was to announce in turn
• 23:17
  four for the 500 and the support races leading up to the 500.
• 23:20
  And I was working for Glenn Downey at Volusia.
• 23:23
  And John McMullen was the director of MRN at that time.
• 23:26
  And John and I had crossed paths a couple of times, most recently
• 23:29
  the fall before that at Super Dirt Week, where he was trying to get
• 23:32
  in, and Gert would let him in.
• 23:34
  She didn't know who he was.
• 23:37
  And I did know who he was, and I knew who Gert was.
• 23:39
  Anyway, we got that all put together somehow or other,
• 23:41
  and John remembered that.
• 23:42
  And John knew that I was working for Donnelly over just across the way.
• 23:46
  So they called, and when I announced it, they told him.
• 23:51
  And that started that career, which lasted for a number of years as well.
• 23:55
  So it came at it a number of ways.
• 23:57
  I don't do much of that anymore.
• 23:59
  Last year, I think I announced just two races.
• 24:01
  I substituted at Canandaigua, and I substituted at Black Rock one night.
• 24:04
  But I love this love of sport, and that keeps me going back.
• 24:07
  And the point about the people is really important, and that's kind of what
• 24:10
  it has evolved to all of us, I think.
• 24:12
  And I think the greatest demonstration of the people thing
• 24:15
  was Super Dirt Week last October.
• 24:17
  For When everybody knew it was the last one.
• 24:19
  And I called it the Family Reunion of Dirt Racing or something like that.
• 24:22
  Because everybody that had been there over the 44 years before that Seemed
• 24:26
  to all gather back for the last one.
• 24:28
  And just seeing all those folks again, it makes it all.
• 24:31
  And it's the people thing, whether it be announcing the race or being at the races.
• 24:36
  That keeps me coming back.
• 24:38
  That's my announcing story, I guess.
• 24:41
  I don't think you can improve on that, Gary.
• 24:43
  My wife is still hoping I'll outgrow it.
• 24:47
  I don't think so, honey.
• 24:49
  Sorry.
• 24:50
  I think you can see through all these gentlemen the passion and
• 24:53
  the love of the sport that just is obviously evident in all of them.
• 24:57
  The next question I had is kind of a, more a nuts and bolts question.
• 25:01
  Is there any difference in how you approach announcing, uh, A feature race
• 25:07
  as opposed to a qualifying race or for the road racing gentlemen, the feature
• 25:13
  class, the IMSA guys, whoever that might be, as opposed to maybe some of the
• 25:17
  support classes in that same regard, is there a common denominator that you try
• 25:23
  to use so that you appeal to perhaps that person that's sitting in the stands
• 25:27
  for the very first time, in addition to the guy that sits there every week?
• 25:32
  So Mike, do you want to lead off with that one?
• 25:35
  You can pass to Roy.
• 25:38
  As a race fan.
• 25:39
  And when I do my announcing, I always think about you guys in the grandstand.
• 25:43
  And whenever I feel like I'm too big for my britches, I would come down
• 25:46
  and your grandstand to just listen to how they would react to stuff
• 25:49
  and try to announce to those folks.
• 25:52
  I never really tried to instruct them like a teacher.
• 25:55
  I always tried to be the guy in the stands.
• 25:56
  And what would we talk about?
• 25:58
  What do we want for the announcer to talk about?
• 26:00
  But in regards to feature versus qualifying races, in my head,
• 26:04
  there's a guy out there with a car and he's trying to race.
• 26:08
  He thinks he's the best race driver there ever was.
• 26:11
  Something myself, I can't say anything bad about him because he's working
• 26:14
  hard on the race car and driving hard.
• 26:16
  I'm up in a race announcer's boot.
• 26:18
  So why should I say anything bad?
• 26:20
  There's no way that I could ever do that.
• 26:22
  I can't change the way I announce just because it's a qualifying race.
• 26:25
  Do I get excited for a feature?
• 26:26
  Absolutely, and who wouldn't try to approach racing the same way each time.
• 26:30
  It's a race a race a race So I tried to talk with the folks in the
• 26:35
  grandstands, imagining in my head what they might want to be curious
• 26:38
  about, what they may ask about, what they want the announcer to talk about.
• 26:42
  And that's the way I've always approached it.
• 26:44
  There's no difference in my mind for qualifying versus features.
• 26:47
  I try not to approach any of the others any differently.
• 26:50
  To me, it's all the same.
• 26:51
  The guys are out there breaking their gut in order to race.
• 26:55
  And again, they think that the best guy out there, whoever you want to
• 26:58
  talk about, drag racing, John Forrest, Formula One, so many stars in there.
• 27:02
  NASCAR, so many stars in there.
• 27:05
  Every one of them want to be there.
• 27:07
  And so do I want to watch them.
• 27:08
  I want to know.
• 27:09
  The race that they're in, I want to see and hear things that everybody
• 27:14
  would like to hear in the grandstand.
• 27:15
  You folks are part of that deal, and if you're here, you
• 27:19
  love racing just like we do.
• 27:20
  I try not to put myself above.
• 27:23
  I try to keep myself right where you are.
• 27:25
  I try to be a fan as well.
• 27:27
  That's the way I approach my racing, announcing.
• 27:30
  When I go to a racetrack, and I know Joe and I are very similar in
• 27:33
  this, and we learned it from Jack primarily, go to the racetrack.
• 27:36
  I don't care if it's the first time announcing at that track, or Starting
• 27:40
  my 52nd year at the Oswego Speedway.
• 27:42
  The first thing I do is I go to the pit area and I talk to drivers.
• 27:45
  I get all their hometown information, their sponsor
• 27:48
  information, personal information.
• 27:49
  If it's a birthday or something like that, you want to impart.
• 27:51
  I think it's very important to give that information to the fan, to make the fan
• 27:56
  relate more to the driver and not just look at a car and a color and a number.
• 28:00
  You want to know more about the driver.
• 28:02
  Also, very, very important in terms of announcing a race, you want And I
• 28:06
  was just reading an article by Bones Boschier about this very subject.
• 28:09
  You can announce a race all night long, but if you don't tell the people how
• 28:13
  this driver gets from this race to the feature race, you haven't done your job.
• 28:18
  If the fan comes in for the first time and leaves the racetrack and doesn't
• 28:22
  know how this guy got to start in that position in the feature event, you've
• 28:26
  not done your job as an announcer.
• 28:27
  And those things are very, very important.
• 28:29
  Other than that, what Mike said is absolutely right.
• 28:31
  Every race should be treated the same.
• 28:32
  Every driver should be treated the same.
• 28:34
  Joe and I alternate announcing an Oswego.
• 28:37
  He does a small block race, then I do a small block race, and he does
• 28:40
  an LR, then I do a super race, and he does a back and forth, we go.
• 28:43
  And then we, uh, we do the feature events.
• 28:45
  But because we do that, we have to stay impassioned about both
• 28:48
  divisions, the small block super modifies and the super modifies.
• 28:52
  You have to be excited about what's going on in the heat race to make
• 28:56
  sure the people understand what's going on in the feature race.
• 28:59
  So I, I agree with Mike 100%.
• 29:01
  Ditto.
• 29:02
  We're done.
• 29:02
  Okay.
• 29:04
  That's the shortest answer I've ever heard.
• 29:07
  You know, I think it's very important not only to race teams and the drivers to get
• 29:13
  their names correct and the towns are from and the program and the sponsors and all
• 29:18
  that, but I think, you know, you owe an awful lot to the fan in the grandstand.
• 29:22
  One of the things I absolutely hate is when a traveling circuit comes
• 29:28
  in I'd like to treat them just as important as our main class.
• 29:32
  And a lot of times in the traveling circuit, you do not get the right names.
• 29:38
  Just like Roy, I walk through the pit area, I try to get all the information.
• 29:42
  And you always, a guy or a car will come in late.
• 29:46
  And you can't get the name of that driver and where he's from.
• 29:51
  Well, I have adopted a family named the Belonga family.
• 29:55
  And many nights there's Billy Belonga, Bobby Belonga, Sammy
• 29:58
  Belonga, Junior Belonga, and Joey Belonga, all running in the same race.
• 30:04
  I wanted to fill that name with that car.
• 30:07
  And then I get people coming to me, That ain't Sammy Belonga.
• 30:10
  Oh, is that Joey?
• 30:12
  No.
• 30:14
  That is so and so.
• 30:15
  Okay, now I got his name.
• 30:18
  Sometimes you just can't get those names, because you're up in the tower,
• 30:21
  I mean, the race has started, and you just Many times we'll radio over into
• 30:24
  the pit area, who's in car number 17, and get some information for them,
• 30:28
  but I think it's very important.
• 30:30
  For the fan in the grandstand to know who's in that car, where that car is
• 30:33
  from, and where that driver is from.
• 30:35
  And I also like to plug as many sponsors as possible.
• 30:39
  These are the folks who put money up for tires and gas and so on.
• 30:44
  I've learned a lot of this from Roy.
• 30:45
  He is just absolutely fantastic.
• 30:47
  Plugging the sponsors and keeping the thing rolling.
• 30:50
  As far as keeping the fans informed, the same as Roy, I like to let them
• 30:54
  know how they get from race A to race B or the concierge or whatever.
• 30:59
  How the different situations happen on the speedway.
• 31:02
  We're very fortunate now because we get the replays up in the tower.
• 31:08
  Many years ago, a situation had happened out on the speedway and
• 31:12
  sometimes you had a guess at it.
• 31:14
  But today we're very fortunate to look at the replays and talk about how a
• 31:17
  situation was created on the racetrack.
• 31:20
  A car got wide, a car came in a little bit too tight, a car tried to work underneath.
• 31:24
  And you pass that along to the fans.
• 31:27
  And you know what's really neat is at the end of a race many times when you're
• 31:30
  walking out into the parking lot and so on, And hey, you're Joe, aren't you?
• 31:33
  Yeah, geez.
• 31:34
  You know, I disagreed with that call that they made out there,
• 31:38
  but after you said it, uh, you described how it was and everything.
• 31:42
  I agree.
• 31:43
  That's it.
• 31:44
  You gotta give them a show, and you gotta let them all know where they're from.
• 31:49
  Just a quick story.
• 31:50
  We're all race fans here.
• 31:52
  We love racing.
• 31:53
  And you have to project that when you're announcing.
• 31:56
  I remember one specific race.
• 31:59
  New Jersey Motorsport Park.
• 32:01
  Ferrari Challenge race.
• 32:02
  There's nine cars in the race.
• 32:04
  The track is 2.
• 32:05
  2 miles long, cars are separated.
• 32:08
  I've got cars passing in the back where we can't see, and I've got them
• 32:12
  running up and setting up for passes.
• 32:14
  At the end of the race, I walked down out of the tower, and somebody came up to me
• 32:18
  and said, Whoa, that was an exciting race.
• 32:21
  And I go, I did my job.
• 32:26
  Yeah.
• 32:26
  Yep.
• 32:27
  Let's have more nine car fields.
• 32:31
  I think things are a little bit different in road racing.
• 32:33
  With the support classes, if anything, you have to work harder at those,
• 32:36
  because you don't know the people, you're trying to build up the event.
• 32:39
  In a lot of cases, help drivers come along with their careers.
• 32:41
  So the stars in the big race may be better known.
• 32:44
  You put a lot of effort into that, but you also put a lot of
• 32:46
  effort into the support classes.
• 32:48
  I think what's changing the most And it's all about bandwidth now.
• 32:53
  When I started, I had a scorer by the name of Craig Robertson who could sit through
• 32:58
  a six hour firehawk race and write down the positions of the cars for six hours.
• 33:02
  I don't know how he did it.
• 33:04
  Now it's all computerized.
• 33:05
  We have access to it.
• 33:06
  The fans have access to it.
• 33:08
  So that's changing.
• 33:09
  In fact, now you can go to a road race, bring your iPad with you, watch the
• 33:14
  TV highlights as they're broadcast.
• 33:16
  So it's really changing the character and One of the things I think an
• 33:19
  announcer needs to do, names and numbers are always important.
• 33:22
  Mike Joy spent some time at Round Rock as the track manager, and I
• 33:25
  learned a lot from him, from his announcing background as well.
• 33:29
  He said, names and numbers.
• 33:30
  You've always got to connect names and numbers.
• 33:32
  Now with the numbers on some of the cars, it's so hard to see.
• 33:34
  You watch a Formula One race.
• 33:36
  I don't know what car is what.
• 33:37
  I can't tell from the paint scheme.
• 33:39
  You're trying to see what helmet is on the driver to tell who's in what car.
• 33:44
  You guys started to say it's all about bandwidth.
• 33:46
  People now bring their iPads to the race.
• 33:48
  They're watching the scoring system.
• 33:50
  They're watching the TV highlights.
• 33:52
  The announcer, I'm trying to do, I'm trying to anticipate when
• 33:54
  are pit stops going to come up?
• 33:56
  Who's gaining ground on who?
• 33:57
  Whose car might be starting to go off?
• 33:59
  And I think that's changed the character of what I do a little bit.
• 34:02
  The other thing is with vintage racing now, which is very
• 34:05
  popular on the road racing side.
• 34:07
  It's really much more about the cars, the history of the cars.
• 34:10
  The technical nature of them, you know, the technical background
• 34:13
  when they were built, who's driven them over the years, much more of a
• 34:17
  point of emphasis than the drivers.
• 34:19
  A lot of it's already been stated relative to support
• 34:21
  classes versus highlight classes.
• 34:23
  My view is they all paid the same amount of money to race.
• 34:26
  They have the same desire to win.
• 34:28
  Compete as the top guys.
• 34:30
  And so you try to treat everybody equally.
• 34:32
  And that's kind of been the theme that's been stated here so far.
• 34:35
  Talking about who's made this race possible, these cars possible.
• 34:38
  Another story, I'll pick up on the point that was made earlier.
• 34:41
  I'll never forget this night at Spencer Speedway, the Spencer brothers ran the
• 34:45
  place and they were interesting folks.
• 34:47
  Some of you knew them.
• 34:48
  I think they've all died now, but I never viewed them as really race fans.
• 34:51
  They were in this to make a buck.
• 34:52
  And they had built the track with out of mortgage and they worked real jobs,
• 34:56
  their husband and wife team and so forth.
• 34:57
  It was a big deal with them, but they were kind of phasing out a little bit.
• 35:01
  And Dell and Evelyn's son, Gary became the manager or
• 35:04
  whatever his title was later on.
• 35:06
  And he had me doing the stupidest stuff.
• 35:08
  He was trying to change the image of the track and racing.
• 35:11
  And they had, uh, Evel Knievel was a big deal then.
• 35:13
  Well, they didn't have Evel Knievel, obviously, but they
• 35:15
  had somebody on a bicycle.
• 35:17
  Laughing Jumping from one place to the other, and I'm supposed
• 35:21
  to get excited about that.
• 35:23
  And I say, I'm a race fan, I'm not into this for anything, this other stuff.
• 35:26
  Anyway, so, I like put up with that.
• 35:28
  I ended my career at Spencer Speedway on a particular night.
• 35:31
  When I was announcing Richie Evans was sponsored by B.
• 35:34
  R.
• 35:34
  DeWitter and Gary came to me and said you don't talk about that at all, you
• 35:37
  talk about the track sponsors and he had sponsors for the night and so forth.
• 35:40
  With that I announced that this would be my last night
• 35:42
  at Spencer's B Way and it was.
• 35:43
  The initial question was any difference between sport classes and major classes
• 35:47
  and absolutely none and it's great racing.
• 35:49
  I know you just finished Gary, but I'm going to start with you and actually you
• 35:52
  and Roy have already touched on this, but I'm curious how difficult it is for you.
• 35:58
  To be the announcer when a death occurs again, you've already
• 36:01
  touched on it to a degree.
• 36:02
  Roy has touched on it.
• 36:04
  I was at Oswego the night Jimmy was killed.
• 36:07
  We didn't know anything about it in the stands.
• 36:09
  In fact, they pulled the car around the front straightaway.
• 36:11
  It didn't even look like it had been hit.
• 36:13
  Wasn't until the next day that I learned that I'm just curious how you deal with
• 36:17
  that and how you keep the program going.
• 36:20
  That sounds ridiculous, but I've been really lucky in that regard with the
• 36:24
  Spencer Speedways incident that we talked about, it was obvious that
• 36:27
  that program was done that night.
• 36:29
  I mean, it was a tragedy and it was the feature event and
• 36:31
  it was late and so forth.
• 36:32
  And so it was no question we were not going to continue, which we didn't.
• 36:35
  So I had to have to keep that going at all.
• 36:37
  Only other time that I announced a race where there was a fatality,
• 36:40
  where I was the announcer was at rolling wheels, a crash bar came
• 36:43
  into the grandstand and killed him.
• 36:45
  Right down below where we were announcing from, but most people didn't realize that.
• 36:49
  Of course, Donnie didn't want us talking about that.
• 36:51
  We didn't.
• 36:52
  And so that race program went on like nothing had happened.
• 36:54
  But for a certain number of people, they knew something had happened,
• 36:57
  but we didn't talk about it.
• 36:58
  The other events where I've been involved where fatalities have occurred, One was
• 37:02
  here at Watkins Glen when McDuffie got killed and that happened at my feet.
• 37:06
  I was announcing in that whatever turn that is at the end of the, they've not
• 37:09
  got the loop or she came down there, whatever, but again, it was the MRN deal.
• 37:12
  And I didn't have to keep the whole thing going.
• 37:14
  And it was a long delay.
• 37:15
  I was at Homestead when John Demachek got killed in a truck race.
• 37:18
  But again, MRN, so they.
• 37:20
  Continue to think I didn't have to do much with it.
• 37:22
  I think those are the only events that I've been to as an announcer where there
• 37:26
  were fatalities and for that I'm really lucky because I've gone to a lot of
• 37:30
  races and a lot of dangerous things have happened, but that's about it So I was
• 37:33
  lucky in that it's not very many of them number one and number two that I didn't
• 37:36
  have to keep the program Going like we're already talking about situations in Oswego
• 37:41
  I recently had to deal with the aftermath of a fatal accident at Lime Rock.
• 37:46
  There are a couple of things that I wanted to keep in mind during that
• 37:49
  time, and keep in mind in general with dealing with these kinds of situations.
• 37:52
  First of all, I don't speculate.
• 37:54
  The only information I work off of, is information that's provided to me by the
• 37:59
  people in race control because they're the ones who know the situation, and
• 38:02
  they're the ones who, along with the track owner or track promoter who make the
• 38:06
  decision how they want it to be handled.
• 38:08
  This is also true in any incident.
• 38:10
  I wouldn't speculate unless you see it with your own eyes.
• 38:13
  Driver gets out of the car, and you know they're not hurt.
• 38:15
  In road racing, we're taking information from various corner stations.
• 38:19
  It's going through one group of people, and there's a lot of noise and a lot
• 38:22
  of confusion as an incident unfolds.
• 38:24
  But to get back to this particular incident at Lime Rock, we knew
• 38:28
  it was a very serious accident.
• 38:30
  The program was stopped.
• 38:32
  This was in the middle of the day.
• 38:33
  We run during the day, so we're not dealing with an evening event.
• 38:37
  In the state of Connecticut, the Connecticut State Police
• 38:39
  investigate all racetrack injuries.
• 38:43
  So the events stopped.
• 38:44
  Connecticut State Police came in and just like any other accident, there
• 38:47
  are police cars out on the track.
• 38:49
  They're doing all of the measurements, all of the photographs that they do.
• 38:52
  So it'll Long time when the event was not running and we didn't
• 38:56
  know if it was going to continue.
• 38:58
  I was fortunate that I had a partner working with me that
• 39:01
  day by the name of Tom Hill.
• 39:02
  And Tom does some color commentary while I will do play by play.
• 39:06
  So we started talking about the car show that was coming up and some other
• 39:09
  things that were going on at the track.
• 39:10
  Some cars that Tom had seen in the paddock.
• 39:13
  And then the word came that we were going to continue the event.
• 39:15
  Now we still didn't know the outcome of that.
• 39:18
  We went on with the event and then subsequently we found out that those
• 39:21
  injuries proved to be fatal to the driver.
• 39:23
  It was probably the saddest day I've spent a lime rock.
• 39:26
  This was a weekend event.
• 39:27
  This happened on Saturday, so then we had to come back and do the whole
• 39:29
  program on Monday and I wasn't sure.
• 39:32
  How we were going to approach the whole topic.
• 39:35
  Fortunately, we have a great relationship with the church that's across the
• 39:39
  road from us, Trinity Episcopal, the Reverend Heidi Truex always does
• 39:43
  our invocation and she's wonderful.
• 39:46
  And in this particular instance, you just found the right words, I think,
• 39:49
  to put us all at ease and let us go on.
• 39:52
  That really was a moving experience for me.
• 39:55
  I think I've been fortunate.
• 39:56
  I don't believe anybody's had a fatality that some serious injuries.
• 40:00
  Well, announcing we mostly don't talk about it because
• 40:03
  you don't know all the details.
• 40:06
  We just kind of gloss over that.
• 40:07
  I just want to add a little bit.
• 40:09
  What Frank said that now with HIPAA, you have to be very careful
• 40:12
  about what you say, unless there's something official that comes out.
• 40:16
  I would never speculate on anything that's happened.
• 40:18
  Let me just go back to one other incident that happened last year, which will, I
• 40:22
  hope, illustrate why you don't speculate.
• 40:24
  I was at Watkins Glen for a Formula 1600 series event.
• 40:28
  I'm not listening to the corner stations, I'm listening to our series race director.
• 40:31
  And I hit a report, a car hit the guardrail, the driver was out of the car.
• 40:36
  And then the next thing I hear is, we need the ambulance.
• 40:39
  Well, what had happened was, the front of the car had started to collapse.
• 40:43
  The driver jumped out of the car, didn't realize he had a broken ankle.
• 40:46
  And when he landed on the ground, you can imagine what happened.
• 40:49
  Well, he passed out, half on the grass, half on the racetrack.
• 40:52
  So even when you see a driver get out of the car, you're not
• 40:54
  sure exactly what's happened.
• 40:56
  So that's why you You'd never want to speculate.
• 40:59
  You really can't go with anything except the official word that you get from the
• 41:03
  people who have the inside information.
• 41:05
  And therefore they're the ones who are setting the tone
• 41:08
  and the subsequent events.
• 41:10
  I was at the track when Jimmy was killed.
• 41:11
  I've been at the track, fortunately, just one other time when someone was killed.
• 41:16
  And I never understood when people who don't understand racing or don't like
• 41:20
  racing would tell me that, Oh, people just go to the races to see people get hurt.
• 41:23
  And it's like, no, I have been to races when people are hurt and there
• 41:26
  is nobody that goes there for that.
• 41:28
  It is like you pump the balloon up and somebody puts a pin
• 41:32
  in it and it all goes away.
• 41:34
  So I never, for a second, ever bought into that, but it has happened.
• 41:37
  Joe, do you have any thoughts?
• 41:39
  I'll tell you one thing I'll never forget.
• 41:41
  I was working Canada English Speedway with Gary Montgomery, and at the conclusion
• 41:45
  of the race, I would do the write up, and Gary would go down and into the office
• 41:51
  or wherever, and would call in results to the local newspapers and so on.
• 41:56
  This year was 1982.
• 41:57
  Gary came back up into the tower and he said, Joe and I turned around and
• 42:01
  looked, and he was as white as a ghost.
• 42:04
  I said, what's up?
• 42:05
  He said, I called the Democrat the Chronicle to give him our results.
• 42:09
  And he, they informed me that Jim Cine died at a swig tonight.
• 42:13
  It was like the date of Earth stood still.
• 42:15
  It was just unbelievable.
• 42:17
  Later that night, I got in the car and drove out with my family
• 42:21
  and drove up through the pits.
• 42:22
  Merv Treichler was sitting on his trailer.
• 42:24
  I said, Merv, you here?
• 42:26
  He nodded yes.
• 42:27
  It's something you just don't want to go through.
• 42:29
  It's like losing the closest member of your family.
• 42:33
  I have been announcing at maybe three or four different tracks
• 42:36
  that a tragedy has taken place.
• 42:39
  Dennis Taney, a candidate with Speedway.
• 42:42
  First time I ever announced at New York State Fairgrounds under Ira Vail.
• 42:45
  For Car went into the audience, into the crowd between turns three
• 42:49
  and four and killed the person.
• 42:51
  It was at Syracuse the night Kevin Fleming was killed.
• 42:55
  We knew it was a bad accident up in the tower.
• 42:58
  I was announcing with Doug Elkins.
• 43:00
  Glenn came over to our side of the tower and he said we just had
• 43:04
  word that we probably have one fatality and one seriously injured.
• 43:07
  Just kind of looked at Glenn and Glenn was a type of leader that just took control
• 43:12
  and he said, here's what we're going to do the 4th of July show, we're going to
• 43:15
  lower the lights, we're going to do the fireworks and the personnel is going to
• 43:19
  go in the back straight away, clean up the situation, but we don't say anything.
• 43:23
  We did exactly that and we continued with the program.
• 43:27
  Now, I never said it, Doug Elkins never said it, but boy, the word got through the
• 43:31
  grandstand in a pit area like wildfire.
• 43:33
  It was just unbelievable.
• 43:35
  One of the other things I remember, we did put a dirt asphalt race on
• 43:38
  at the Nazareth 1 mile speedway.
• 43:41
  And that's when Roger Penske owned the facility.
• 43:44
  Prior to the race, we had to be at a race meet at about 7 o'clock in the morning.
• 43:48
  And all the corner workers were there, and this was in
• 43:51
  conjunction with an IndyCar race.
• 43:53
  All the corner workers were there, safety people, flaggers,
• 43:57
  everybody that worked on the track.
• 43:58
  And I gotta tell you, I never saw a leader in my life like Roger Penske.
• 44:02
  We all sat there and he says, where are the announcers?
• 44:06
  And I put my hand up, Tim Pitts put his hand up, and the IndyCar
• 44:09
  announcer put his hand up.
• 44:11
  He said, why don't you three guys sit in over there?
• 44:13
  And then he went over everything, strategically, in their positions
• 44:17
  of what they're doing in case of an emergency and everything.
• 44:20
  Finally, the room cleared out.
• 44:22
  It was Roger Penske, his right hand man, Glenn Donnelly was in
• 44:25
  the room, and the three announcers.
• 44:27
  He said, gentlemen, I want to just go over one situation.
• 44:32
  In the event of a fatality or a tragic accident on the speedway, number
• 44:38
  one, here's what's going to happen.
• 44:39
  He says, the injured person will be taken in an ambulance to the infield hospital.
• 44:45
  The helicopter will be standing by.
• 44:47
  In the event that helicopter takes off and goes to the
• 44:50
  hospital, we don't talk about it.
• 44:54
  And I'm going to tell you, he said this like a military general.
• 44:57
  The show will go on.
• 44:59
  We will never say if the party is deceased, they'll read about
• 45:03
  it in the paper the next day.
• 45:04
  Do you have it?
• 45:05
  He pointed at each one of us.
• 45:07
  Yes, sir.
• 45:07
  Meeting is done.
• 45:08
  Thank you.
• 45:09
  And boy, I gotta tell you, that rang a bell to me like you wouldn't
• 45:12
  believe, but these things happen and it's part of the sport.
• 45:16
  And like the other gentleman said, no one goes to the
• 45:19
  racetrack to see anyone killed.
• 45:21
  Those things have happened.
• 45:23
  It's part of the game.
• 45:24
  But you deal with it as best as you can as it happens.
• 45:27
  Oswego had a reputation for a long time of being a violent track.
• 45:32
  The steel walls, inside and outside.
• 45:35
  During the 64 years so far of the track, I was just trying
• 45:39
  to figure it out in my head.
• 45:41
  Not counting drivers who died of heart attacks.
• 45:44
  There have been at least 8 fatalities at the Oswego Speedway.
• 45:47
  One happened before I started to announce there.
• 45:50
  I was on mic for all seven of the other ones.
• 45:53
  It's never easy.
• 45:54
  Roy, I think a good thing to bring up too is, we have had at Oswego,
• 45:58
  a couple people on the speedway that have had heart attacks.
• 46:02
  Three.
• 46:02
  Three.
• 46:03
  And I'm gonna tell ya, I've gone to many, many speedways around the country.
• 46:08
  The emergency crew at the Oswego Speedway is second to none.
• 46:11
  And Roy, I think you can take over how they have saved lives.
• 46:14
  We've had three incidents in the last five years of people suffering what
• 46:18
  would have been a fatal heart attack had it happened at any other racetrack.
• 46:21
  One of them was in Victory Lane.
• 46:22
  One of them was in the grandstand.
• 46:24
  And one of them was in the pit area, a driver.
• 46:27
  In all three cases, it took at least a half an hour or more to stabilize
• 46:32
  the person, bring them back to life.
• 46:34
  In two of the cases, the person died several times and was brought back.
• 46:38
  Now there are two interesting things about this that have happened.
• 46:41
  One I don't understand, one I do understand.
• 46:43
  The track safety crew is fantastic.
• 46:45
  They're not going to make a move until they know the patient is
• 46:49
  stabilized and ready to move.
• 46:51
  Now what happens with that, however, is You get people in the grandstand
• 46:54
  who don't know what's going on, and they will actually boo the safety crew.
• 46:57
  It's happened on several occasions, but the track safety crew at
• 47:00
  Oswego is absolutely phenomenal.
• 47:03
  It's the best in any weekly run track in the country, and I don't
• 47:06
  think you can find another racetrack in the country that has saved one
• 47:09
  heart attack victim, let alone three.
• 47:11
  I have only been involved with three fatalities, but only one of
• 47:16
  them was on a microphone capacity.
• 47:18
  Dale Earnhardt Sr., down at Daytona in 2001.
• 47:20
  I was in victory lane.
• 47:22
  I was supposed to interview him because he was the owner of Michael
• 47:25
  Waltrip's team who won the race.
• 47:27
  We're in down in victory lane and we're standing and waiting for Dale
• 47:31
  to show up because we figured because he's the car owner, he'll be there.
• 47:34
  And he never did.
• 47:35
  I was standing next to one of the guys who was security.
• 47:38
  He was listening to his radio on an earphone and he said,
• 47:41
  It doesn't look good for Dale.
• 47:42
  He had a bad wreck in Turn 3.
• 47:44
  And we kind of already knew that, and he said that the ambulance
• 47:47
  was taking him to the hospital.
• 47:49
  It doesn't look good.
• 47:50
  And that's one, obviously, I'll never forget.
• 47:52
  The other two incidents, again, were not while I was on the mic, thankfully.
• 47:56
  I actually witnessed the death when I was a spectator on the back
• 47:59
  section of the boot at Watkins Glen.
• 48:01
  It was a Formula One driver.
• 48:03
  His name was Helmut Koenig.
• 48:04
  I believe I'm pronouncing that right.
• 48:06
  Came down the boot section out of turn six and into turn
• 48:10
  seven, and the car never turned.
• 48:12
  And Watkins Glen at that time had three catch fences that
• 48:15
  were made out of chicken wire.
• 48:17
  And those catch fences were supposed to slow the car down.
• 48:20
  And in that case, he didn't, you know a formula car's got a
• 48:23
  pointy nose on the front of it.
• 48:25
  So as he went, made his way through the three catch fences,
• 48:28
  the fence never held the car.
• 48:30
  I don't want to get graphic here, but the Armco guardrail was bolted in place.
• 48:36
  You can just imagine when the car hit it.
• 48:38
  It's a formula car.
• 48:39
  It's head is above the driver's cockpit and it hit so hard that the guardrail
• 48:43
  bolts on the top did not break.
• 48:46
  The ones on the bottom, however, did and it swung open like a gate.
• 48:49
  Now you can imagine what happened at that point.
• 48:51
  So it was one of the things that I saw, and I don't want to
• 48:54
  see anything like that again.
• 48:55
  J.
• 48:55
  D.
• 48:56
  McDuffie is the other one.
• 48:57
  Again, I didn't see it.
• 48:58
  I was down in the S's as a spectator.
• 49:00
  I'm thinking to myself, hey, the race has been stopped.
• 49:02
  Nobody's telling us why.
• 49:04
  State police cars are on the racetrack.
• 49:06
  That never happens.
• 49:07
  Ambulances and, uh, track safety crew obviously made their way over there.
• 49:12
  And I knew things were bad at that point.
• 49:14
  Like I said, you never see a state police car on a racetrack.
• 49:16
  But here again, I'm sure all of these guys have already mentioned it.
• 49:20
  We are told not to speculate, not to guess, wait for a future word, and
• 49:26
  usually that means the track owner or whoever is promoting the race,
• 49:30
  tells us, And sometimes how to say it.
• 49:34
  And in regards to Adele Senior, Well, I've never seen any organization
• 49:39
  snap into action faster than NASCAR.
• 49:41
  They took over the situation from the very beginning.
• 49:44
  And I remember being at Victory Lane and walking over to the press
• 49:47
  center because Mike Helton was going to give the official word.
• 49:50
  He walked into the press center.
• 49:52
  We already knew what happened.
• 49:54
  Announcement that he made.
• 49:55
  I know you remember it.
• 49:56
  If you were watching TV, he said, we've lost Dale and the whole room hushed,
• 50:01
  you could feel the temperature drop.
• 50:02
  That's what it felt like.
• 50:03
  It was like cold again at a time.
• 50:05
  I don't want to ever see or experience again, but NASCAR
• 50:09
  jumping into action, took control.
• 50:11
  And the next day I was told not to even wear a Daytona shirt because they
• 50:15
  were afraid that media would come up and try to get a statement from us.
• 50:18
  And we really didn't know what happened.
• 50:20
  I hope you have a better question for the next couple of minutes.
• 50:24
  This track has the best hot dogs.
• 50:27
  I'm going to have to lighten things up here a bit.
• 50:30
  It happens in racing, and these gentlemen are such professionals and have been
• 50:34
  involved in the sport for so long.
• 50:35
  I just thought that was something that we should touch on.
• 50:38
  We won't dwell on it.
• 50:39
  Now what I'd like to know from everybody is how has the sport changed
• 50:43
  either for the better or the worse?
• 50:45
  Frank, obviously you can comment on this from a driver's perspective because
• 50:50
  you've been driving for 40 plus years.
• 50:52
  Now everybody else here will comment on it chiefly from the announcing profession.
• 50:56
  So I'm curious as to how you feel the sport has changed positively
• 51:00
  or negatively over the years.
• 51:02
  Let's actually start with Joe.
• 51:04
  Well, you know, earlier today, I brought some picture frames of
• 51:07
  old race cars that ran around the Empire State, Northeast, whether
• 51:12
  they were a dirt car or asphalt car.
• 51:14
  I also had a collection of them that I passed around.
• 51:17
  And those were the days that a guy could virtually pull a car out of a
• 51:21
  junkyard, out of a backyard, strip the car down, put a roll cage in it, do some
• 51:26
  modifications to the engine, put a good set of brakes in it, and go out racing.
• 51:30
  Today, that just doesn't happen.
• 51:33
  Whether it be dirt or asphalt, it has really changed an awful, awful lot.
• 51:38
  They're cookie cutter cars today.
• 51:40
  Here again, whether they were dirt modified and asphalt modified, super
• 51:44
  modified, there is some changing around in there and you can look at
• 51:47
  a car and say, this is a Hawk chassis or home built chassis or whatever.
• 51:52
  I like it the old way I've been doing it for 51 years now.
• 51:55
  So I guess that's the old fashioned way.
• 51:57
  It was funny showing those pictures today.
• 51:59
  Mike Monet is here.
• 52:00
  Mike could say, um, well, that car was originally the Don Diffendorf car,
• 52:05
  and then it became a Jimmy Covell car.
• 52:07
  Then it became the Boach Harris car and so on down the line.
• 52:11
  I don't know if you can do it today.
• 52:13
  The cars that are on the street are totally different
• 52:15
  than what they used to be.
• 52:16
  Everything is front wheel drive or all wheel drive.
• 52:19
  You just can't pull a car out of the weeds and put a roll cage in it anymore.
• 52:23
  But I sure liked it the old way because those were cars were cars and
• 52:27
  men were men and racing was racing.
• 52:30
  Racing quality is just as good.
• 52:32
  I mean, maybe the lap times are much, much better today.
• 52:35
  Maybe in any given track, whether it be a Speedway or, uh, Ransomville Speedway,
• 52:41
  a Lancaster Speedway, an Oswego Speedway.
• 52:44
  Lap times are way, way down.
• 52:46
  And we're always looking to try to set a record and makes a good story.
• 52:49
  And even on the national circuit, whether it be in the NASCAR circuit
• 52:53
  or whatever, it's pretty much all cookie cutter, but it's racing.
• 52:56
  We're going to live with it.
• 52:58
  They brought a race car to the Oswego Speedway last year that
• 53:00
  used to race in the early 1960s.
• 53:02
  The guy was out of Kentucky and his first name was Wayne and I
• 53:04
  cannot remember his last name.
• 53:07
  Wayne McGuire.
• 53:08
  The seat is a wooden seat.
• 53:10
  It's a plank that goes across the car.
• 53:12
  Yeah.
• 53:13
  Safety has changed a lot.
• 53:15
  Uh, Swigler's been, as I mentioned, a violent track, but since the
• 53:18
  end of the, uh, 1990s, when A.
• 53:20
  J.
• 53:20
  Michaels was killed, and they started with the foam walls at Swigler, the
• 53:24
  foam barriers, and they went, uh, Swigler made mandatory seats, the
• 53:27
  Butler style seat at that point.
• 53:29
  You know, they use the Hans device and everything like that.
• 53:32
  We've had some horrible crashes, but no bad injuries because of all the
• 53:35
  safety processes that have gone on.
• 53:37
  But when you look back at what it was back then, you know, the roll cage
• 53:42
  came up like this on a lot of these cars, easy to fly out of the car.
• 53:45
  And even before then there were no roll cages.
• 53:47
  The safety aspect of the sport has changed tremendously and all
• 53:51
  for the better, in my opinion.
• 53:54
  The racing, as was already mentioned, technology wise, every
• 53:57
  day it seems like it's changing.
• 53:58
  And now with the advent of social media, there's all kinds of speculation about
• 54:03
  what this car is and what that car isn't.
• 54:05
  And I agree with the Coca Cola mentality.
• 54:08
  There doesn't seem to be much reward anymore for people to go into their
• 54:12
  garage in the backyard or whatever, and build a car that can take out everybody.
• 54:16
  Lap everybody.
• 54:17
  Can you think about that now?
• 54:18
  Somebody lapped somebody out in the They'd be accused of cheating,
• 54:23
  not because they had hard work.
• 54:25
  Just bugs the heck out of me.
• 54:26
  That's the case.
• 54:28
  Look, I like looking at a computer and a score chart just like anybody.
• 54:31
  But the idea that somebody can work hard and actually perform
• 54:36
  better than anybody else.
• 54:37
  The whole cookie cutter concept I am just, I don't like.
• 54:41
  The whole concept is pretty similar to the way we live in this world now.
• 54:44
  Nobody is better than anybody else.
• 54:46
  Everything should be on the same plane.
• 54:48
  And there's no rewards for doing your homework.
• 54:51
  The future we've already seen in racing, if you watch the premium
• 54:55
  channels on cable, they've already done Formula E, which is electric racing.
• 54:59
  To me it sounds like turbo slack cars, that's what it sounds like to me.
• 55:03
  That don't even sound like race cars.
• 55:05
  There's no such thing as a pit stop even.
• 55:08
  What they do is they bring the cars into the pits, they jump into
• 55:10
  another one that's fully charged.
• 55:12
  They take it back out to the racetrack.
• 55:14
  There's no working on the same car trying to get it better through the race.
• 55:17
  If you think racing's changed now, you wait until we get into all electric.
• 55:21
  And it's probably bad for me to say that because we just have
• 55:24
  the Green Grand Prix down here.
• 55:27
  That's a big bugaboo, man.
• 55:28
  I just have a hard time.
• 55:31
  I agree with you on the electric concept.
• 55:33
  I said an hour ago, what attracted me to racing?
• 55:36
  One of the things is the sound, the sound.
• 55:38
  I don't care if it's a super Doswego, a V12 Ferrari, something in between.
• 55:43
  It's the sound.
• 55:44
  And I agree with you, Mike, there is no sound.
• 55:47
  Now, Glendonley's developing some electric sprint cars, I guess, to run
• 55:51
  at his new motorsports track up in Syracuse, and maybe that'll be cool.
• 55:55
  But again, if you take the sound away from me, you've taken away a very large
• 55:58
  portion of what turns me on anyway.
• 56:01
  We're all learning in the tower now to go, Vroom, vroom, vroom!
• 56:04
  That's how it's done.
• 56:08
  Best sound I ever heard was when I put Watkins Glen during the six hours in the
• 56:12
  K& M series where the two classes were allowed to race together because they
• 56:16
  didn't have a full field of K& M cars.
• 56:18
  Porsches, six cylinders, Ferrari, V12s, big block Chevys, small block
• 56:23
  Chevys, all resonating off the trees coming into the boot section.
• 56:27
  It was like a symphony, I'll never forget it.
• 56:28
  One of the best things I've ever heard.
• 56:31
  And of course, that's why vintage racing is so good today.
• 56:34
  It's also a lot less expensive.
• 56:36
  Old guys with old cars, and even some young guys with old cars.
• 56:39
  And you can do it, maybe not a Can Am car or a GTP car,
• 56:43
  but you can do it on a budget.
• 56:44
  You've got an old Alfa Romeo or a 1981 Formula Ford.
• 56:49
  Simple to operate, simple to work on, not very expensive.
• 56:53
  My motor lasted 10 years, we just took it apart.
• 56:56
  That's cheap racing.
• 56:57
  Here's the difference today, is four years ago, this shirt.
• 57:02
  I walked into a Ferrari banquet, and I had my Watkins Glen shirt
• 57:06
  on, and this guy goes, Nice shirt.
• 57:08
  And he sits down next to me, and I start telling him stories about racing.
• 57:12
  And he owns a Ferrari, he's just sold his company, and talking about the total
• 57:16
  24 hour, And he goes, Well, let's do it.
• 57:17
  I said, Well, I'm a regular working guy, I can't do that.
• 57:20
  He says, Sold my company, I got a lot of money, let's do it.
• 57:22
  For the one race, the 50th anniversary of the Rolex 24 hour, In a used car.
• 57:30
  Porsche GT3 Cup car.
• 57:32
  I spent a half a million dollars of his money.
• 57:35
  We had some good times.
• 57:36
  And the car, at the end of the race, went into his garage.
• 57:40
  That's the difference.
• 57:41
  My Formula Ford is worth about 12, 000.
• 57:45
  My first race car was 450.
• 57:47
  I bought it out of a barn in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
• 57:50
  It was a 1958 Elva sports racing car.
• 57:53
  I bought it in 1968.
• 57:55
  I sold that car for a ton of money.
• 57:57
  The end of the year, 600 bucks.
• 58:01
  The last guy had a price tag on it of 95, 000, but that's another story.
• 58:06
  Oh, great.
• 58:08
  I agree with Roy.
• 58:09
  I think that what's improved most is the safety of the cars,
• 58:12
  and that's nothing but good.
• 58:13
  The downside, which I think Frank touched on a little bit, was
• 58:17
  technology now has gotten so advanced that it's not approachable anymore.
• 58:20
  This is, I think, in all forms of racing.
• 58:23
  I open the hood of my car now, and they don't even want you touching me.
• 58:26
  You know, there's a big piece of plastic there.
• 58:28
  And that's different from when I was growing up.
• 58:30
  We could change the crutch on a Volkswagen Bug in 30 minutes.
• 58:33
  Lift the back of the car up, drop the engine out, change the crutch, put it back
• 58:36
  in, and we weren't intimidated by that.
• 58:37
  The complexity with all the electronics now, you know, I can't see electricity,
• 58:41
  you know, there's these sensors and these wires and they must be doing something,
• 58:44
  but I don't know exactly what it is.
• 58:46
  And I think that that and the fact that there are so many more things
• 58:49
  for young people to be involved with now, skateboards, bicycling, X games,
• 58:54
  kinds of things that the automobile does not have the same place in society
• 58:59
  that it had when I was growing up.
• 59:01
  Racing is going to change and the young people who are involved Look
• 59:04
  at it a little bit differently.
• 59:06
  I'll tell you what my pet peeve in racing is, and that is all of the
• 59:08
  artificial rules that have been created.
• 59:10
  The lucky dog, the push to pass.
• 59:14
  It used to be very simple as an announcer to explain to people what was going on.
• 59:18
  The cars are out there, they're racing one another.
• 59:22
  Now it's, well, you know, the tires are degrading and they're going to
• 59:24
  have to stop to change the tires.
• 59:26
  They've introduced a level of complexity that, to me, just isn't I guess for the
• 59:30
  show it's needed, but to me it's upset what used to be the essence of the sport.
• 59:35
  I'm not sure I'm going to transition from skateboards back to where we're at.
• 59:39
  We've touched on all of it here.
• 59:41
  Cookie cutter business, I agree with it.
• 59:43
  They're terrible.
• 59:44
  Nothing prettier to me today than seeing a real one or imagining or looking
• 59:48
  at Joe's photos of a 37 Ford Coupe.
• 59:50
  Not modified much, but just enough to make it a race car.
• 59:53
  Those were beautiful cars, and not just the Fords and Chevrolet.
• 59:56
  Safety, again, has been touched on, and Roy even touched on it specifically.
• 1:00:00
  And we had this question in advance that was going to talk about safety.
• 1:00:03
  I didn't see the guy with the board seat, but if you look at a car that raced
• 1:00:06
  at Waterloo back in the 50s or 60s or whatever and you see them, it might have
• 1:00:10
  been a bucket seat that came out of an old airplane or something or other, but
• 1:00:12
  there was about as much support to it as this chair that I'm sitting in right now.
• 1:00:16
  And these new low joy seats and the various manufacturers have
• 1:00:19
  just made it so much safer.
• 1:00:20
  And that's what's wonderful.
• 1:00:22
  So the technology in the safety aspects of it all are great
• 1:00:25
  technology that's costing so much money for everybody for everything.
• 1:00:29
  Some of it's safety, some of it for performance is too bad.
• 1:00:32
  I liked it the old way, put new seats in old cars and I'd be happy.
• 1:00:36
  I think my point about the skateboards was these are things
• 1:00:39
  that young people can afford.
• 1:00:40
  Where now it's harder to get people like us who didn't have
• 1:00:44
  a connection to the sport.
• 1:00:45
  I mean there are lots of second and third generation racers that benefit
• 1:00:48
  from their family affiliation.
• 1:00:49
  To find someone coming into the sport now with no background is much harder because.
• 1:00:54
  The cost of entry is so much higher.
• 1:00:56
  My fear is that racing will evolve into Formula E and drifting.
• 1:01:00
  It's almost there.
• 1:01:01
  Let me put in a good word for cars that don't make much noise.
• 1:01:04
  A few years ago, I had the opportunity to drive a car that was built for what
• 1:01:08
  was known as the Volkswagen GTI series.
• 1:01:11
  These were diesel powered cars.
• 1:01:13
  They made no noise from the outside.
• 1:01:15
  When you're inside the car driving them, they It was just
• 1:01:17
  like any other racing car.
• 1:01:18
  You had the line from the transmission and they put on good races.
• 1:01:21
  They were real racing cars and they were fast.
• 1:01:24
  That's one of the changes us graybeards and the like may have to adapt to.
• 1:01:28
  But there will be different kinds of racing that will attract different people.
• 1:01:31
  I can't say the electric cars do much for me, but quiet racing cars in some
• 1:01:35
  venues are going to be one of the things that helps to keep the sport going.
• 1:01:39
  Okay.
• 1:01:44
  I think the problem is that for all of us up here is we come from a
• 1:01:47
  different age and there's a new age.
• 1:01:49
  All right.
• 1:01:50
  Here's my last question.
• 1:01:51
  And this is what I think is going to let us segue into stories,
• 1:01:53
  stories, and more stories.
• 1:01:54
  We'll start with Mike and then work down favorite tracks, favorite series.
• 1:01:58
  drivers, best interview, worst interview, whatever one of those you
• 1:02:02
  want to take and just roll from there.
• 1:02:03
  Wow, obviously the track up here on the hill where I got my start with
• 1:02:07
  Al Robinson in 1995 is my favorite.
• 1:02:10
  Daytona, obviously I made it to there, that's the pinnacle.
• 1:02:13
  As far as other tracks are concerned, Virginia International
• 1:02:16
  Raceway, another road racing course I was lucky to be asked to do.
• 1:02:20
  That's one of my favorites.
• 1:02:21
  Richmond on the NASCAR circuit, the three quarter mile short track and Nazareth,
• 1:02:25
  they both put on great modified races, no better track in my mind for modified than
• 1:02:30
  the three quarter mile over at Richmond.
• 1:02:32
  And I'm talking about today's configuration.
• 1:02:34
  There's a lot of guys.
• 1:02:35
  I remember it way before and they liked that as well.
• 1:02:39
  Mid Ohio, I was able to go there.
• 1:02:41
  Great place.
• 1:02:42
  And I haven't mentioned that I've done drag racing.
• 1:02:45
  The big track that I liked going to was out at Denver,
• 1:02:47
  Colorado, the Van Deme Speedway.
• 1:02:49
  And the reason for that is 'cause it's up in the mountains that HRA
• 1:02:54
  wanted us to be at the track at eight o'clock in the morning, be ready to go.
• 1:02:59
  So I get up there.
• 1:03:01
  Speedway at eight o'clock and the owner of the track comes up to me
• 1:03:05
  and goes, who the heck are you?
• 1:03:07
  And I said, I'm one of the guys that's supposed to be
• 1:03:09
  announcing with the NHRA today.
• 1:03:11
  He says, well, the races don't start until one o'clock.
• 1:03:13
  I said, I was told to be here at eight.
• 1:03:15
  So what the heck should I do now?
• 1:03:16
  He says, see those mountains go up and take a ride.
• 1:03:20
  And I went all the way around the mountains, came down
• 1:03:21
  through Evergreen, Colorado.
• 1:03:23
  Came back to the track, it took me about a three hour trip, in
• 1:03:26
  order to see those mountains.
• 1:03:27
  I mean, racing has taken me places that I probably would have never gone before.
• 1:03:32
  Different places around the country that I would never have seen
• 1:03:35
  unless I went to announce racing.
• 1:03:36
  For that, I'm very grateful.
• 1:03:38
  You say one of the tracks I hate, you want me to say that?
• 1:03:42
  That's a tough one.
• 1:03:43
  As much as I respect all you guys that work at Camp Dagobah.
• 1:03:47
  There was a night that I went there.
• 1:03:48
  I know it was only one night, but it seemed like you guys were
• 1:03:50
  racing on the craters of the moon.
• 1:03:53
  I mean, the cars were bouncing up and down all over the place.
• 1:03:55
  I couldn't understand how the drivers were even controlling the cars.
• 1:04:00
  Like I said, I respect you guys a lot, but I didn't have any fun at that racetrack.
• 1:04:04
  Another racetrack that I can't stand is Pocono.
• 1:04:06
  I don't like that track.
• 1:04:08
  The Triangle.
• 1:04:08
  I sat in the grandstand, so I didn't announce that.
• 1:04:11
  Thank God.
• 1:04:12
  The cars go way out to the north 40 and then they come back.
• 1:04:18
  That's right.
• 1:04:19
  I do not like that track at all.
• 1:04:21
  I never will.
• 1:04:22
  You can pay me a dollar and I'll start still want to go.
• 1:04:26
  How about the best interview or worst interview?
• 1:04:28
  I'm going to come back to Dale Earnhardt Sr.
• 1:04:30
  Two weeks before he died, I was asked to do a press conference for
• 1:04:34
  the Chevy Corvette racing team.
• 1:04:35
  I don't know if you remember, he raced with his son for the
• 1:04:38
  24 hours in the Corvette team.
• 1:04:40
  He came back into the press conference and the guy from
• 1:04:43
  Chevrolet asked me to handle it.
• 1:04:45
  And he says, well, here's what's going to happen.
• 1:04:46
  Just like you had questions to ask us, he says, you're going to have 20 minutes
• 1:04:51
  to conduct a question and answer session.
• 1:04:53
  He says, I'm going to be in the back of the room going like this
• 1:04:56
  when it's 20 minutes is over.
• 1:04:57
  So I started asking Dale some questions, interview went 20
• 1:05:00
  minutes, like the guy said.
• 1:05:03
  I said, we're going to end the question and answer session right now, Dale Sr.
• 1:05:07
  is right here.
• 1:05:07
  And he says, wait a minute, we're ending, where am I going?
• 1:05:11
  I said, I was told you had to be on a plane here.
• 1:05:13
  They only gave me 20 minutes to go, so I'm not going anywhere.
• 1:05:16
  And if you know Dale, he was quite cantankerous.
• 1:05:19
  And he also tried to be a jokester.
• 1:05:22
  He played pranks on everybody.
• 1:05:24
  That's probably my best interview that I had.
• 1:05:26
  My worst was when, and I'll never forget this one.
• 1:05:29
  Down on Homestead by Abbey.
• 1:05:31
  I was coming toward Matt Kenseth.
• 1:05:33
  And he was part of the Roush team at that point.
• 1:05:35
  And he saw me coming.
• 1:05:37
  And I saw him with his elbow and I could read his lips.
• 1:05:40
  He says, watch this.
• 1:05:41
  So I came up to interview him.
• 1:05:43
  He gave me one word answers to every question I asked.
• 1:05:47
  Drove me nuts.
• 1:05:48
  I couldn't get anything out of him more than one word.
• 1:05:50
  That was probably my worst interview.
• 1:05:52
  Right?
• 1:05:53
  I've announced at probably close to 50 tracks in any
• 1:05:57
  number of different divisions.
• 1:05:58
  And I can honestly say my absolute Favorite race is the one I'm at right now.
• 1:06:04
  The race I'm announcing right now, and yeah, I've had some bad races
• 1:06:08
  and some bad tracks I've been at.
• 1:06:09
  It's the one I'm doing right now.
• 1:06:10
  The one I'm watching right now.
• 1:06:11
  That's my favorite.
• 1:06:12
  I really don't have any that I can say.
• 1:06:14
  I don't like that track because everyone I've been to, there's
• 1:06:17
  something about I like and really enjoy.
• 1:06:19
  In terms of interviews, I'll give you the worst one first because it was
• 1:06:23
  when USAC split and IRL took over and ran, uh, USAC ran a race at Pocono.
• 1:06:30
  They had a tough time putting together a starting field, 33 cars.
• 1:06:34
  So you had some very current Indy type cars all the way down to the
• 1:06:39
  old champ cars where the drivers actually had to get out of the car.
• 1:06:43
  for refueling because they didn't have the quick fill.
• 1:06:46
  The race, when it ended, A.
• 1:06:48
  J.
• 1:06:48
  Foyt had won.
• 1:06:50
  There were no two cars in the same lap.
• 1:06:52
  Second place was four laps down.
• 1:06:54
  Third place was 10 laps down.
• 1:06:56
  Tenth place was 40 laps down.
• 1:06:58
  And I had to interview A.
• 1:06:59
  J.
• 1:06:59
  Foyt at the end of the race.
• 1:07:00
  I was doing that.
• 1:07:01
  Pocono had set up its own radio network for that race.
• 1:07:04
  It started to rain.
• 1:07:05
  They bring an ambulance out on the track.
• 1:07:08
  They bring AJ over to the ambulance, we get in the ambulance, they
• 1:07:11
  give me the microphone, I start to interview AJ, microphone won't work.
• 1:07:16
  AJ says, F this and out he went.
• 1:07:21
  In terms of good interviews, Jimmy Champagne on the local level was probably
• 1:07:26
  the best, the easiest person to interview.
• 1:07:28
  You could ask him anything.
• 1:07:30
  He would elaborate on anything.
• 1:07:31
  He was a very, very helpful person.
• 1:07:33
  I had a chance to interview an awful lot of the NASCAR drivers as well.
• 1:07:36
  And in that group, I would say Richard Petty, and I'll tell you
• 1:07:39
  a very funny story very quickly about Petty down at Pocono.
• 1:07:43
  I was brand new doing my television show in Binghamton,
• 1:07:46
  and it was my first NASCAR race.
• 1:07:47
  We go to the race down in Pocono, and I'm getting drivers, and I come
• 1:07:51
  up to Petty's Garage, and Richard is right there, and I said, Richard,
• 1:07:54
  do you have time for an interview?
• 1:07:55
  He said, not now, come back later.
• 1:07:57
  Well, I thought I'd been blown off.
• 1:07:58
  No big deal, it's happened before.
• 1:08:00
  I go down, I got Daryl Waldrip, I got Bobby Allison, I'm coming back, I'm going
• 1:08:03
  back by Petty's Garage, and he says, hey, hey, didn't you want to interview me?
• 1:08:08
  I said, yeah, but there was a drunk lady in the back of the garage.
• 1:08:11
  I didn't want her in the picture.
• 1:08:16
  Joe.
• 1:08:18
  Well, I gotta say, just like why my favorite race track
• 1:08:21
  is the one I'm at that night.
• 1:08:23
  I enjoy announcing every race at every race track that I've worked at.
• 1:08:28
  I too have probably been close to 50 different tracks around the country.
• 1:08:32
  I've got a couple of stories on the worst interviews I have done.
• 1:08:37
  Um, One of them, I was working at Lebanon Valley Speedway for Lebanon 200.
• 1:08:42
  And Tommy Corrales won the race.
• 1:08:44
  And this was before the unique wireless mics that we have of today.
• 1:08:49
  We had to use a two way radio and a microphone and bring it over to the tower.
• 1:08:54
  I was working with an older gentleman, but he was kind of the
• 1:08:57
  voice of the Lebanon Valley Speedway.
• 1:08:59
  Uncle Art, that was it, Uncle Art.
• 1:09:02
  He was up in the tower, so I had to go over and interview Tommy Corrales.
• 1:09:05
  I got there and I started with the interview and I'm
• 1:09:09
  holding the two way radio.
• 1:09:10
  And I felt something hit my hand, and I kind of looked down to see what it was,
• 1:09:15
  and I don't remember anything after that.
• 1:09:17
  Because some gentleman from the tower threw a rock and hit me in the head.
• 1:09:22
  Knocked me out absolutely cold.
• 1:09:24
  Everything came out okay.
• 1:09:26
  The brain shook a little bit looser after that.
• 1:09:29
  Funny part of the story is a couple weeks later was Super Dirt Week
• 1:09:32
  at Syracuse and I saw Tommy and I said, hey Tommy, how you doing?
• 1:09:35
  He said, good, how you doing?
• 1:09:36
  I said, pretty good.
• 1:09:37
  He said, you know, you're the first guy that ever went down
• 1:09:40
  and I never threw a punch.
• 1:09:43
  One of the other terrible interviews that happened, Gary, I think you
• 1:09:47
  were working with me, a candidate with Speedway with Will Cagle.
• 1:09:51
  If you knew Will Cagle at all, he was kind of a controversy guy.
• 1:09:54
  He could be hot, he could be cold, he could be nice, he could be bad.
• 1:09:58
  One night a candidate with Speedway, a young guy took him
• 1:10:01
  out going into turn number three, who was in the qualifying heat.
• 1:10:04
  They regrouped and everything.
• 1:10:06
  They knew what Cagle was going to do and they pointed to him.
• 1:10:09
  This was before one way radios into the cockpit of the cars.
• 1:10:13
  Cagle lines up in the tail and he comes up through there and
• 1:10:16
  he dumped Mark Livingston going into three on the very next lap.
• 1:10:20
  So he got the black flag.
• 1:10:21
  And he had to run the consolation and obviously he won the conci,
• 1:10:26
  but he had to start back in the consolation starting spot.
• 1:10:29
  I'm going to tell you, if anybody ever used nitrous oxide that night,
• 1:10:32
  he was using it because he came from 20th spot up to first and
• 1:10:37
  probably five laps, maybe seven.
• 1:10:39
  And he got up there to the number one spot and he just put a lap on everybody.
• 1:10:43
  He was just unbelievable.
• 1:10:45
  I went down to interview him and I came down with the trophy and I put
• 1:10:48
  the trophy on his right rear tire.
• 1:10:50
  And I said, so where will Hobbit tonight go?
• 1:10:53
  And he grabbed the microphone from me and he says, Number
• 1:10:56
  one, I don't like the promoter.
• 1:10:58
  Number two, I don't like the flagger.
• 1:11:00
  Number three, I don't like you.
• 1:11:02
  And I don't like any of you race fans.
• 1:11:04
  There, I did my interview.
• 1:11:06
  Because the rules were you had to do an interview or you didn't get paid.
• 1:11:10
  He threw the mic back at me.
• 1:11:11
  He got in the car, fired it up, spun his wheels, and the
• 1:11:14
  trophy went up into the air.
• 1:11:17
  Next day at Weed Sports Feedway, I'm walking down through the pit area,
• 1:11:21
  and I says, I'm going to avoid him.
• 1:11:22
  And he goes, Hey, Jose.
• 1:11:25
  And I turn around and I look and I says, Yeah?
• 1:11:27
  And he says, what did Glenn say?
• 1:11:30
  I said, well, Glenn says, Glenn said you're a, start with an A.
• 1:11:36
  He goes, what did everybody else say?
• 1:11:38
  I said, they all agreed with him.
• 1:11:40
  That was Cagle.
• 1:11:41
  He was pretty controversial.
• 1:11:43
  As far as the best interviews, back when I started announcing, You
• 1:11:47
  really didn't do too many interviews.
• 1:11:48
  You know, here again, you didn't have a wireless mic.
• 1:11:51
  And it was very tough to do a lot of interviews.
• 1:11:53
  Alan Johnson, I'm sure you're going to agree with me, was
• 1:11:56
  one of the terrible ones.
• 1:11:57
  You had to hold him by the shirt because he had a tendency of
• 1:12:00
  walking away from you all the time.
• 1:12:02
  As time went on, he got much better.
• 1:12:03
  Danny Johnson was always a good interview.
• 1:12:06
  They were just all good.
• 1:12:07
  They answered the questions you gave them.
• 1:12:09
  They were happy they won the race.
• 1:12:11
  Sometimes a little disturbing to interview the second place or the
• 1:12:14
  third place because they didn't win.
• 1:12:15
  I've really had a good time at it and that's my stories.
• 1:12:19
  I used to do interviews at the Bog Tent.
• 1:12:21
  These are corporate interviews.
• 1:12:23
  They bring the drivers in and these people paid a lot of money to sit right
• 1:12:26
  at the apex of turn 11 here at Watkins Glen coming on the front straightaway.
• 1:12:31
  Good guys to interview.
• 1:12:33
  Jeff Gordon.
• 1:12:34
  Laura said, always a great interview, especially when Conor Edwards would be
• 1:12:38
  sneaking up behind him and jumping him.
• 1:12:40
  And the two of us start wrestling and fighting for the mic.
• 1:12:43
  That was good.
• 1:12:44
  The big surprise to me was Mark Martin walks in with his own interviewer.
• 1:12:49
  He makes a statement, doesn't sign any autographs like
• 1:12:53
  everybody else, and walks out.
• 1:12:55
  And I thought that was probably the worst of anybody that I had ever interviewed.
• 1:13:01
  The best guy, I think, was Kyle Busch.
• 1:13:04
  And this was when Kyle was getting the rap for being just a jerk.
• 1:13:07
  I did an interview with Kyle.
• 1:13:09
  Again, because of my racing background, I was asking him a question about what
• 1:13:14
  he was doing between the two different cars, the sprint car, whatever it
• 1:13:18
  was, nationwide car at the time.
• 1:13:20
  The difference between the two of them, between turn one and turn
• 1:13:23
  two, and how he approached turn two, Watkins Glen, and what RPM he was,
• 1:13:27
  and was he shifting, was he braking?
• 1:13:29
  You know, that's not a, gee, M& Ms, or you know, what's your
• 1:13:31
  girlfriend's name, kind of a question.
• 1:13:33
  He spent At least five minutes talking about the difference between the two
• 1:13:38
  cars all the way around the track, the RPMs, the gears, the entrance
• 1:13:43
  to the turns as braking points.
• 1:13:45
  And I thought that that was really a cool interview.
• 1:13:47
  It was something that you don't normally hear.
• 1:13:49
  And I still remember that is probably the best interview
• 1:13:52
  that I ever had with a driver.
• 1:13:54
  I don't know if everybody else knows this, but Frank is also a
• 1:13:56
  real estate broker in Connecticut.
• 1:13:58
  Have you ever sold any house to anybody who's like, really cool?
• 1:14:01
  Thank God the motorheads in my area seek me out, because if they didn't, I couldn't
• 1:14:07
  have done all the racing that I did.
• 1:14:09
  And as I like, tell people, I said, you know, if I was really
• 1:14:12
  good at it, I'd be retired.
• 1:14:15
  But yeah, the racing has brought me my niche and clients.
• 1:14:18
  You know, some people it's a PTA or bingo games or their local church
• 1:14:23
  or something, but I've taken care of the motor heads for years.
• 1:14:26
  I sold the international motorsport association, their building
• 1:14:29
  in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and they were there for years.
• 1:14:32
  And when they moved down south, I sold the building for them along with the
• 1:14:36
  18, 000 honeybees that had built a nest in the chimney of the building.
• 1:14:41
  So it's great.
• 1:14:42
  Like you've already heard, the best series or the best race
• 1:14:45
  is the next one I'm going to.
• 1:14:46
  But I want to go back for the one that was the most fun.
• 1:14:50
  The race series that was the most fun goes all the way back to when I first started.
• 1:14:55
  It was called the Car and Driver Showroom Stock Sedan Challenge.
• 1:14:59
  The best thing about it was there was free Schaefer beer.
• 1:15:04
  From there, it was like an automotive Woodstock.
• 1:15:07
  The editors of Car and Driver Magazine came up with this idea
• 1:15:11
  that they would race against anybody who wanted to race against them
• 1:15:15
  in the cheapest cars of the era.
• 1:15:17
  So we had Ford Pintos, Chevrolet Vegas, Dodge Colts . These cars were
• 1:15:23
  slow . They leaned and they lurched, and the tires just screamed and protest.
• 1:15:31
  But what a time it was.
• 1:15:33
  It was just amazing.
• 1:15:34
  I mean, there was this real antagonism between the writers and the
• 1:15:37
  readers that you couldn't recreate.
• 1:15:39
  So that was the most fun that I remember.
• 1:15:41
  Going back, they ran it from 72 until 1976.
• 1:15:44
  Best interview?
• 1:15:45
  Ah, there are lots of them.
• 1:15:46
  I've had the opportunity to run the gamut from road racing people
• 1:15:51
  like Sam Posey and David Hobbs.
• 1:15:53
  Some of the best interviews were with the guys from the old NASCAR North Series.
• 1:15:56
  Dave Dion, Mike Stefanik, that would come and do one road race a year, or,
• 1:16:01
  if it wasn't the only road race, it was the last race of the year, and the
• 1:16:04
  championship was going to be decided.
• 1:16:06
  They just came down and had a lot of fun and were great people to talk to.
• 1:16:10
  Worst interview I can easily remember.
• 1:16:12
  Nobody ever heard it.
• 1:16:13
  22 years old.
• 1:16:15
  One of the first races I ever announced at Thompson, Connecticut.
• 1:16:18
  New racer was there.
• 1:16:19
  His name was P.
• 1:16:20
  L.
• 1:16:20
  Newman.
• 1:16:22
  I followed him around all weekend trying to get an interview.
• 1:16:25
  I didn't even know what I was going to do with an interview.
• 1:16:27
  I had a reel to reel tape recorder with me.
• 1:16:30
  Finally, at the end of the weekend, he said, okay, we'll do the interview.
• 1:16:33
  We did 40 minutes.
• 1:16:35
  I went back home and listened to it and it was 35 minutes of
• 1:16:38
  me and 5 minutes of Paul Newman.
• 1:16:41
  Tape went in the trash.
• 1:16:42
  It did help me though, subsequently, in my dealings with him because
• 1:16:46
  I realized he wanted his space.
• 1:16:48
  You had to wear a peanut costume.
• 1:16:49
  Yeah, as long as Paul Newman wanted to come to the races and be a racer,
• 1:16:53
  he didn't want to be a celebrity.
• 1:16:55
  Fortunately, I learned that early and I had a very good relationship
• 1:16:57
  with him throughout his career.
• 1:16:58
  Best interview, I'm not certain.
• 1:17:00
  There have been a lot of good ones.
• 1:17:02
  Worst interviewers, Cagle's name was on, for that particular
• 1:17:05
  night that you referred to, Jim.
• 1:17:06
  He was never a friendly, nice guy.
• 1:17:08
  Arrogant.
• 1:17:08
  Whether he won or not.
• 1:17:09
  The other guy, most of you all know this name, but Walt Mitchell.
• 1:17:13
  Walt Mitchell, Drove variety of cars, but won a lot of
• 1:17:16
  races in a late mile division.
• 1:17:17
  And I was working for Donnelly and Walt won about every Saturday night.
• 1:17:20
  I guess we ran those cars, but you couldn't get Mitchell to
• 1:17:23
  say more than three words, no matter what the question was.
• 1:17:25
  So that was tough.
• 1:17:26
  The best interview was with Tim Fuller the night he won at my favorite racetrack,
• 1:17:31
  which is Canada Equal Speedway, which we know Mike doesn't particularly
• 1:17:33
  enjoy, but, uh, sorry he didn't like it.
• 1:17:36
  I was only there that one time where I didn't like it.
• 1:17:38
  Well, the track was smooth this night and Fuller won.
• 1:17:41
  And it was his first, and I believe, won once last year, but I don't know what
• 1:17:44
  year this was, but it goes back a ways.
• 1:17:46
  He was driving for Bob Faust in the M1 car.
• 1:17:48
  Some of you folks remember that.
• 1:17:49
  But anyway, he won, and he was on his way to Victory Circle, and halfway down
• 1:17:52
  the back straightaway, he decided to get to Victory Circle quickest way, which
• 1:17:56
  would be straight across the infield.
• 1:17:58
  He did not know that there was a ditch there, which is about 10 feet deep.
• 1:18:01
  And he eventually got there, but not with his car.
• 1:18:04
  And we built a bridge after that.
• 1:18:07
  And that bridge is still there.
• 1:18:08
  Another interview, which is worth sharing with you folks is one
• 1:18:11
  of the last interviews that I did with Motor Racing Network.
• 1:18:13
  It was the last time I worked for the Motor Racing Network
• 1:18:15
  and it was here at Watkins Glen.
• 1:18:17
  I was assigned a pre race interview with Tony Stewart and Tony had just
• 1:18:20
  done something bad the week before, or whatever it was, and he was
• 1:18:24
  not always, but often a problem.
• 1:18:26
  And so I was coached by what you could talk to him about, what
• 1:18:28
  you couldn't talk to him about.
• 1:18:29
  And most of all, you couldn't talk to him about the controversy
• 1:18:31
  that he caused the week before.
• 1:18:33
  That was okay with me.
• 1:18:34
  And I went to his trailer as we were getting ready for the pre race deal.
• 1:18:37
  And he was of course in the trailer.
• 1:18:39
  I made arrangements with his PR guy that we would do this interview.
• 1:18:42
  And everything was set up, but he came out of the trailer.
• 1:18:45
  It wouldn't talk to me.
• 1:18:46
  It wouldn't talk to anybody.
• 1:18:47
  And of course, my, whoever was running, David Hyde I guess was running MRN
• 1:18:50
  then was very disappointed with me.
• 1:18:51
  It was all my fault.
• 1:18:52
  Well, I had done my homework and I'd been the best gentleman I could
• 1:18:55
  be, but he just wouldn't talk to me.
• 1:18:57
  So that was another highlight.
• 1:18:59
  Another interview highlight was Dale Jr.
• 1:19:02
  Worked a lot of truck races, but I guess this was probably a bush race.
• 1:19:05
  Dale was Jr.
• 1:19:05
  because he was who he was.
• 1:19:07
  They always wanted to talk to him and he was running well enough to deserve
• 1:19:10
  an interview before or after the races.
• 1:19:12
  But he was such a nervous young kid, couldn't do an interview very well.
• 1:19:15
  And just to watch him mature over the years as he's now a pretty smooth guy.
• 1:19:19
  Mark Martin, you brought that.
• 1:19:20
  Mark was a tough guy as well.
• 1:19:22
  He stiffed me in a way at Pocono.
• 1:19:24
  I asked him a question and he answered it and I asked him another
• 1:19:27
  question and he pushed me away.
• 1:19:28
  David Hyatt wasn't very happy with me, but in the next race I talked
• 1:19:31
  to Mark, why did you do that?
• 1:19:33
  You got your one question, you got your one answer, and that's
• 1:19:35
  all you were going to get.
• 1:19:36
  That was it.
• 1:19:37
  So I've never been a Mark Vinson.
• 1:19:39
  That pretty much answers all my questions, but now it's time for you folks.
• 1:19:44
  Mike, tell them the story about when you were working for NASCAR that you
• 1:19:49
  got to do the event for Daytona USA.
• 1:19:52
  Oh man.
• 1:19:54
  Daytona USA was a spot where fans could come in and ask questions just
• 1:19:59
  like we're about ready to do now.
• 1:20:01
  Back in the day, the Pepsi Theater was there.
• 1:20:04
  They had just put in a new screen for the video section.
• 1:20:07
  And my job that day was supposed to sit up with five NASCAR Craftsman
• 1:20:12
  Truck Series drivers who were brand new in the series at the time.
• 1:20:16
  They have director's chairs for us.
• 1:20:18
  And the five guys were there before I was.
• 1:20:20
  They introduced me to come up to do the interviews.
• 1:20:23
  And the freaking director's chair collapsed.
• 1:20:26
  I fell backwards.
• 1:20:28
  The first thing I was asked, I wasn't asked, Are you okay?
• 1:20:31
  Did you break our 10, 000 screen?
• 1:20:35
  They finally came over and said, Are you okay?
• 1:20:37
  I said, yeah, don't worry about your screen.
• 1:20:39
  I didn't land on it.
• 1:20:41
  That drove me nuts.
• 1:20:43
  Is that what you're talking about?
• 1:20:44
  No, I'm talking about your trip to California.
• 1:20:46
  They had an attraction down at Daytona USA.
• 1:20:49
  They called it Daytona Dream Lapse.
• 1:20:50
  It was kind of like a roller coaster that would go through the racetrack
• 1:20:54
  and you would have a visual sitting in the roller coaster of how it
• 1:20:58
  might've been in a stock car.
• 1:20:59
  At that particular point, and my job is to be like a PA announcer and
• 1:21:03
  let everybody know what's going on.
• 1:21:05
  I did the voiceover out in California, of all places.
• 1:21:08
  They couldn't put it anywhere in between California and Waukensland
• 1:21:12
  or Daytona, what the heck.
• 1:21:13
  So they bring me out to uh, California, now I gotta become a member of SAG.
• 1:21:18
  Organization where most actresses and actors have to join that.
• 1:21:22
  So I have to pay dues to be SAG in another commercial sense.
• 1:21:27
  So I didn't have to use that union card at all.
• 1:21:30
  Drove me nuts.
• 1:21:31
  One of the stories, one of the greatest moments I've ever seen
• 1:21:34
  in my career, took place two years ago in downtown Watkins Glen.
• 1:21:38
  There was a race driver you may have heard of, his name is Rusty Wallace.
• 1:21:42
  And he had just received his star on the Walk of Fame.
• 1:21:46
  Wallace is a pretty busy guy, he did his autographs, he did his interviews,
• 1:21:50
  and he was on his way back to his car, and out of the corner of his eye, He
• 1:21:55
  caught a familiar face and he went over and spent the next 10 minutes
• 1:21:59
  talking to his friend Al Robinson and the story that I want to hear Al tell
• 1:22:05
  is the one he told to Rusty that day.
• 1:22:08
  Will you do that for us Al?
• 1:22:13
  It was indeed.
• 1:22:14
  I was driving through Muncie, Indiana one night in the 1980s, and I found
• 1:22:19
  myself behind a rather beat up looking Winnebago, and the Winnebago had Missouri
• 1:22:24
  plates on it, and it was festooned with Busty Wallace and Kenny Wallace stickers.
• 1:22:29
  The Winnebago stopped at a gas station just about the time it
• 1:22:32
  became necessary for me to also replenish the tank on my rental car.
• 1:22:36
  Asked the woman as she stepped out of Winnebago how she and her husband
• 1:22:40
  got to be such big Wallace fans.
• 1:22:42
  She said, we didn't have much choice because Rusty and Kenny are our sons.
• 1:22:48
  That's how I met Judy Wallace and also Russ Wallace.
• 1:22:51
  And I still don't know what Rusty's real first name is.
• 1:22:54
  You know, there was a controversy a number of years ago as Is Rusty Wallace's
• 1:22:58
  name on his birth certificate William Russell or is it Russell William Wallace?
• 1:23:03
  On the subject of the best interview, I think routinely the best interview
• 1:23:07
  that I remember was Neil Bonnet.
• 1:23:09
  All you had to do was walk up and say hello to Neil Bonnet and he
• 1:23:12
  would give you as much time as he had before his next sponsor appearance.
• 1:23:18
  He was a genuinely pleasant person to talk to and a real gentleman.
• 1:23:21
  As well as being a great race driver.
• 1:23:24
  Frank, I already warned you about this question.
• 1:23:26
  It has to do with Al Robinson.
• 1:23:28
  You and Al had a tradition at midnight hour at Daytona.
• 1:23:34
  Can you give us a little background on where that tradition started?
• 1:23:39
  Whose idea was it?
• 1:23:41
  Why did you pick that song?
• 1:23:44
  Well, I don't know so much about the song, and Al's going
• 1:23:46
  to have to help me with this.
• 1:23:48
  Actually, a bunch of us used to do Daytona all night long.
• 1:23:52
  As they kind of narrowed down their staff, and I became politically not
• 1:23:57
  welcome up in the booth anymore.
• 1:23:59
  Unless I'd sneak up there at night.
• 1:24:01
  Al would take over the midnight section.
• 1:24:04
  He was the prince of darkness somewhere around midnight.
• 1:24:08
  I'd go up in the booth for at least a couple of years there and we
• 1:24:12
  would do the howling at the moon.
• 1:24:15
  Absolutely correct.
• 1:24:17
  Frank, our technical expert, David Bell created a, uh, In the Midnight
• 1:24:22
  Hour by Wilson Pickett, who I'm sure many of you remember very well.
• 1:24:26
  It was a staple of the Stroke of Midnight to, uh, play In the
• 1:24:30
  Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett.
• 1:24:32
  At least David Bell's outtake version of it.
• 1:24:35
  One of the guys I worked for in the PR department down at
• 1:24:38
  Daytona was named Mark Lewis.
• 1:24:39
  Mark Lewis, actually.
• 1:24:40
  He liked to, uh, refer to himself as being the most influential African
• 1:24:44
  American executive in motorsports.
• 1:24:46
  Right.
• 1:24:47
  And he would help Al throughout the night.
• 1:24:49
  Right.
• 1:24:49
  Mark was a great guy to have around.
• 1:24:50
  He usually stuck in until about 3 a.
• 1:24:52
  m.
• 1:24:52
  or so, at which point fatigue began to play a role.
• 1:24:56
  Let me tell you another story about Frank.
• 1:24:59
  Before a race, the drivers are in the pre grid area.
• 1:25:02
  They're all strapped in their cars.
• 1:25:03
  They're trying to concentrate on the task ahead.
• 1:25:06
  And there was a young woman by the name of Stephanie Van Wye, who was
• 1:25:09
  just starting her racing career.
• 1:25:10
  She was a very accomplished equestrian.
• 1:25:13
  Stephanie was trying to focus.
• 1:25:14
  And Frank asked me for the microphone.
• 1:25:17
  Proceeded to sing Happy Birthday to Stephanie.
• 1:25:19
  Oh, of course.
• 1:25:20
  That story has never died.
• 1:25:23
  And I'm the one who gets blamed.
• 1:25:25
  Frank did the singing, I get blamed because I handed him the microphone.
• 1:25:28
  We've played enough jokes on people over the years that At one point,
• 1:25:32
  in fact, it was the last race of the national season out of Bridghampton.
• 1:25:36
  For those of you that remember Bridghampton, I think I had run
• 1:25:39
  off the road and come back on in a formula car, so I didn't win the
• 1:25:43
  race, but Chip Ganassi won the race.
• 1:25:45
  Chip pulls into the pits and is looking for accolades and there's nobody there.
• 1:25:50
  I had pulled in someone behind him.
• 1:25:52
  Chip's entire crew, along with lots of other people, filled
• 1:25:56
  my car up with whipped cream.
• 1:25:58
  They had a couple of dozen cans of Reddi Whip and paid me back.
• 1:26:03
  Looking at the audience and trying to figure out what might be
• 1:26:05
  repeatable, what's the stupidest thing you guys have ever done where
• 1:26:09
  you put your foot in your mouth?
• 1:26:11
  It was in a basketball game.
• 1:26:14
  I was announcing in Montrose, Pennsylvania.
• 1:26:17
  The shooter was coming across the top of the key.
• 1:26:20
  And I started saying, he shoots from the top of the key.
• 1:26:22
  Well, he scored.
• 1:26:23
  So I was going to change it to, he hits from the top of the key.
• 1:26:26
  And I said, he shits from the top of the key!
• 1:26:32
  When that happens, you don't stop.
• 1:26:33
  You just keep on going.
• 1:26:35
  Keep on going.
• 1:26:36
  How many know the music group?
• 1:26:40
  Glenn Donnelly was very famous for having musical groups come in to the County Fair.
• 1:26:45
  There was a big stage built in the center of Weedsport Speedway,
• 1:26:49
  then called County Fair Speedway.
• 1:26:51
  It was on a Sunday night during the races.
• 1:26:54
  The next day, Molly Hatchet was going to appear at the County Fairgrounds.
• 1:26:57
  So, I go down to interview the winner, and Glenn says, Take the group!
• 1:27:02
  Take the Molly Hatchet group down with ya!
• 1:27:04
  They had been up in the tower, tipping a few.
• 1:27:07
  So I says, okay, come on guys, Now, look, I grew up in the 60s, Beatles,
• 1:27:12
  Beach Boys, those type of groups.
• 1:27:14
  So I come down, I can't remember who the winner was, And I says, hey,
• 1:27:17
  alongside of me, We got the group that's gonna be playing here tomorrow
• 1:27:20
  night, The Molly Hatcher Group.
• 1:27:22
  By the way, guys, where is Molly?
• 1:27:23
  Where is she?
• 1:27:24
  laughing I gotta tell you this, when I got up in the tower, Glenn says,
• 1:27:30
  Boy, if you didn't sound like a jerk.
• 1:27:34
  I said, where weren't you?
• 1:27:35
  Where was she?
• 1:27:37
  Stupidest thing I've ever said.
• 1:27:38
  That was out of California Speedway.
• 1:27:40
  It's called out of Club Speedway now.
• 1:27:42
  And I introduced Jimmy Johnson and I'm out in the Southwest for the first time.
• 1:27:46
  So he's from El Cajon, what did I say?
• 1:27:49
  El Cajon, don't forget that'll never happen again.
• 1:27:51
  I was announcing at Daytona for MRN, but I had the distinct privilege in
• 1:27:56
  1999 for being the guy in the tower.
• 1:27:59
  If you're working for MRN in your tower at Daytona or any of these
• 1:28:02
  tracks, all you do is fill in between during the commercial periods when the
• 1:28:05
  radio network is doing their thing.
• 1:28:07
  This was earlier in the week and it was the IROC series.
• 1:28:10
  I'm announcing all these famous name drivers that we all recognize
• 1:28:13
  driving these Pontiac Trans Am cars.
• 1:28:16
  And I'm not sure who it was that came over the radio.
• 1:28:18
  And it was either Roger Penske himself who owned the series or
• 1:28:21
  Hilton or somebody from the track.
• 1:28:22
  Tell that announcer, those are not Pontiac Grand Ams.
• 1:28:26
  Those are IROC Grand Ams and they had lost their Pontiac sponsorship.
• 1:28:29
  So the cars were the same from the year before.
• 1:28:32
  They were obviously Pontiacs.
• 1:28:33
  Anybody with half a brain would have known that.
• 1:28:35
  But they were no longer Pontiacs as far as Roger Pinsky was concerned.
• 1:28:38
  I'm not going to tell you the most embarrassing things I've said.
• 1:28:41
  I don't want to remember them.
• 1:28:42
  Come on, I got a good story.
• 1:28:44
  I'm at Daytona and it's the middle of the night.
• 1:28:47
  Al, you might have been there.
• 1:28:48
  This is very late at night.
• 1:28:49
  I think Tom Natchew was there with us.
• 1:28:52
  It's like three o'clock in the morning.
• 1:28:53
  We're looking for something to talk about.
• 1:28:56
  A few years earlier, I'd written a poem about what it's like to run a 24 hour
• 1:29:00
  race and have your motorhome with you.
• 1:29:02
  It goes like this, and I won't read the whole thing, but it shows
• 1:29:06
  that somebody's listening even at three o'clock in the morning.
• 1:29:09
  I found the cheese the other day.
• 1:29:11
  Looked a lot like curds and whey.
• 1:29:13
  Someone had shoved it under the seat along with the peach and two slices of meat.
• 1:29:17
  It was all kind of fuzzy.
• 1:29:18
  And what was that smell?
• 1:29:20
  Here in the Delvecchio Bad Smell Motel.
• 1:29:24
  Just about that time the phone rings next to us.
• 1:29:27
  We pick it up and there's a voice on the other end and it's
• 1:29:30
  There is no poetry at Daytona.
• 1:29:35
  So, we never got through the hotel.
• 1:29:39
  Well, that kind of reminds me of a story when I was down at
• 1:29:41
  Virginia International Raceway.
• 1:29:43
  The new Mini Cooper that's out is made by BMW, I don't know if you know that.
• 1:29:47
  So I call it the BMW Mini Cooper.
• 1:29:49
  One of the guys from BMW said, it's not a BMW.
• 1:29:52
  It's just a Mini Cooper.
• 1:29:53
  Don't tell anybody BMW.
• 1:29:55
  So I kind of got scolded that day.
• 1:29:57
  Now I can tell you that's not a BMW Mini Cooper.
• 1:30:01
  Wayne County Speedway is in the middle of North Carolina.
• 1:30:05
  Well, it started out as a dirt track.
• 1:30:07
  It became a paved track.
• 1:30:08
  And it was one of those areas where fighting in the pits was mandatory.
• 1:30:14
  During a race, car coming out of turn number two hit the outside wall,
• 1:30:18
  bill rolled down the back straight.
• 1:30:19
  Ambulance crew standing by the ambulance, they run down the back straight,
• 1:30:22
  get down to turn three where the car says, Damn, forgot the ambulance.
• 1:30:26
  Back they go for the ambulance.
• 1:30:28
  Same track, guy gets black flag, he won't come off the track.
• 1:30:32
  Cars keep going around, under the yellow, he won't come off the track.
• 1:30:35
  They bring out the red flag.
• 1:30:37
  He won't come off the track.
• 1:30:38
  I'm on the outside wall.
• 1:30:40
  They bring a tow truck out.
• 1:30:41
  The guy wasn't going very fast.
• 1:30:42
  He was a street stock.
• 1:30:43
  He was just kind of motoring around.
• 1:30:44
  He comes down like this and the tow truck, tantamount against the wall.
• 1:30:50
  By the way, I want to mention Keith Zares here.
• 1:30:51
  We've mentioned other announcers.
• 1:30:53
  Keith is the announcer at Adirondack and Evans Mills and also does
• 1:30:56
  infield announcing at Oswego.
• 1:30:57
  Same track, late model race.
• 1:30:59
  The owner of the car gets upset because his driver has just been
• 1:31:02
  penalized for spinning somebody out.
• 1:31:04
  He runs out into the pit area, which is outside the parking lot,
• 1:31:07
  rather, which is outside the track.
• 1:31:08
  Brings his car down onto the track.
• 1:31:11
  He's going this way.
• 1:31:12
  The field is going that way.
• 1:31:13
  Goes around several times.
• 1:31:15
  They call the police.
• 1:31:15
  911 is called.
• 1:31:16
  Here comes the police.
• 1:31:17
  The blue lights are flying in here.
• 1:31:18
  The guy goes off the track.
• 1:31:20
  Now you've got three cop cars and this guy racing around the parking lot.
• 1:31:25
  Finally out into the road, and they finally stopped him.
• 1:31:28
  This track, by the way, is located in Nahunter, North Carolina, the
• 1:31:32
  pig capital of North Carolina.
• 1:31:36
  Perfect.
• 1:31:36
  Not the cops.
• 1:31:38
  North Carolina is the second largest hog producer in the United States.
• 1:31:41
  What was the most exciting last lap that you have ever called?
• 1:31:47
  1983 International Classic.
• 1:31:49
  Oh yeah.
• 1:31:50
  At the Oswego Speedway.
• 1:31:51
  At EV.
• 1:31:52
  200 lap race and it was as boring as they get until the last seven laps.
• 1:31:56
  Doug Hebron was leading, Bentley Warren was running second, Warren Coney was
• 1:31:59
  third, Eddie Bellinger was fourth.
• 1:32:01
  Seven laps to go I start to say Hebron is running out of fuel.
• 1:32:05
  Doug Caruso, one of the brothers of the owners of the track, chose Mesa's.
• 1:32:09
  Really, it's a boring race.
• 1:32:10
  You're not going to make it exciting now.
• 1:32:12
  Well, he was running out of fuel.
• 1:32:14
  Coming into the white flag, the running order was Hebron, Bentley
• 1:32:18
  Warren, Warren Conium, Eddie Bellinger.
• 1:32:20
  Coming out of turn number two, Hebron bogged down, Warren was behind him,
• 1:32:25
  Conium went by, Bellinger went by.
• 1:32:27
  At the end of the lap, it was the exact opposite order that they started the lap.
• 1:32:32
  Bellinger won, Warren Conium second.
• 1:32:36
  Best last lap was at Little Valley Speedway.
• 1:32:39
  Promoted there for one year.
• 1:32:40
  I brought in the BRP Modified Tour, which was pretty unique to Little Valley.
• 1:32:45
  It's primarily a late model track.
• 1:32:47
  Kevin Mullen, a driver from Ohio.
• 1:32:49
  Weston, PA.
• 1:32:50
  And Ronnie Smoker, who is from nearby Eden, New York, or Boston, New York, which
• 1:32:54
  is just up the road from Little Valley.
• 1:32:55
  They ran a number of laps side by side, and that just doesn't
• 1:32:58
  happen any place much anymore.
• 1:33:00
  And Smoker's car was smoky for the last five laps.
• 1:33:04
  And we were never sure who was going to win.
• 1:33:06
  I mean, you just didn't know they did not make contact.
• 1:33:08
  It was a great race and Smoker did end up winning.
• 1:33:10
  We learned later that the smoke was not a big problem at all, but that was primarily
• 1:33:14
  because Smoker had a fan base there.
• 1:33:17
  Nobody knew Bowling.
• 1:33:18
  They put on a great race.
• 1:33:19
  And of course, the last lap was Formula 1600 series that I announced
• 1:33:24
  for, you never know who's going to win the race until the last lap.
• 1:33:27
  And what, again, if you're an Overtrack fan, you need to realize
• 1:33:30
  that road racing is a little different.
• 1:33:31
  The cars disappear and all kinds of things happen out back and a different group of
• 1:33:35
  cars appears coming out of the last turn.
• 1:33:37
  It can be just about impossible to figure out, you know, what's going to happen.
• 1:33:41
  But one of the races that made a biggest impression on me for a
• 1:33:44
  great finish was a Bush North race.
• 1:33:45
  In 2001 and going into the last lap, Andy Santer was leading Butch Lightsinger,
• 1:33:53
  who was a well known road racer at the time, going into the second to last turn.
• 1:33:58
  Andy's car got off course and got upside down.
• 1:34:00
  And all of a sudden, here's Butch Lightsinger with the win.
• 1:34:03
  Well, the NASCAR pits were inflamed to say the least because the supposition
• 1:34:08
  was, since nobody had seen what went on on the back part of the
• 1:34:11
  track, that Lightsinger had gotten into Andy and put him upside down.
• 1:34:15
  So he towed Andy's car in, and by now, you know, there's lots of murmuring
• 1:34:19
  going on, and Andy came over and said, Screwed up bad, didn't I?
• 1:34:23
  He never touched me.
• 1:34:24
  I looked in my mirrors instead of watching the track, drove right off the road.
• 1:34:29
  Wildest last laps I ever announced was at the Moody Mile at Syracuse.
• 1:34:34
  And there was about two and a half laps to go.
• 1:34:36
  Danny Johnson was leading, driving the Freightliner car number
• 1:34:39
  six, and as he goes down into the tricky number three corner.
• 1:34:43
  I said, wow, a little puff of smoke coming out of Danny Johnson's car.
• 1:34:47
  Now, over the years, I've been known to maybe fabricate
• 1:34:52
  a little bit here and there.
• 1:34:54
  Embellish, embellish, embellish.
• 1:34:55
  I think that's the word.
• 1:34:57
  And there were a couple of people standing behind me up at the tower.
• 1:35:00
  One of them being Pastor Wells and his wife.
• 1:35:02
  He goes, yeah, sure.
• 1:35:04
  Tell him it's smoking, Joe.
• 1:35:05
  I go, it is.
• 1:35:06
  It really is smoking.
• 1:35:07
  And he comes out of turn four and down the front straightaway to get the white flag.
• 1:35:11
  And as he goes into turn number one, he really puts out a puff of smoke and he
• 1:35:16
  stands on it coming out of turn number two and down the back straightaway.
• 1:35:20
  And this time when he goes down to the turn number three,
• 1:35:23
  it is a big puff of smoke.
• 1:35:26
  And when he comes out of turn number four for the checkered flag comes
• 1:35:30
  across the line, he puked the engine right there on the start finish line.
• 1:35:35
  I turned around and I said, there, I told you what I lied to you.
• 1:35:41
  Most exciting race I ever called on a last lap was Wanda Did Not Exist
• 1:35:46
  at VRR, Virginia National Raceway.
• 1:35:48
  The track is almost four miles around.
• 1:35:50
  I didn't have a time and computer.
• 1:35:52
  I didn't have a TV.
• 1:35:53
  But I called the best damn race I ever called.
• 1:35:56
  There was all kinds of lead changes.
• 1:35:57
  There was all kinds of things going on.
• 1:35:59
  Guys rubbing each other.
• 1:36:00
  It's the best race I've ever called that never happened.
• 1:36:05
  Frank, that sounds like something you told me once, uh, in the SBRA Tower.
• 1:36:09
  If things get a little monotonous, you call a race battle that doesn't exist?
• 1:36:14
  Yeah, of course.
• 1:36:15
  That's exactly what Mike said.
• 1:36:17
  Embellish it a little bit, you know.
• 1:36:19
  And sometimes you have to look far down the field.
• 1:36:22
  Sometimes we've got a 40 car field, you know, the front's kind
• 1:36:25
  of stretched out a little bit.
• 1:36:27
  Look down and see what the 18th place car is doing because that
• 1:36:30
  18th place car, that guy or gal is driving their hearts out against the
• 1:36:35
  19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd place car.
• 1:36:39
  And that's where the battle is.
• 1:36:40
  And that's your job is to make it exciting.
• 1:36:43
  and get somebody to focus on what's really happening out there.
• 1:36:47
  That's just as cool as the front, if it's closed.
• 1:36:50
  But if the front's stretched out, you know, you might as well be talking to
• 1:36:53
  your hairbrush instead of a microphone.
• 1:36:56
  1971 72, a guy came up to me by the name of Jack Brandt.
• 1:37:00
  He was kind of a co promoter for Ira Vale back in the Ira Vale promotion days.
• 1:37:04
  And Jack said to me, Joey says, And I said, no.
• 1:37:10
  And he says, what do you know about a motorcycle?
• 1:37:13
  And I looked over at one and I says, it's got two wheels.
• 1:37:15
  He says, good, you're the announcer.
• 1:37:17
  He was promoting during the state fair, an AMA sanctioned
• 1:37:21
  motorcycle race on the Moody mile.
• 1:37:23
  I says, gee, Jack, I really don't know nothing about motorcycles.
• 1:37:28
  That's okay.
• 1:37:28
  You'll do good.
• 1:37:29
  So I get all the credentials and everything.
• 1:37:31
  And that was announcing from the old tower in the infield and with the
• 1:37:34
  old grandstand at the fairgrounds.
• 1:37:36
  We had all the top riders there.
• 1:37:38
  I remember, uh, Kenny Roberts was there.
• 1:37:40
  And one of the things I learned real quick, I was told, they're
• 1:37:44
  not drivers, they're riders.
• 1:37:46
  I said, okay.
• 1:37:47
  They went out and they did some warm ups and everything, and the
• 1:37:50
  grandstand was absolutely packed.
• 1:37:52
  I'm really embarrassed because I don't know much.
• 1:37:54
  I walked through the pits, I got all the information I could get
• 1:37:58
  and everything, but I just didn't feel I was doing a good job.
• 1:38:01
  And when they went out for one of their qualifying heats, Coming
• 1:38:04
  off of turn two, I thought I saw a rider slip to the inside and fall.
• 1:38:09
  And when I said that, I said, Wait, we got one, two riders down.
• 1:38:13
  I looked at the grandstand and I seen everybody stand up and look in point.
• 1:38:17
  Well, then I realized I could see turn two in the back straightaway, but they
• 1:38:21
  couldn't from that old grandstand the way the elevation in the old grandstand was.
• 1:38:26
  So I said, ah, my secret.
• 1:38:30
  Man, I'll tell you, I had four or five riders down at a time coming out of turn
• 1:38:34
  number two and I made it really exciting.
• 1:38:36
  And Kenny Roberts won the race, by the way.
• 1:38:38
  Did they charge you a dollar every time you said driver?
• 1:38:41
  I didn't race.
• 1:38:41
  I did.
• 1:38:42
  It cost me about 25 bucks.
• 1:38:44
  No, I didn't get fined.
• 1:38:46
  I got a hot dog.
• 1:38:48
  You may have caught it at the beginning of this thing.
• 1:38:50
  My name is Roy Soto, and that's important for this story.
• 1:38:53
  Down in Binghamton, Jack Crawford, who was a sprint car driver, and
• 1:38:57
  I promoted the first World of Outlaw race in New York State.
• 1:39:01
  We signed the first contract.
• 1:39:03
  Glenn Donnelly got in ahead of us.
• 1:39:04
  They were the race at Rolling Wheels the night before, but it got rained out.
• 1:39:07
  So we had the first race down at Five Mile Point Speedway.
• 1:39:10
  It was on television in Binghamton at the time.
• 1:39:12
  About two weeks before that, Art Bonker, who was the promoter at Five
• 1:39:16
  Mile Point, where the race was going to be held, we were leasing the track
• 1:39:19
  from him, Gordie Cunningham, said to me, Why don't you come to the track?
• 1:39:23
  You don't have a race at Oswego on this Saturday night.
• 1:39:25
  He said, come to the track, announce a few races, and promote
• 1:39:29
  the World of Outlaws race.
• 1:39:30
  Wow, that's a great idea.
• 1:39:32
  I'll do that.
• 1:39:32
  The track announcer at Five Mile Point was Dusty Doyle.
• 1:39:37
  Dusty got into the amber liquid a little early almost every race night.
• 1:39:43
  So Dusty comes out and he says, Ladies and gentlemen, We've got a young
• 1:39:46
  man here in the Binghamton area, you may know him from television.
• 1:39:50
  He's gonna be promoting a World of Outlaws sprint car race.
• 1:39:54
  Here at Five Mile Point Speedway, and he wants to get his feet a
• 1:39:58
  little bit wet in race announcing.
• 1:40:00
  Ladies and gentlemen, Leroy Sneva.
• 1:40:06
  And Dusty Doyle always made the comment when he counted cars, 2,
• 1:40:11
  4, 6, 8, 10, 12, plus one more.
• 1:40:14
  He would never say that word.
• 1:40:17
  One of the greatest compliments I've ever heard made of an announcer
• 1:40:21
  was made by a fan named Dick O'Brien, who Larry knows very well.
• 1:40:24
  He spent a lot of time at the Oswego Speedway, and he once said that Roy
• 1:40:28
  Silver could make a two car concierge exciting, and that's about the
• 1:40:32
  highest praise any announcer can get.
• 1:40:34
  My question for you, Larry, did you ever have a reporter forget
• 1:40:36
  to plug in the microphone?
• 1:40:39
  No.
• 1:40:39
  Yes, Jim Richmond.
• 1:40:41
  Me, I was the idiot.
• 1:40:44
  That's right, yeah.
• 1:40:48
  I've had many instances like that though.
• 1:40:51
  The tricky turn three.
• 1:40:53
  The number three turn.
• 1:40:54
  Well look, there's also, you can take a flyer out of there and
• 1:40:56
  end up in the raffidily patch.
• 1:40:59
  I've had a lot of guys in the raffidily.
• 1:41:01
  You guys are great.
• 1:41:02
  Who was the most colorful driver you guys ever out?
• 1:41:05
  I'd say Will Kagel.
• 1:41:07
  Yeah.
• 1:41:07
  Will certainly, you know, will used to do some things that,
• 1:41:10
  particularly in a caution.
• 1:41:11
  He was accused of doing a lot of different things.
• 1:41:14
  It was because he did 'em.
• 1:41:15
  Yeah.
• 1:41:17
  One of the things he would go through and I would play it up an awful lot.
• 1:41:20
  He'd pull his harness straps a little bit.
• 1:41:22
  Look at him.
• 1:41:22
  He's trying to psych up the driver on the outside.
• 1:41:25
  He is pulling his sleeves up.
• 1:41:26
  But at one time he said to me, I don't like when you call
• 1:41:29
  attention to pullin the sleeve up.
• 1:41:31
  Because if you remember, mirrors were outlawed.
• 1:41:34
  And Will was known to have a bracelet on that may have had a reflector on it.
• 1:41:40
  So he could see around the track.
• 1:41:44
  I hope you guys have had as much fun as I have, because this has just been a bop.
• 1:41:47
  Let's please thank all these guys up here.
• 1:41:57
  So, on behalf of the Center, Gary, Greg, Frank, Joe, Leroy, and Mike.
• 1:42:05
  Name became so popular in Binghamton.
• 1:42:08
  I was a baller at the time, and somebody made me a pair of heel
• 1:42:11
  plates that said Leroy Sneva on them.
• 1:42:14
  Are you related to Tom Sneva?
• 1:42:15
  Really?
• 1:42:16
  Cool.
• 1:42:17
  Leroy Van Dyke?
• 1:42:20
  Anyway, thank all of you for coming.
• 1:42:22
  Thanks to all of you for coming, and thanks very much.
• 1:42:26
  Mr.
• 1:42:26
  Robinson has a question.
• 1:42:27
  Oh, Mr.
• 1:42:27
  Robinson.
• 1:42:28
  Yes.
• 1:42:28
  I'd like to mention the person who's not here who made me an
• 1:42:34
  announcer for the first time.
• 1:42:36
  The link deal can't fail.
• 1:42:37
  And of course, it's my first opportunity to announce the major events,
• 1:42:40
  courtesy of Gary Montgomery and the 1983 Race of Champions in Okinawa.
• 1:42:45
  I want to take a moment to thank each one of these gentlemen for taking
• 1:42:48
  time out of their busy schedule.
• 1:42:50
  It's just been a thrill working with all these gentlemen and
• 1:42:52
  I respect them immensely.
• 1:42:54
  They have left me with memories that will last forever and totally
• 1:42:59
  enhanced my experiences going to the races over the years.
• 1:43:02
  Thanks guys.
• 1:43:02
  Thanks everybody.
• 1:43:07
  This episode is brought to you in part by the International
• 1:43:09
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• 1:43:11
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