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Celebrating the History of the Syracuse "Moody Mile" · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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On today's episode of The Logbook, we're taking you back to a 2015
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celebration of the New York State Fairgrounds, a place where engines
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roared, legends were born, and a mile of dirt became a cathedral of speed.
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The Moody Mile is at the heart of this IMRRC center conversation with a tribute
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to the racers, the storytellers, the innovators, and the dreamers who turned a
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simple oval of clay into one of the most iconic stages in American motorsport.
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From the early days of AAA champ cars to the thunder of Super Dirt Car
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Series, the Syracuse Mile has seen triumph, heartbreak, and a history
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written at over 100 miles an hour.
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You'll hear the voices of the men who lived it, Wes Moody, who gave the track
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its name with a lap so fast the announcers didn't believe their own stopwatches.
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Glen Donnelly, the visionary who refused to quit, even when the
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weather or the world said otherwise.
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Drivers like Alan Johnson and Gary Tompkins each carry their own stories
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of speed, fear, pride, and the unforgettable feeling of rolling out
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onto the Mile for the very first time.
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You'll hear about ice cubes thrown from campers, bodies built in horse
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barns, sprint cars run wide open for a full lap, and the quiet moments,
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the ones in the garage long after midnight where champions were made.
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You'll hear the laughter, the scars, the memories, and the reverence for a
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place that meant more than just racing.
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And as one speaker put it, it was the greatest spectacle on dirt.
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And now, with the grandstand silent and the track gone, the
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stories matter more than ever.
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So settle in, because this is not a eulogy, it's a celebration.
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A celebration of men, the machines, and the Mile that shaped generations.
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Welcome, folks, to the Moody Mile, where history still echoes
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if you know how to listen.
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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
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Good morning.
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We're delighted to see this nice audience here.
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I'm JC Argettsinger, president of the International Motor
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Racing Research Center.
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This morning is the driver's panel, and I'm going to have,
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uh, Kip introduce everyone.
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Kip, would you come on up?
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Kip, you really deserve a, a round of applause here for putting
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this together, working diligently to get this wonderful cast.
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I refer to myself as kind of the token short track guy in this place.
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And when we brought the Gary Ballou car in yesterday, it was like, "Yes." We have
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had some very, very stout cars on display.
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We are very blessed with that.
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But I think the Ballou car certainly, uh, is one of the best ones we've ever had.
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So I hope after the guys share thoughts and histories and memories,
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both good and bad, that you come back to the center because we're
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gonna do a history of the place.
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I've seen excerpts of it.
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It is killer.
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It is just fabulous.
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And, uh, I hope you all come back for the afternoon session.
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I'm gonna introduce Joe Morata and Gary Montgomery, and then
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I'm gonna get out of the way.
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Everybody who has attended a race in central New York over the last 40-plus
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years knows the voice of Joe Morata.
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Joe announced at all 44 Super Dirt Weeks.
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Joe announces weekly at, at Oswego and all over the place.
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And Gary Montgomery, longtime writer for Gator Racing News,
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Motor Racing Network commentator.
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Gary's history doesn't need recounting, in part because I don't know all the history.
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So anyway, Gary and Joe are gonna introduce our
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illustrious panel of drivers.
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As I say, I'm gonna get out of the way and just let these guys
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swap stories and tell memories.
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Thank you, Kip.
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Well, I'm gonna tell you, this is really an honor to be up here,
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and to remember the Moody Mile is just absolutely second to none.
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And we've got quite a group of drivers here.
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Gary Montgomery down there on the other end.
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You know, as I started out almost every race here for the past 30
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years, I would say, as my good friend Jack Burgess always said, "You've
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gotta have a favorite out there."
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And here are some of my all-time favorites sitting right to the left of me.
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Mel Lane alongside of me.
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Uh, Mel, of course, who has run at the Moody Mile on many occasions, not only
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in a small block modified, but also in a big block sprinter, a 410 sprinter.
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Also alongside of him, guy who, uh, had a, a great run at the Moody Mile, former Mr.
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Dirt champion, ladies and gentlemen, Gary Tompkins.
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Next in line.
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Now, this guy is known for, well, he's known for asphalt racing.
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He's known for dirt racing.
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He is known for running a super modified, a small block super
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modified, a super stock on the asphalt.
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And this year, he had his very first experience of running on the Mooney Mile.
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Danny K., Danny Kafasinski.
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A gentleman who needs no introduction at all to the Moody Mile, to dirt track
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racing, obviously a future Hall of Famer.
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Ladies and gentlemen, AJ Slideways, Alan Johnson
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Now here's a guy next to him, we call it the Moody Mile.
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And because of this gentleman on that Labor Day in 1970, when he
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went, exceeded 100 miles an hour, ladies and gentlemen, Wes Moody.
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There have been an awful lot of leaders in history, but the leader of
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the Moody Mile dirt car racing, the godfather of the sport, Glen Donnelly
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Another local guy, Ryan out of Waterloo, New York, started his
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racing at the old Waterloo Speedway.
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We were talking about it a few minutes ago.
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Had many runs at the Moody Mile at Syracuse, a very noted chassis builder.
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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Johnny Bayroch.
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And a guy who I have shared the mic for many, many years over many different
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racetrack, both dirt and asphalt, ladies and gentlemen, Gary Montgomery
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To get this program underway, we call it the Moody Mile.
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And I would think the first gentleman that we should call up here on our panel is
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the guy who we nicknamed the Moody Mile.
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Wes Moody, we'd like you up here.
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Do you recall that day on Labor Day afternoon at the
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then called Syracuse Mile?
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Yeah, I certainly do.
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Can you recall some of the events that took place on that day?
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Yeah.
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Well, we were, we were racing about, uh, four or five nights a week
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at that time, and we, uh, got to Syracuse, and we're trying to figure
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out what kind of tires to put on.
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And had a pair of Goodyear tires that, uh, somebody gave me.
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We were all broke, and, uh, you know the, the deal back in the day.
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Anyway, we threw those, those tires on, and Alan just
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talking about, uh, some tires.
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Uh, probably the same set of tires, uh, Alan.
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We went out and oh, my God, that thing was fast.
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We were just blowing them away, and could never beat Kagle
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at Wheatsport rolling wheels.
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And, uh, man, I smoked him that day, and that was the best feeling of my life.
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Do you remember, though, when you turned that quick lap?
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Oh, I certainly do.
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I'll never forget it.
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It's, uh … I still, uh, feel it right now.
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As you were running that day during the hot lap sessions and actually
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running your qualifying heat, I understand that your car was pelted by
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ice cubes down in turn number three.
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Good friends of mine, R- Richie Evans and, uh, Sonny Seaman, they backed
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their camper up to the, uh, third turn.
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And, um, and, and, and I was running real hard with, uh, Tobias, as I
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recall, going into third turn and it felt like bullets hitting my car.
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I said, "What the hell?" Come around again and like, bullets hitting it again.
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What the heck?
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And I guess they were, uh, both drunk up on the top of their camper, and
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they were, uh, throwing ice cubes at me That was quite an eventful day.
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I got a question for Wes.
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Which car was that?
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I, I wasn't at the, or if I was there that day, I've forgotten.
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But, uh, was that the stagecoach or a coupe?
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That particular time, that was a '57 X car that those guys are
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hitting me with the ice cubes with.
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Yeah, but was it a coupe-bodied car or a sedan-bodied car?
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It's at the track record- Yeah … but that was a coupe.
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That was a coupe, all right.
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Yeah.
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I must confess that, um, we've called this thing, Joe and I, and other
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announcers have called it the Moody Mile for years, and that's the reason for it.
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It c- and I think it was, uh, the fellow, uh, Dave Wright from, uh,
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Gator News that came up with that nomenclature for the track then.
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But I always continued to use it because I thought the track had a mood.
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It was, sometimes it was moody, sometimes it was good, and, but it was Moody Mile
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for a couple of reasons, in my opinion.
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But the real, of course, the source of that, it was you.
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Well, actually, uh, Joe Marotta and my dad started that same day.
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My dad w- and Joe, I don't know which picked up on it first, but that same
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day, uh, they say we were flying high.
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That was, uh, tough to beat Cagle and Chamberlain and those guys.
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Oh, my God, they were tough to beat, those guys.
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And we smoked them, man.
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Well, you know, here's how it all started.
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Uh, we were in a couple of hour rain delay.
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They finally got the cars out there, and people were a little
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maybe restless in the grandstand.
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I said, "Man, I gotta do something to kinda perk this crowd up." So I had
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the old-fashioned stopwatch, and I knew 36 seconds was 100 miles an hour.
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So all of a sudden, this little coupe comes flying by, and he went a 35.9.
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And I says, "That's over 100 miles an hour. 35.8, that's over 100
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miles an hour." So I announce it.
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Now, there was a gentleman there by the name of John Duvall who was official
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here at Watkins Glen Speedway, a right-hand man to promoter Ira Veil.
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And he says, "Ira, I'm only getting 37-second laps." And Ira said,
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"100 miles an hour sounds better.
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Let the kids say it." So then, uh, we had a little bit of a break, and I climbed
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down the stairs, ran into Dave Wright.
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And Dave Wright said, "Hey, Wes Moody went over 100 miles an hour." I says,
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"Yep." He said, "It's now the Moody Mile."
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I says, "Really? All right." And so when I got back upstairs,
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it became the Moody Mile.
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Does anyone have any questions for Wes Moody?
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Actually, the day we're running really good on the asphalt and,
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and winning, that, that was the day I liked it the best.
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And the next time you're on the dirt, and, uh, we're going like
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hell, man, I love this dirt.
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Good answer.
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He sounds like one of those guys that are now, uh, running for
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some kind of an office, right?
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Yeah.
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Yes.
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You know, we wanna talk to the gentleman sitting to the left of Wes Moody.
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I call him the godfather of the Moody Mile or the one-mile track, Super Dirt series.
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Glen Donnelly, how did it all start?
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How did it all get together?
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Geez, I don't know, Joe.
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I can just remember I needed an announcer.
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Oh, boy.
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And you know, there was this guy, he was probably in his late teens,
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early 20s, was at the burley show.
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Do you guys remember those days when they had the burlesque shows at the state fair?
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Careful, my wife is here.
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Joe, how did it go, you know, when you were trying to get him on the inside?
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Why, just last week, Mr.
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Walter Winchell described her as the best undressed woman in show business.
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Do you guys remember that?
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I don't see too many heads going, but that's how I met Joe Morana.
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I said, "Geez, he'd make a great announcer." But on a serious note,
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every organization, and again, I was in sports all my life, and in
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particular football, and I went through college on a football scholarship.
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So I always looked at the NFL, and of course, the NFL just started
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running what they call the Super Bowl.
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That kind of triggered a lot what we had to do in 1970 when
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I got into this racing game.
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So the Super Bowl was always the best track you could come up with around the
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area, and at the time it was Syracuse.
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So I had Weedsport, a few years later took over Rolling Wheels, and
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then a few years later, Canandaigua, and in the early '80s, Middletown.
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Syracuse was the perfect place to end the season, and that's when we
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started in 1972 with Super Dirt Week.
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After that first year, it was terrible though.
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Friday night rain, Saturday rain, we did everything on Sunday.
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Bottom line is I lost about 7,000 bucks, but I had a contract with
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Schaefer Beer for five grand, and it was for three years.
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The obligation was there, that's why we went back and went the second year.
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It's a good thing we did because from there on it was what we'd
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consider in sports a home run.
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But again, everything that we tried to do was do it after what they would do
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in the NFL or any major league sport.
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Even today, where we're coming into, uh, the 21st century and a new era,
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we're playing with a new surface that we think will be a future for dirt racing.
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We did it at Rolling Wheels this year, and after five events, we
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think we got it pretty well down.
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The World of Outlaws come in and set the world's record.
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Rolling Wheels today is the fastest track in the world, 145 mile an
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hour on a basically five-eighths mile track, and that's big.
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Even Syracuse, they couldn't run that speed, you know, on a mile track.
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But the surface really makes the difference It's where it's tacky, smooth.
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Some of the guys, Gary, Allen, have run on the surface this year.
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This is one of the things that I'm, I'm kind of looking forward to, and it's not
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like I come up with this idea myself.
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The NFL and Major League Baseball, and in particular Major League Baseball, is the
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people that I'm really copying on this.
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You know, if you watched a Major League game 10 years ago and it started raining,
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they'd have to cover the infield.
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Last year, the Yankees played 17 games right in the rain, and it's the
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same basic surface we're using, and theirs all comes out of Wisconsin.
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A lot of stuff starts in Wisconsin.
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But in particular, that's where, that's where their surface… The
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only trouble is it's real expensive.
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When you're talking polymers and waxes and the stuff you've got to use to mix
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in with your clay, it gets expensive.
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Rolling wheels just on a trial basis here cost us over 400,000, and when we put
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this track together in Central Square, we'll have well over a million in it.
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I think that that's the way to go.
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I think the future of the sport, you know, you got to look at these 16
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to 30 year olds and what they want.
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You drive along the side of the road and you see these kids glued to something.
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Look, they're looking right at it.
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Wes told me it's cell phones.
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I don't… That's what it's come to.
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Joe, I, I don't think we wanna look in the rear mirror, so that's why
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I'm starting to talk about what's out front, 'cause we don't allow
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rear view mirrors in stock cars.
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We haven't anyway, have we, Alan?
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I don't know.
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I don't know.
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Okay, Glen.
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Gary, any questions for him?
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Well, I would just add that you gave a great introduction, but, um, Glen is
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responsible for, as far as I'm concerned, establishing this sport as we know it
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today, and as we've known it for the last 20 years or whatever it's been.
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His vision, his crazy ideas.
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Mostly his vision, then he figured out people to get to work for him
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to make th- those visions reality.
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And there's been a long list of folks that have been involved in
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that, and I'm delighted to have been part of it over the years.
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And, uh, you know, he's created an industry.
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The cars, I think the, the way they look, I don't like it, but that's, uh
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It's the way it's evolved.
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And the fact that he had this vision and stuck with it all these years, and
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continues to stick with it, is just great.
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I really respect him, like him.
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Used to be his partner.
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He got mad at me, I got mad at him, but we got over it.
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And I look forward to his success at the Central New York Raceway Park.
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You know, one of the things I'd like to say about Glen in the conjunction with the
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Mooney Mile, this guy never said never.
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He was never a quitter.
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I mean, we were faced on many, many occasions with the worst weather
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that you could ever, ever see on a radar screen, and one way or
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another, we would get the show in.
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You know, I'm gonna recall one story.
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When Glen Donnelly took over, uh, Orange County Fair Speedway, he and I went down
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on one of the first nights and rode down together, and then rode back together.
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He said to me, he says, "Well, Joe, what do you think?" I said, "What do
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I think of what?" He says, "What do you think of all the help, and the
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scorers, and the people in the tower?"
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I said, "Well, Glen, I … Honest to God," I said, "I think you
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were a little tough on them.
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You were really a little rough on them." Well, by the time we got
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onto Route 17, he was sleeping.
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We got about halfway up the interstate or Route 17, and he woke up, and he says,
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"Did you ever play football?" I said, "Yep." He says, "You remember your coach?"
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He says, "During the game, he was ragging on you all the time. He was just always on
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your tail, but after the game, he was your best friend." And that was Glen Donnelly.
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Glen was kind of tough.
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He was up there in the tower.
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He was, he was a pusher and a mover, but he got the game done, and then
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he became your best friend again.
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And I think we owe an awful lot of credit of the Mooney Mile to Glen
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Donnelly, ladies and gentlemen.
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We're gonna switch around here a little bit The Moody Mile has
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been run for, what Gary, since?
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1903. 1903. Glen wasn't there, I wasn't there.
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But I'm gonna tell you, there's been so many experiences on the Moody Mile.
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Danny Kampesinski, who I introduced earlier, had quite a year this year.
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Now he is the PR guy and the social media person up at the Oswego Speedway,
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and he has run on the asphalt a lot.
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But one of his goals in life was to run on the Moody Mile.
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I had him on my radio show the week after.
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He wrote a very interesting article, and I think because of
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that, Kip asked him to be here.
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Danny, can you relate some of the experiences as a first
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timer on the Moody Mile?
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Well, honestly, I feel kind of goofy being up here sitting in between
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Alan Johnson and Gary Tompkins
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I, I think I have 40 laps of experience on the Mile, but it may
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have been the most exciting 40 laps I've ever run in my entire life.
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I started racing at Oswego all the way back in 2001.
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I was 16 years old.
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At that time, there weren't a lot of teenagers racing at Oswego.
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I was a sophomore in high school, but my father built 13 different cars
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that ran at Oswego, and it was in my blood to always want to go there.
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He did not like dirt cars.
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And I think, I think he referred to them as farm implements.
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I think that's what he called dirt modifieds.
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He was a super modified guy.
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But I grew up loving racing of all sorts.
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My mom went to Rolling Wheels for years with, uh, Jimmy and Debbie
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Winks, and she would take me to Rolling Wheels and watch guys like
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Alan and Gary and Bob McCready race.
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And we lived in Columbus, Ohio for about 13 years at one point too, and
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I remember turning on, I think it was the TNN Sports Cavalcade, and Syracuse
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would be on watching Brett Hearn run and, and all those great races.
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And so I always knew of the Mile.
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Never went to Syracuse until probably 2001 or 2002.
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It was for a Fourth of July race, I think, at the time, and never really envisioned
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myself doing any kind of dirt racing.
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But after I got done with Oswego, we ran super modifieds and small blocks.
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I went off to college at St. John Fisher, got my degree
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in communications journalism.
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Actually ended up working for World Racing Group for a while with Jack Spino and,
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and all, and all those guys, Tom Skibinski and, and spent some time, moved to
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Charlotte, came back to work for Oswego.
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And a, a gentleman that I raced with at Oswego for a long time,
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his name's Jason Simmons, owned a bunch of asphalt cars, decided he
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wanted to go dirt modified racing.
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He tried it at Fulton once last year.
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It didn't really treat him very well, so he offered me the car.
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He said, "Well, if you want to take the car, put it in your
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garage, maintain it, work on it, you can go run anytime you want."
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So in between running it, we, we do the Oswego Kart Way on Friday nights.
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I have to be there every Friday, Oswego every Saturday.
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So I'd go to Weedsport.
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We went to Canandaigua one night.
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We went up to Can Am and, and had some fun with it.
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And it was an old Bicknell car that apparently Matt Shepherd
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had ran at Syracuse at one point.
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But I had no experience with these cars and I really, I never
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envisioned taking the car to Syracuse.
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It wasn't something that, you know, I just didn't feel like we
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would go there with any kind of ability to run well and be safe.
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And then the word came down that it was the last race ever to happen at the fair.
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And like, well, I guess we're gonna have to do it.
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So, um, we put the car together very last minute, couple days in between.
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We ran the Outlaw Show at Fulton with the same car, put a body and some
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shocks on it, and went to Syracuse, and it was just An unreal feeling.
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It was the closest thing I could relate to being at, like, the
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Daytona International Speedway, just showing up for the tech line.
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I mean, have you guys been there to see the tech at Syracuse?
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That was my most nerve-wracking part of the entire week.
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We had a four-wheeler and a piece of rope to pull the car, and I'm next to Tim
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McCready in line, and I'm not even sure if … I hung the body on the car for
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the first time myself, and they got these templates, and I'm like, "Oh, my God.
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Uh, they're not even gonna let me on the racetrack with this thing," you know?
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But we made it through, and of 93 cars, we time trailed 14th fastest, and
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ended up finishing 12th in the race.
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Couldn't believe it.
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I think my asphalt experience helped a little bit with that.
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I was talking with Gary earlier.
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Most of the qualifying and practice we did early in the week, the track was rubbered
20:58
up pretty well, and it was pretty wide open, which kinda suited me very well.
21:02
And then come Sunday it was like, it was slippery, a lot more slippery than I was
21:06
used to dealing with racing Supermodifieds at Oswego, where you got all the bite
21:09
and horsepower you could imagine.
21:11
So, like I said, it w- I don't wanna talk forever, but it, I could.
21:13
It was the best 40 laps I've ever, uh, experienced, and I'm so elated
21:18
to have been able to experience it, but so devastated at the same time
21:21
that I'll never get to do it again.
21:26
Gary?
21:27
Yes.
21:29
I have no question for Danny, but I would shift gears if you're ready
21:33
to shift gears and talk to- Sure.
21:34
Okay.
21:35
Uh, let's talk to the mayor here next to me, Johnny Barage.
21:37
Named him the mayor of Seneca Falls when he lived there a few years ago and raced
21:41
and won a lot of races and so forth.
21:43
John has some experience on the mile, and as you mentioned earlier,
21:45
we've got, uh, two guys up here with us today that have driven both
21:48
modifieds And, uh, sprint cars.
21:51
John, I believe, made four starts on the mile in a modified.
21:53
I'm not sure how many … I don't, I don't believe that.
21:55
I know that for a fact.
21:56
Do you know that for a fact?
21:57
Okay.
21:58
I don't know.
21:58
For Super Dirt Week that is.
21:59
I'm, I've got stats up the go- zoo, uh, from, uh, Don and Joanne Davies, and some
22:05
of you may recognize that, those names.
22:07
Anyway, they, they provide statistics for all of the, the
22:10
race, Super Dirt ra- races.
22:11
And so I've com- they've compiled it, and I've sub- subtracted from
22:15
that, found out you had four runs there in, in Super Dirt Week.
22:18
But you may have run Fourth of July races and Labor Day races as well.
22:22
But the interesting thing, most interesting thing about all that, I
22:25
think, is the fact that you've done it both in a modified, probably a
22:27
small block as well, and a sprint car.
22:29
And so talk to us about the differences between sprint cars
22:33
and modifieds on the Moody Mile.
22:35
Well, there's, there's quite a bit of difference between them.
22:37
Uh, sprint cars, uh, at Syracuse, you're pretty much
22:41
driving around there wide open.
22:43
You don't let off the gas, and it's quite a ride.
22:45
Takes you a while when you first go out there in a sprint car to figure
22:49
out that that's what you have to do.
22:51
You have to talk yourself into leaving it wide open.
22:53
Once you do, then you, then you're getting around there pretty good.
22:57
Modifieds, yeah, we didn't race there a lot, but we did, uh, run there a few times
23:01
and, uh, ran pretty good a couple times.
23:04
Got wrecked a couple times.
23:05
Our best race there was, uh, Fourth of July.
23:08
We ran a small block against the big blocks, and we won the heat.
23:12
We started fifth in the feature and finished fifth, and that was our
23:15
best finish that we had at Syracuse.
23:17
Even in modifieds, uh, it's quite a ride around that place when you're used to
23:21
running half-mile tracks and 3/8ths-mile tracks, and you go there, and it's
23:25
really different and quite an experience.
23:26
Ev- everybody that ever got to race at Syracuse, I'm sure they're glad
23:30
right now that they did, seeing that it's gonna be going away here.
23:34
It was a great experience.
23:35
I call it the greatest spectacle on dirt.
23:37
I think that is the case.
23:38
Uh, quality of the racing isn't always great, but it is a spectacle for sure.
23:41
I must confess that I don't remember too much of your winning and having
23:45
good runs on the mile, but I do remember a day very specifically.
23:49
You and I were standing at the start/finish line when the red flag
23:52
was out after a multi-car crash, and we were surveying the damage of … And
23:57
it was a sprint car at that time.
23:58
And I think the answer was it wasn't damaged, and I think
24:00
you fired up and kept going.
24:02
Yeah.
24:03
Yeah, we could have.
24:03
One time we fired up and kept going.
24:05
We were in two wrecks up there, uh, the last time I ran a sprint car there.
24:09
On the original start, there was… I can't remember how many cars they started
24:13
in the feature, but we started 16th.
24:15
A, a lot.
24:15
A lot.
24:16
Yeah.
24:16
And, uh, we started 16th, and they started wrecking in, like, third or fourth place.
24:21
Boy, we really got tore up.
24:22
That was the only time in my whole racing career, 28 years,
24:25
that I went to the hospital.
24:27
Other than that, yeah, that, that place was, it was fast.
24:30
There's no question about it.
24:31
It was fast, exciting, and guys like you and Wes and the rest of the
24:35
drivers down the line here that have had the experience of doing that, I
24:38
just marvel at the fact that it can be done, that there's a man alive that,
24:41
or, or a woman, that will do that.
24:44
We must complete this resume on the mayor here though.
24:47
He moved from Seneca Falls to Penn Yan, and he now builds hot rods and
24:50
street rods and that sort of thing.
24:52
And so we're honored to have the mayor of, uh, Seneca Falls, now the
24:55
mayor of Penn Yan, with us here today.
24:57
John, you were, uh, noted as a chassis builder as well as a driver.
25:01
When you were putting together chassis and building chassis, did you do
25:05
anything special for a Syracuse chassis?
25:08
Were they designed in any different way?
25:11
The only car that we ever built different for Syracuse is one for Lynn
25:14
Huff that was quite a bit different.
25:16
But other than that, usually just the sheet metal.
25:18
You know, the body work was different.
25:20
Two of these guys sitting on the stage here used to work
25:22
for me doing sheet metal.
25:24
Actually, they had my cars at different times too, Gary and Alan both.
25:28
Gary, when he first started working for me, he was just doing
25:31
odds and ends around the shop.
25:32
He was like 16, 17.
25:34
We were building a car for Syracuse.
25:37
We had some ideas for the design of the front end and the hood.
25:40
And it's, you know, it's easy to put it on paper.
25:43
It's hard to, to make it reality.
25:45
And I, I handed Gary a picture and said, "You gotta build this front end
25:48
for this car." He wasn't very old, and he never did much sheet metal
25:51
work or anything, and he just whipped that thing out, and it was perfect.
25:55
He's been doing it ever since.
25:57
But the body work on the cars is really, uh, as you can see on the 112 over here,
26:02
uh, body work really makes a difference at Syracuse 'cause of the speeds.
26:06
Gary, would you like to continue?
26:08
Sure.
26:08
We've already talked to Gary, about Gary Tompkins here just
26:11
a second ago, Johnny did.
26:12
Let's go to Gary Tompkins.
26:14
Gary is a very talented driver, as you all know.
26:18
Earned the Hard Charger award, I believe, for his, uh, I think seventh
26:22
place finish, uh, this last month or so I followed his racing career, I think
26:28
from the beginning when he ran a, uh, s- what we called, I think we called
26:32
them street stocks or I'm not sure what we called them actually back…
26:34
Amateur cars probably.
26:35
Amateur cars at Canandaigua.
26:37
He ran a, a Mopar Dodge Challenger, I think it was, or maybe a Plymouth
26:41
Barracuda or something like that.
26:42
You know what he tore up?
26:43
Yeah, well, you know, he and a lot of other guys tore up a lot
26:47
of- Yeah … really valuable cars.
26:49
But nonetheless, that's where he started and, um, and he most recently
26:52
raced last weekend down at Charlotte.
26:54
So with that, we'll turn it over to Gary Tompkins and he can tell us
26:57
about some of his racing experiences.
26:59
Gary, start at the beginning.
27:00
We know you were a tin knocker, and you are a tin knocker, and
27:02
that's, that's another chapter.
27:04
So maybe you can talk about both, first as a driver, then as a tin knocker and worker
27:09
around Troyer and Bay Rush and so forth.
27:10
Yeah, I started working for John right after I graduated high school after
27:14
going to, well, CCFL back then, now it's FLCC, looking for a part-time job.
27:18
Bill Chaud actually got me hooked up with Johnny.
27:20
I, I mean, I knew Johnny 'cause Johnny put the roll cage in my mint 1970
27:23
Dodge Challenger R/T plum crazy car.
27:27
I started doing odds and ends around there, and at that time Mike McLaughlin
27:30
was working for Johnny building bodies.
27:32
That was right when Mike was really starting to move up through the ladder.
27:36
I started helping out John on his cars.
27:38
You know, of course, racing, you bend up some body panels.
27:41
He always made me straighten them out.
27:42
Started making patches and this and that.
27:43
And I used to build little models when I was a kid and stuff and make bodies
27:46
out of cardboard and stuff like that.
27:48
So I always wanted to do something like that, I just
27:49
never thought I'd be a tin smith.
27:51
Then he started to have me do more and more in, in the winter of 1986,
27:55
we actually, John and I both went up to Troyers and worked for a while.
27:57
Of course, he decided he didn't wanna stay there, but I did for 10 years.
28:00
But I still worked for John, you know, build- It was fun 'cause I'd
28:03
work at Troyers during the day and everything's gotta be, you know,
28:05
a certain way, and they gotta have the designs and stuff like that.
28:08
And I'd go out to Johnny's and it's, all his body's work was just simple,
28:11
straight, let's get it on the car.
28:12
It looked, it looked good, but it just wasn't as exotic as what Troyers was.
28:16
It was fun, you know, building stuff in a horse barn and going out
28:19
there and beating the big boys, so.
28:20
I also, uh, when I worked at Troyers, I think it was '89,
28:23
Alan, you started last and won?
28:26
Yeah.
28:26
I built the body for that car.
28:28
Part of the body was falling off, and all I could think of was, "That body's
28:31
gonna fall off, they're gonna get black flagged, and they're gonna blame me."
28:34
But fortunately, that didn't happen.
28:35
Uh, fortunately he won.
28:37
Got a lot of bodies that went through, uh, won some races up there.
28:40
Actually, uh, if you go to the Dirt Museum over in Wheatsport, Phil
28:43
Taylor number 1 car, the asphalt modified car, dirt asphalt modified
28:47
car, I built the body for that.
28:49
That was a pretty special thing, too.
28:50
But I always wanted to be a driver, ever since I was a little kid.
28:53
You know, my dad used to take me to all these racetracks.
28:55
I said, "Man, I, I can't wait to be able to race cars someday." You know, one of
28:58
my favorite times of the year was going to Syracuse, sitting up in the stands just
29:03
watching those guys go around that track.
29:04
It just … It was such an experience.
29:06
It was such a exhilarating just watching them cars go around that
29:09
track, the speeds they were going.
29:11
One of my favorite races that I wasn't involved in was the year, the
29:14
1979, when Jack Johnson won, 'cause finally a New Yorker won that race.
29:18
You know, 'cause all the PA and New Jersey guys were always winning that race.
29:20
But I always wanted to drive there, and when we started racing
29:24
sportsman, they actually had us have, like, an invitational go up there.
29:27
We got our car ready to go up there, and I couldn't wait.
29:30
We get on the track, and I end up having motor problems, and we make a lap.
29:32
So that was, that was heartbreaking.
29:34
But I don't remember my very first time around the track.
29:37
I know I was probably nervous I can't say I was ever scared about that place, but
29:40
you really had to give that place a lot of respect, 'cause if you messed up, you were
29:44
gonna wreck and you're gonna wreck hard.
29:45
I, I mean, I know Alan can attest to that, and John too.
29:47
I was very fortunate.
29:48
I've never wrecked hard there.
29:49
I've, I've wrecked there, but not very hard.
29:51
But the speed there, it does take a lap or two, even a modified,
29:54
to get used to the speed.
29:56
Now, we're inside these cars and they, they make noise.
29:58
We can hear them, but the noise is always a little different at the
30:01
end of the front stretch, especially going into turn one there compared to
30:04
what you're used to on a short track.
30:05
Just everything is vibrating a little different than the m- you know, the
30:08
motor sound's a little different.
30:09
Just the fact that you're going so fast and then you're trying to race side by
30:12
side with somebody or wheel to wheel.
30:13
Now, obviously, over the years people will say, "Oh, you can't pass
30:16
there." And for a while it was tough.
30:18
This past year though, we started 36 and, you know, we got seventh and
30:21
passed the majority of the cars, 'cause that's just the way the track was.
30:23
But obviously, uh, I've got two seconds there.
30:25
I've 100 feet away from two wins.
30:28
Vic Coffey beat me there in 2002.
30:30
That was the year they had … They got rain delayed, and then on lap
30:33
120 they had a red flag, and I was talking to my crew on a radio and
30:37
they were making fuel calculations and said, "We're not gonna make it."
30:39
So we come in and put fuel in it.
30:41
Well, we put a little too much fuel in it, 'cause Vic Coffey come in
30:43
and put a little less in and he beat us out and couldn't beat him.
30:46
I followed him around, and I think Alan is even ahead of us that year too, and, and
30:49
he ran outta gas along with about eight or 10 other guys and, and, uh, we ended up
30:53
finishing second to Vic Coffey that year.
30:55
2004 is our other time we got second there.
30:58
That was the year that we were going for Mr. Dirt.
31:00
I was driving for Jim Beachy that year.
31:02
We had a fast car all week, probably the fastest car there, but I started
31:06
outside pole in the feature because, uh, we had a very good first lap in
31:09
time trials, and then the driver tried to be a hero the second lap and almost
31:12
stuck it in the third turn wall.
31:13
We were runner up front all day, and we were fighting
31:16
Brett Hearn for the Mr. Dirt.
31:17
You know, we sort of had to be where he, you know, near him all day to make sure
31:21
the points didn't change much, and I still remember the vision of him getting pushed
31:24
down the center track on the back stretch by a tow truck, and I said, "Well, he's
31:27
out of the race," and the call coming over the radio, "You can't race hard anymore.
31:30
You gotta relax and, and drive around and finish this race." So
31:33
they let me race the last five laps.
31:35
I caught up to Tim Fuller, who was running second.
31:37
Kenny Tremont was running f- first, running the lead.
31:39
Kenny ran out of gas coming out of turn two.
31:41
Tim went out around him.
31:42
I went underneath him, and uh, I spun my tires a little bit.
31:44
Timmy beat me to turn three, and I followed him across the line.
31:47
So the only thing too, and this isn't well known, Glen used to have a, an
31:51
award called the Maury Holbrook Award.
31:53
I don't know if Joe remembers Maury Holbrook.
31:54
Yeah.
31:54
He, he was- I sure do Yeah, he used to do the, the track surface
31:58
there, the, the track prep, and it was the fastest time of the week.
32:01
It's funny, Wes is talking about going 36 seconds.
32:04
Well, we won it in 2005, and, and we did it in practice,
32:07
and I still remember the lap.
32:08
We went 28.111.
32:09
Obviously, it's not a track record, 'cause it wasn't an official lap in qualifying,
32:13
but I just remember that lap because I was, uh, you know, 15 car lengths behind
32:17
Billy Decker, who was 15 car lengths behind another guy, and it was sort
32:20
of like a draft all around the track.
32:21
A car just… I'd never had a car feel like that around there.
32:24
It just… I mean, we were fast that week, but we weren't that fast.
32:26
It was a special lap.
32:27
It just, uh… One of them things, you think about it afterwards, it's like,
32:30
"Holy cow, the car was that fast?" Uh, you know, we raced this year, during
32:34
Sunday, 35 second laps, and that year we were that fast, 'cause the track was
32:38
that good, and the cars were that good.
32:39
But I always say Syracuse is one of those places where I love to drive
32:42
around, but I, I hate to race around it, just because it can be so frustrating.
32:45
You're always on the edge, and you know if you mess up, you're gonna pay for it.
32:50
True that you always gotta go to the bottom, stay to
32:51
the bottom coming out of two.
32:53
Uh, not this year.
32:54
Actually, the last few years.
32:55
In 2012, they actually put clay on the track, and that did
32:58
away with a lot of the cinders.
32:59
Actually, uh, Dan talked about this year, going there with the car he ran at Fulton.
33:03
Well, we ran in 2012 with our car, and we got the bright idea right after
33:07
Fulton, "Hey, let's go to Syracuse."
33:08
We, uh, put a new body on it, changed motors, went up to Syracuse,
33:12
time trialed sixth fastest.
33:13
Well, the reason why we time trialed sixth fastest is because you couldn't step on
33:16
the gas And you were hunting for bite.
33:19
That was the year that Brett Hearn won.
33:21
It actually got rained out just after halfway, but we were literally running
33:25
up by the wall all the way around the track at times just trying to find bite.
33:28
This past year, on Sunday, the track had slicked up a lot.
33:31
There was a hole in the bottom of turn one.
33:33
You could drive through it, but it really messed your car up.
33:35
And of course, you don't want to break your car.
33:37
But if you went around it, you had to either slow down, go to the
33:39
bottom, or just let the car drift.
33:41
And, uh, like I was telling some guys earlier, by the end of the day, we were
33:45
almost at the wall coming out of turn two.
33:46
And we were actually at the wall going into turn three,
33:48
too, just trying to find bite.
33:50
So, and we were running 35 second laps, which when you're going that slow, you
33:53
know, you can drive different places on the track to try to find bite.
33:57
You're not trying to drive the track like an asphalt track.
33:59
You can drive it more like a regular dirt track when it's like that.
34:01
I marvel at the fact that you can remember all that stuff and all those laps.
34:05
I'd like to back you up, and I know we don't look to, in the rear view mirror,
34:08
but, uh, you talked about building model cars and always wanting to be
34:11
a racer and going with your dad and mom to watch the races and so forth.
34:14
And then you did eventually get that Charger RT, I guess, or Challenger RT.
34:19
A Challenger.
34:20
Not, not, not even, not, not even a simple one, but an expensive one.
34:21
No.
34:22
But anyway, when did you decide you could become a race car
34:25
driver and would stick with it?
34:26
And I suspect you never imagined where you'd end up, but just continue racing.
34:30
Um, I just, ever since, uh, you know, my dad is … He's got the
34:33
gift of gab, and he always talked to the guys that were from Canada.
34:36
You know, Buffalo Way, uh, Cliff Norton, Terry Edwards, Lloyd Holt,
34:39
Mi- Mikey Grant, and those guys.
34:41
I'd wake up on Saturday and Sunday mornings with race cars in my driveway.
34:44
They still were dirty, and they still had the
34:46
You could actually … Sometimes they were still warm.
34:48
And just looking at them and saying, "Man, I wanna drive these
34:49
things." I have been very fortunate.
34:51
You know, I've had to scratch and claw, you know.
34:52
I, I, except for when I drove for Mr. Beachy, and a couple other times too,
34:55
I've never really had a big sponsor.
34:57
We've had to scratch and claw for what we've got.
34:59
Ever since I can remember, I've been wanting to drive a race car,
35:02
and, and particularly dirt modified.
35:04
Now, back when I was racing street stocks, I had the notion that I really
35:07
wanted to drive a sprint car, but one day my dad told me he wouldn't walk across
35:10
the street to see a sprint car race.
35:11
And he was a great influence on my racing career, so I knew where that was headed.
35:15
It wasn't gonna be a sprint car, so … Joe, you wanna keep going or- Sure.
35:21
Mel Lane has been sitting here very patiently.
35:24
Mel has had quite a few experiences at Syracuse.
35:27
Now, the unique thing about him, not only did he run a small block modified
35:31
at Syracuse, but he also ran a sprinter.
35:34
Like to have you talk about the difference of competing on the Moody
35:37
Mile with the two different cars.
35:39
Well, there's quite a difference with a sprint car being so much
35:42
lighter and more power than the small block modifieds, but the modifieds
35:47
were great back in the early '80s.
35:49
I went four times and with a low budget car, and we
35:52
I did, uh, win a heat one year and finished eighth in the final.
35:56
That was my best, you know, with that car.
35:58
And then when we went back, entered with the World of Outlaws in '90 or '91, I
36:03
ended up 11th in the A Main feature.
36:06
Sammy Swindell won it, and I ended up 11th on the lead lap.
36:09
It was really successful.
36:10
I mean, it was, the car got more comfortable as the race went
36:14
on, and it was very fast, but try to not do anything crazy.
36:19
Between running a modified on the racetrack, and I'm talking here again
36:23
strictly to Moody Mile, different lanes, different grooves, different
36:27
places you get into it, get off of it.
36:29
Well, with a sprint car with a wing on it, uh, it was like Johnny Beyross mentioned,
36:33
when you get the car right, you, you don't have to lift off the throttle.
36:36
The wing will just hold you right down onto the track and- So you would
36:40
go full throttle around that mile?
36:42
Yeah.
36:42
Really?
36:43
Whoa.
36:44
Yeah, and, uh, that's a tremendous feeling.
36:47
I mean, to be able to have the car work that good to do that is exciting.
36:50
And then running a small block modified, obviously different lanes
36:54
that you would use, and you would get onto it at a different point,
36:57
shut it off at a different point.
36:59
Uh, yeah, and, and with the modified, we, we never build a special car or had the
37:05
money to spend to do it proper, so it, it was more of a field filler, you know?
37:10
I mean, we did good on the short tracks and, but the mile was, was tough.
37:14
The experience of running the mile, and I'm sure every one of these
37:17
fellows that are seated alongside of me here, is just phenomenal.
37:21
Danny Kay, uh, kind of summed it up.
37:23
For him, it was like running at Daytona.
37:25
You also feel that way?
37:27
Yeah.
37:27
I've, I raced on 42 different dirt tracks, and i- it certainly is the fastest
37:33
and most unique feeling racing there.
37:36
Well, you sure did a great job.
37:37
Thank you.
37:38
Any questions for Mel Lane?
37:42
I wonder how the times compare between the sprint car and the modified.
37:47
Well, uh, sprint cars are, are a little quicker 'cause they're lighter and,
37:51
you know, they have similar horsepower.
37:53
I think Billy Ponch holds the record there at 24 point something seconds on a mile.
37:58
We did go back, I didn't mention it, but I went back as an owner and had Lance
38:02
Young drive for me in a URCESS Challenge, and we ended up winning that race.
38:07
Uh, Lance was the same way.
38:08
We, we b- had a car built special for that and, you know, it just worked very,
38:12
very good, and he averaged, like, 127 mile an hour for the whole race and
38:17
could run her absolutely wide open.
38:19
That was a good experience, still.
38:21
Syracuse, the mile, isn't known as a sprint car track.
38:24
Eldora is known as a sprint car track around these parts,
38:27
around the world probably.
38:28
You've run a 410 sprinter at both tracks.
38:31
Talk to us about the difference between Eldora and Syracuse.
38:34
Well, I, I, h- I have not run at Eldora.
38:36
I've run at Knoxville, Iowa, which is- I'm sorry.
38:38
I meant Knoxville.
38:39
That's what I really meant … right, Knoxville.
38:40
Yeah.
38:40
That is an excellent track.
38:42
It's, you know, it's a big half mile, so the speeds aren't quite as great.
38:46
Same deal.
38:47
I mean, the first year that we went there, there was 164 cars
38:50
that took the time trial, so I mean, it, it's a huge, big deal.
38:54
It's not quite that large anymore in car count, but that's
38:56
a great adventure to go to.
38:58
But it's different than Syracuse.
39:00
Syracuse is just, we'd slow the steering down to try to make the
39:04
car, you know, not jerky at all compared to the sh- short tracks.
39:08
And so just quite a bit of difference, but both huge events.
39:11
Well, that leaves us with one driver.
39:15
He's a three-time winner at Syracuse, many time track champion
39:19
at many, many different dirt speedways around the Northeast.
39:23
I remember this guy winning his first modified feature in the Tom Ewing
39:28
Corvair bodied car number 14J, and that was at Candadaigua Speedway.
39:33
Alan, it's been one hell of a ride, hasn't it?
39:36
Yeah, Joe, it's been since 1974.
39:40
1974. And of course, your success at Syracuse has been second to none.
39:44
You've seemed to done well both on the short tracks, the medium
39:47
sized tracks, but you've also done well at the mile at Syracuse.
39:50
Can you relate some of the Syracuse stories?
39:53
Well, I've been there enough times, you know?
39:54
I've been there since '74, so what's that, 40 times or so?
39:57
So, you know, I've had some good runs, but I've had some pretty bad ones, too.
40:01
Um, mostly I remember the wrecks more than you remember the wins.
40:05
The track's gone through a lot of transitions since '74.
40:07
You know, it, it seems like every time you go there, it's different.
40:10
Like Gary says, you're there one time, it's 28 seconds a lap.
40:13
You're there a couple of days later, and it's 35 seconds a lap.
40:16
It's just a challenging place.
40:17
You try to go up there with good equipment, but it's kind of hard
40:19
to find an owner that can spend that kind of money for one race.
40:22
You know, I've been lucky.
40:23
I've been probably four or five times where I've been there and I,
40:26
and I was probably in, if not the fastest, one of the fastest cars.
40:29
You know, all the rest of the times I, I wasn't.
40:31
But, uh, it's a, it's kind of a race where just survival, having the right pit
40:35
strategy, and not running out of gas, you know, you're gonna be successful there.
40:39
And, and a lot of luck Alan, can you recall the year that you had to run the
40:43
non-qualifiers race on Sunday afternoon, and you had to qualify through the
40:48
non-qualifiers race, and I think you started in the 55th starting position, if
40:52
I'm not mistaken, and came up and won it?
40:55
Well, that's going back to the luck factor.
40:57
No, but we were pretty good, uh, we were pretty good going back to that week.
41:01
We were okay.
41:01
You know, we were a mid-pack car, maybe however many cars
41:04
you used to get back then.
41:05
I think it was 80 or 100, whatever you used to get.
41:07
We were probably 35th fastest on the charts.
41:09
But, uh, we had a problem with the car where it was popping out of gear all
41:12
week long, and I had the transmission apart in my own trailer trying to fix it.
41:16
I didn't know a transmission part from a rear end part.
41:19
So, you know, we struggled with it all week trying to get it fixed,
41:21
and never did get it fixed, so that put us in a non-qualifiers race.
41:25
We were a little off on setup.
41:26
Like I said, we were probably half as fast as anybody there,
41:29
you know, about mid-pack.
41:30
We threw a setup at it.
41:31
Saturday night, I borrowed some shocks from Kenny Tremont.
41:34
Completely off the wall compared to, you know, like something
41:36
Troyer would set you up with.
41:38
Went out there, and we started pretty far back in the non-qualifiers race, too.
41:41
The car was just awesome.
41:42
I mean, like, I got out there, and, like, I just passed a car a lap, you know?
41:45
It was just great, but I thought I was gonna run out of time.
41:48
Got up to the last lap, and I, I still remember Mark Clury following
41:51
me around, and I knew I was better, but it's so hard to pass there.
41:54
I didn't think I was gonna be able to do it, and, uh, just gave it
41:56
everything I got coming out of four, got up alongside of him.
41:58
And, you know, it's questionable if it was a tire nap, but I figured, I
42:03
figured Glen still had his provisional, so I wasn't really worried about it.
42:07
But anyways, uh, they called it a tie and we got in the race, and I
42:10
ended up missing the drivers' meeting 'cause they had the drivers' meeting
42:12
while the non-qualifiers race was on.
42:14
So I started last, like you said, and, you know, I, I was doing
42:17
all right working up through.
42:18
I, like I said, I had a really fast car.
42:20
We threw a setup at it that it, it was just great.
42:22
It was super fast.
42:23
The race was going on, I got up to… People were pitting and not
42:26
pitting, and I was up to fifth.
42:27
I'm trying to get in my spot on the, on the yellow.
42:30
The guy's not letting me there.
42:31
He's fighting with me, and he's a lapped car, so he's not letting me in there.
42:33
So Glen's getting tired of cars going around in continuous yellow.
42:37
I didn't know I was supposed to go to the outside, run a fifth.
42:39
I thought I was supposed to start fifth.
42:41
I, but I was actually supposed to be the fifth in line on the
42:43
outside, but I didn't know it.
42:44
Back then, I don't think communication was that great on the radios.
42:47
I don't even think we had a radio, to tell you the truth.
42:49
But Glen was getting tired of running the cars around the yel- on, under the
42:52
yellow, I guess, so he put me last.
42:54
Still got a bone to, still got a bone to pick with him about that.
42:58
But anyways, uh, I went last and like, I didn't know what was going
43:01
on and went where they told me to go.
43:03
So I worked my way back up.
43:04
By the end of the race, I was third again.
43:06
You know, that was the year my brother and, uh, Frank Kozie was
43:09
kind of fighting for the same piece of real estate going into one.
43:12
I'm the one that ended up with it.
43:14
They both ended up in the wall.
43:15
So, uh, you know, it was just a matter after that, I think there
43:17
was five or six laps left or whatever, had a tire going down.
43:21
Gary's body was falling off of it.
43:23
No fault of him.
43:24
He didn't put it on.
43:27
Yeah.
43:27
You know, we had, you know, that's pretty much the way the race went.
43:30
We ended up winning it.
43:31
Alan, you drove for many different teams.
43:34
One of the teams that you drove for that really impressed me was
43:37
the Jim Beachy Pillsbury team.
43:39
I've seen many introductions and many, uh, different ways that drivers brought
43:44
their cars out onto the speedway during the, um, big race, the 200 on Sunday.
43:49
But I think second to none was the time that you guys brought the Pillsbury
43:53
Doughboy car out onto the speedway.
43:56
Every one of the crew was dressed up in a Pillsbury type uniform, the big
44:00
flat hats and the big puffy hands.
44:04
And as they pushed the car out onto the track, everybody waved at the
44:08
audience, and I think that was one of the greatest introductions that
44:12
anyone has ever done at the Moody Mile.
44:14
And you were part of that, and thank you for that.
44:16
I'll always remember that.
44:17
Well, I don't know if I was part of that.
44:19
I, uh- Well, I was walking about 50 foot behind the car when they,
44:23
they were pushing it on there.
44:24
I, I got into it after they all left.
44:27
But I thought that was kind of- I think I heard a yell from
44:30
the tower … kind of comical.
44:31
I think I heard Glen saying, "Where's the driver?" Beachy was wondering that too,
44:35
but- Uh, I couldn't quite work up the courage to put the hat on, so, uh, I kind
44:42
of snuck in after that was all over with.
44:45
Well, Bici was probably the most colorful car owner that you raced for, drove for.
44:48
You've driven for, uh, many, but let's go back to the beginning,
44:51
Tom Ewing and the guys from Victor.
44:53
The story that I have heard, and I believe it to be true, is that you
44:57
were probably, I don't know if you were 14, 15, whatever you were, but, uh,
45:00
but you had never driven a standard transmi- I don't know if you had…
45:02
Didn't have a driver's license, so you hadn't driven on the road at all.
45:04
Never driven a standard transmission car around the fields or anything.
45:07
So they had you out in the parking lot, I think, at Wheatsport or
45:10
someplace or other, teaching you how to drive and shift a car.
45:13
Is that about right?
45:13
That's not quite a true story because-
45:15
uh, I don't know where that story came from.
45:17
My dad used to have Jeeps.
45:18
He had 117 acres of property out in Middlesex and used to have,
45:21
uh, Army Jeeps when we were kids.
45:23
He had trails all over the place, and they had the standard transmission in
45:25
them, and I, I learned to drive standard probably when I was 10, 12 years old.
45:29
Okay, I'll never share that story again then.
45:30
I can at- I can attest to the 117 acres out in Middlesex.
45:35
What, what else, what else you got, Gary?
45:35
I gotta straighten you out?
45:38
Yeah, we're gonna straighten a few things out here before this day is
45:40
over between you and I. But I'll go back to, uh, you talked about
45:43
remembering a crash a- at Syracuse, and, uh, I remember one very well.
45:47
I don't know what year it was, but Joe and I were in the tower, and you
45:50
crashed in turn one into the wall.
45:53
I think at full speed.
45:54
I don't know.
45:54
I couldn't believe that you wouldn't be hurt.
45:56
The word came over the radio that the driver was okay, and I went
45:59
back over the radio, "Are you sure you got the right driver?"
46:01
And they were sure, and you were okay.
46:03
But that was a, as I recall, a, a wicked, vicious crash.
46:07
And I don't know what year it was, but it was turn one.
46:08
You probably do remember.
46:10
Yeah.
46:10
Yeah, I, I, uh, I actually broke a helmet in that crash.
46:12
Looking at where the roll bar was, where my head was, I'm kind of
46:15
thinking my neck had to stretch four or five inches to hit that roll bar.
46:18
It knocked me out.
46:19
I remember, uh, Dick Larkin and I were trying to get into
46:21
one, and I guess he had a wheel underneath me and I didn't know it.
46:24
Sent me right up into the wall.
46:25
And yeah, that was one of the bad ones.
46:27
That was a bad one.
46:28
But we, we mentioned this briefly, but I have, as I mentioned earlier, I have
46:31
statistics from Don and Joanne Davies and, uh, that show that Alan, and this is just
46:35
again for the, uh, what we now know as the Syracuse 200, 36 starts, three wins.
46:40
'83, '89, and '03.
46:43
So a 20 year spread between those two, and you won't get to do it again, but
46:47
it was a great run while it lasted.
46:49
I mean, on the m- on the Syracuse Mile, that is.
46:52
Yeah.
46:52
Yeah, it was, uh, it was a lot of fun.
46:54
A lot of years, you know.
46:55
It's hard to believe, for 40 something years.
46:57
I missed a few 'cause I didn't have rides for them, but just a lot of work.
46:59
You know, I can still remember burning the midnight oil to try to
47:02
get the cars ready for that week.
47:03
And, you know, at John's I had one or two of his cars there before, and being
47:06
in his garage till midnight just seemed like it come up and there wasn't enough
47:09
time to get the cars ready, you know?
47:11
'Cause we'd race who knows how many races up till then.
47:14
You know, just one race at a time trying to keep the car going for the next night.
47:17
And then Syracuse would come and about as unprepared as we could be,
47:20
but, you know, we burned the midnight oil and we, we always made it.
47:22
I'm kind of thinking maybe with Glen here we could start another, uh, 40 years.
47:25
I don't know how, how many years we'll make, but we can always try.
47:29
Any questions for any of the group that is up here with us right now?
47:34
I'd like to know how much time is spent in the garage in,
47:38
you know, in the off season.
47:39
How much time, like now when they start, like work, you know, it's
47:42
always interesting because actually the off season is short, but How
47:46
much time will be being spent, you know, working directly with the cars?
47:49
Gary?
47:50
Uh, I was at Bicknell Racing Products yesterday, and they sent 11 cars out of
47:54
there yesterday, and they're supposed to send in another three or four on Friday.
47:59
Parts probably will come up this coming weekend.
48:00
There are gonna be a lot of guys wanting their cars then.
48:02
They started building the 2016s, I think, in September.
48:05
And right now, if you order a car from Bicknell, it won't be
48:08
until March you can pick it up.
48:09
I don't know how the other car builders are, but I know they're that busy.
48:12
You know, it's pretty much a r- a year-round thing now.
48:14
It's just to stay on top of the game, you really gotta be going the whole time
48:18
trying to get ready for, you know, whether it be a next race or the next season.
48:21
You cannot really slow down a whole lot.
48:23
It just go, go, go all the time.
48:24
You know, I have a question.
48:26
You often heard of a regular Saturday night special, and then your Syracuse car.
48:31
Did any of you ever have just a car put away for Syracuse?
48:35
Um, when I drove for Honeycutt, 2002 we bought a Syracuse specific car.
48:40
The frame was basically the same.
48:42
The difference, uh, Allen actually had one when he drove for BT too.
48:45
The front sheet metal, the front of it was closed off a lot
48:48
more, duct work to the radiator.
48:49
The front wings went all the way down to the frame.
48:51
The doors were different heights.
48:53
A lot of different stuff to, to make the air not only go through the car
48:57
straighter, but also put the downforce in a different area 'cause, you know, you're
49:00
on a mile that's almost like asphalt, so you can do a lot more of that stuff.
49:03
We'd get done with it.
49:04
Now, back then, when we got it, they actually still raced Labor Day.
49:07
Was that a good testing- Yeah.
49:09
It was, um- For, for Super Dirt Week?
49:10
Yeah, 'cause we, our first race was Labor Day with that
49:13
car, and we got fourth with it.
49:14
We didn't have the motor that the guys in front of us had, but we were
49:17
way better through the corners than any of those guys in front of us.
49:20
We just couldn't pass them.
49:21
And Labor Day, even Fourth of July, the track is really narrow, uh, the groove is.
49:25
But we learned, you know, okay, we got something here, so we went through
49:28
it again for, for Super Dirt Week.
49:30
Super Dirt Week ended.
49:32
We take all the running gear off the car, put the frame of the body over
49:34
in the corner, put the running gear on another car, run the short tracks
49:36
with that, buy all new running gear for that car for Syracuse again next year.
49:40
We did that.
49:41
Well, I left Honeycutt in 2008 or 2009.
49:44
They still had the car, and they're still doing the same thing.
49:46
Johnny Byrush, how about you?
49:47
Did you have anything special for Syracuse?
49:50
Yeah, we used to try to build a car, uh, special for Syracuse.
49:53
We didn't run there much ourselves, but For different customers, we'd try to
49:57
build a car, uh, especially for Syracuse.
50:00
And like I say, usually for the sheet metal work, usually
50:03
it was at the last minute.
50:04
One time we, uh, ran Syracuse, we, uh, we started a brand-new
50:08
car 10 days before Syracuse.
50:11
Meant that that was just straight tubing in the tubing rack.
50:14
And then 10 days later, we, we went to Syracuse, and that car was really
50:18
fast, and I- it was the best I ever…
50:21
I never qualified very good there.
50:23
I never ran many races that they time trialed.
50:25
And I qualified 10th, and I remember the, the day of the race, uh, we
50:29
went out for final practice, and I drove right around Jack Johnson
50:32
like he was parked, and we were, uh, starting right next to each other.
50:36
And Jack told me, uh, before the race, he says, "If you don't mess
50:39
up, you're gonna win this thing."
50:41
We went, like, 12 laps and broke a oil pump in the motor,
50:44
and that was the end of it.
50:45
But that was a special car for Syracuse, and that was when
50:47
Gary started working for me.
50:49
He built the body for that car, the nose, and the hood, and everything.
50:53
And that car was really, really good in the wind.
50:56
I know these guys that drive those cars up there, you get a lot of buffeting.
50:59
Helmet, your head, and everything moves around, especially
51:02
when you're passing cars.
51:03
And that car, the way the sheet metal was on it, when you drove down
51:06
the straightaways, it was just like sitting in your regular road car.
51:10
The sheet metal was perfect on that car.
51:12
The body work really does make a difference at that racetrack.
51:15
One other time we built a car, a special car, for Lynn Hough.
51:18
That car was really good.
51:19
That was the same way.
51:20
We built it two nights before Syracuse.
51:22
We were out back of the shop painting the frame with spray
51:24
cans at 2:00 in the morning.
51:26
And that car was really fast.
51:28
He ended up having a water pump failure.
51:30
But then the following year, he had a small block in the car and, uh, won
51:33
the small block race with that car.
51:35
One more thing about John, the year before we built that car,
51:38
that was the white car, right?
51:39
That was the white car?
51:40
That was the white car, yeah.
51:41
We built the car called the Circus Wagon.
51:43
That was the car that wrecked when, uh, Sammy Swindell tried to make a
51:46
lane underneath Johnny coming out of four, and there was no lane, and it
51:49
wrecked them both, and then poor buzzy come along and crushed them both.
51:51
Now, that car there was the Corn Husk car at Wedsport the following
51:56
year when he had the race won, so.
51:57
Oh, yeah.
51:58
That Johnny did some, uh, harvesting.
51:59
Yeah, did some farming.
52:00
I remember that.
52:01
Yeah, so that car was fast that year, too.
52:03
I, I really felt good about that car.
52:04
But yeah, the year that we built that car, I don't remember who…
52:07
Rod Eisenberg was one guy.
52:08
And then we had an engineer from, uh- Cornell … Bill Trout had
52:11
a aerodynamicist from Cornell University- Yep … come up to
52:14
the shop, and, and we went over a lot of little things on the car.
52:18
Some of it was stretching the rules, but what he had us do was, he says,
52:22
"Now, look." This guy was really smart.
52:24
He says, "You gotta do some things- that are blatantly illegal so that they make
52:30
you- Yep … change them when you go through tech. Make them feel good. He,
52:34
he had us make the lips a little bit too long, and they'd measure it and go,
52:37
"Well, you can't have that like that.
52:39
You gotta cut it off." "Okay, we'll cut that off."
52:41
And he says, "Maybe some of the other stuff they won't see. They
52:44
won't pay attention to that." And so that, that's what we did.
52:47
We put a lot of work into those cars for Syracuse.
52:50
When you were in that one car that was pretty fast, that you went around Jack
52:53
Johnson and so on, was that Ford powered?
52:56
Yeah, that was Ford powered.
52:57
Yeah.
52:58
You always kind of stuck to the Fords.
53:00
Yeah, yeah.
53:00
When I drove for Billy, we ran Fords.
53:03
Gary, did you ever run any of his Fords or…?
53:05
No, but I ran, uh, when I ran Sportsmen, I ran Chrysler products.
53:09
Yeah, I know.
53:09
You cut up that good Mopar.
53:10
Well, they were… Yeah, they, but while even with Sportsmen, I had a, a Mopar.
53:13
Yeah.
53:14
And, uh, the gentleman, Joe Lepine from Danbury Competition who
53:16
built his Fords built my Chrysler.
53:18
John, did you ever feel that the Ford had an advantage or
53:21
disadvantage at the Moody Mile?
53:23
Well, that year with that white car, I felt we had an advantage.
53:26
Actually, Will Cagle drove that car and had- The Classic or whatever it was called
53:30
a Winner's Classic race at that time, where if you won one of the
53:33
qualifying races- Yeah … and there were 16 guys in the race and, and Will
53:37
wasn't, he didn't have a car there.
53:39
But he said, "Well, let me take your car and run a lap, and I'll split
53:42
the money with you." So he did.
53:45
He come in and he says, "I never drove a car like that."
53:48
He says, "Boy, I wish I was driving that car." He says, "Man, that
53:50
thing is really fast." And it was.
53:52
It's just too bad it broke.
53:53
That was kind of my luck up there.
53:55
Yeah.
53:55
At any rate, I'm gonna keep going.
53:56
Okay.
53:58
I'll, I'll just read this, this fella has written here, talking about the
54:01
beginning and the end of the, uh, racing on the mile at Syracuse, and
54:05
this specifically is the beginning.
54:07
"The Onondaga Historical Association has a letter in its files dated June
54:12
12, 1900, in which Timothy Woodruff, lieutenant governor to Theodore
54:19
Roosevelt, urges Frederick Stevens, the future state senator, to get up an
54:24
automobile race for the state fair. It's one of the biggest ever, and we could
54:29
really make something out of this."
54:30
That's a little paraphrase on the end.
54:32
So that's what was going on in 1900.
54:34
All of you know what went on in 2015, so the beginning and the end.
54:39
Well, I gotta tell you, I, I think, guys, you did a great job representing
54:42
a lot of the history of the Moody Mile.
54:45
I mean, uh, it's 2015.
54:47
The checkered flag is out.
54:49
The memories are there, and sure great that all of you folks have, uh, competed.
54:53
We have another question?
54:55
Talking about so many unique cars, I was wondering what Glen's thought
54:58
was when he saw the Blue car show up.
55:02
That's a good question.
55:04
This is before or after I had a long talk with our tech people.
55:10
Well, the bottom line is we sent Don Bushbacker, who was our head
55:14
tech people, he went out to, uh, St.
55:16
Louis, Missouri, where they were building the car.
55:18
So he looked at it.
55:19
The only thing, he come back and said, "Look, all the cars that are on the,
55:23
the circuit right now are built to the minimum specifications. Blue's car is
55:29
gonna be at the maximum." And it's a Lincoln Continental, and believe me,
55:34
I couldn't find anything in the rule book that said you couldn't do it.
55:38
And of course, the rest is history.
55:40
They came, and after Merv Triegler, J- And Jeff Bodine … in fact, Jeff
55:45
Bodine was, was… Yeah, remember, he won Daytona, like, six years later.
55:49
But yeah, everyone, and if you were there on that Sunday, you saw
55:53
a whole different field of cars.
55:55
All of a sudden they went from minimum specs to maximums.
55:59
That was one of the highlights of being at Syracuse.
56:02
You know, probably, which we don't talk about much, probably the, the
56:05
spectacle at Syracuse that I probably look at and say, "I mean, this was
56:10
a real wow," 75 three and four when we had the USAC Champ cars there.
56:16
And there's where you saw the biggest names in motorsports.
56:20
You know, Al Unser, Mario Andretti, Vukovich, Bettenhausen, Pancho Carter.
56:26
I mean, these guys were the biggest and the best in the world.
56:30
And you talk about a show, that's why even the track surface, it
56:34
was prepared that we didn't run it in, those Champ cars run it in.
56:39
They were all Firestone tires at the time, and they were running inner/outer
56:43
liners, just like Cup cars do today.
56:46
That's how far advanced that USAC Champ division was back in, in the early '70s.
56:52
Bettenhausen got a flat going into turn one.
56:55
I remember Merv Trickle and I were right there in turn one watching
56:58
these guys, and it was incredible.
57:01
When the track was still heavy, it wasn't packed in.
57:04
I mean, our modifieds wouldn't even go out on a track like
57:07
this, you know, in today's game.
57:09
These guys, you know, and the tires were huge.
57:12
It wasn't like … And Alan, you remember back in those days when they
57:15
were, we would run the so-called drag rubber, and that's what these guys had.
57:20
And he come flying down through there, dirt flying in the air, and
57:24
he went into turn one, never lifted.
57:26
Put it right in one of those buildings.
57:28
And then three days later, Wes and I went up to see him in the hospital, and
57:32
he'd been messed up ever since then as far as … But the night before, they
57:37
were at Reading, Pennsylvania, running sprint cars, and hear Bettenhausen had
57:42
a broken nose from a rock or something that hit him in the face down at Reading.
57:46
And he was running for Penske at the time, and Penske fired him because
57:50
of the sprint car race instead.
57:52
So I mean, you know, these are things that, you know, you don't hear much
57:55
about because they had a big fight between USAC and Champ cars, and
58:00
it all went away right after that.
58:02
But believe me, the best division that USAC had was that dirt Champ
58:07
division, when you saw all the top names in those cars and how that race
58:12
So I don't know.
58:13
To me, it was a, it was an unbelievable experience to see
58:17
the biggest names in racing run on dirt in those, uh, Champ cars.
58:22
Other than that, I'll tell you, I hope to turn the chapter next year and hope
58:26
you all come to our new, uh, facility.
58:28
I, I'll, I'll guarantee it's gonna be the wow factor when you come in and
58:32
see what we're gonna build up there.
58:34
And hopefully it's a resurgent for Alan Johnson, who put on a hell of a lot of
58:38
shows from that first show at Weedsport, and I'm not talking in a stock car.
58:43
Right, Alan?
58:45
It was Snowmobile racin'.
58:47
His father and I were partners on an 800 cc.
58:51
Remember Larry Berman drove it, 'cause Alan was too young at
58:54
that time to get on an 800 sled.
58:56
I did.
58:57
It's always been about speed.
58:59
Every race that we went to at Syracuse, it was all about preparing the track
59:04
to get the most speed out of it.
59:05
And we didn't care what it cost or what you had to do.
59:09
If there was something new or something we had to use on that track to get
59:12
it, you know, we would try and do it.
59:14
And like I say, to put the modifieds, it was a real satisfaction when
59:18
you could see a sprint car go around there in 24 seconds, and in
59:22
today the guys say it's too fast.
59:24
You don't wanna run there.
59:25
But yet they came to Rolling Wheels.
59:27
Remember, their average speed there was 142 miles an hour.
59:31
At Rolling Wheels this past October they were averaging 145 miles an hour.
59:36
That's what racing's about.
59:38
It's about sp- I don't care how you cut it.
59:40
Like when Wes set it with 36 seconds and then we were running
59:44
in the 28-second bracket.
59:45
I mean, these were satisfactions that you look for in motorsports.
59:49
And I don't care whether it's Indianapolis, Syracuse, or the
59:52
new track we're building, we're all looking to set the records.
59:56
And some of the stuff that we wanna do is considered 21st century.
1:00:00
And hey, let's wait and see what we have in the future.
1:00:03
Right, Wes?
1:00:03
You got it.
1:00:04
And you know, you talk about what Wes does in it.
1:00:06
I ought to let him tell you.
1:00:08
You know, he, he's gonna go out and work in the garage putting a car together.
1:00:12
Yeah.
1:00:12
Yeah.
1:00:12
But it's not because he wants to do that.
1:00:14
Well, you do it because you love it.
1:00:16
You know, we're putting together a, um, a number 22 Billy Rafter, uh, coupe, a
1:00:21
'36 Chevy coupe to go into the museum.
1:00:23
I mean, I just doing it the old way, getting, uh, building
1:00:26
parts, building brackets.
1:00:28
And I mean, it's just, it's a labor of love.
1:00:30
I mean, we go racing because we love the speed and the thrill and the competition.
1:00:35
You get in that garage, and it's for the love, just for the love of racing.
1:00:38
But if Jackie was gonna tell you, it's so that you get out of
1:00:41
her hair and your wife's there.
1:00:42
Yeah, that's it.
1:00:44
They throw me out of the shop.
1:00:46
They throw me out of the, uh…
1:00:47
Not allowed in the ev- in the Christmas shop.
1:00:49
You know, the one thing I'd like to say.
1:00:51
During Glen's regime for Super Dirt Week and building the empire that he
1:00:55
did, there were some unsung heroes.
1:00:59
Mark Kosweski, one of the track maintenance people.
1:01:02
Maury Holbrook, someone talked about him earlier.
1:01:04
Track preparation was, was his thing.
1:01:07
And I'm gonna tell you, there were some secret ingredients used into the
1:01:11
mile, right, Glen, that made that track work and, and come up really good.
1:01:16
One of the guys is here, right here, Jack Spino, who was, uh- Always the
1:01:20
man in victory circle and working the press booths and stuff like that.
1:01:24
He was really good.
1:01:25
And another guy who was a dear friend of, uh, Glenn and myself and many, many
1:01:29
others, his nickname was The Chief.
1:01:31
And when he was, um, inducted into the Dirt Car Hall of Fame, I called
1:01:36
him the Chief of Connections.
1:01:38
You know, one of the things we did not bring up, during the running of the big
1:01:42
race, the 200s, halfway leader always got a $10,000 bonus, and that was all done and
1:01:50
procured by this guy named Aaron Freshman.
1:01:53
So it was a great team from the front to the back, s- left to right, and it really
1:01:58
made Syracuse what it is and what it was.
1:02:01
Just before the 200, I had the distinct privilege of introducing
1:02:05
all the former champions of the race.
1:02:07
There, at that time, there were 44 races had been run.
1:02:10
By the time the day was over, 45 had been run.
1:02:12
But there were 22 winners in those first 44, and after the yesterday's or
1:02:16
that race that day, there were still just 22 winners, but still 22 winners.
1:02:22
450 drivers have qualified for and raced in the 200.
1:02:25
Now, it had different names over the years.
1:02:27
It was 100 to start with, and it was even called a 300, I think, at one point.
1:02:30
But, but anyway, so we introduced all the drivers and gave them a jacket to be worn.
1:02:35
So there were 22 jackets like this.
1:02:38
There are now 23.
1:02:39
For that, I have the distinct privilege of presenting it.
1:02:42
He didn't think he was ever gonna get this, and, uh, but nonetheless, we have
1:02:46
the winner's champion jacket for Alan for his three wins on the Moody Mile
1:03:01
And I think that pretty much wraps it up.
1:03:03
Of course, we're gonna be doing our afternoon session.
1:03:05
Kip, uh, you'd like to say something?
1:03:07
First of all, I'd like to thank everybody on the panel.
1:03:10
I, I sat down and I promptly realized that some of you may
1:03:13
wonder, where is Brett Hearn?
1:03:15
Well, Brett Hearn called me Thursday afternoon, had a personal
1:03:18
problem he had to take care of.
1:03:19
But Brett suggested that I give Gary Tompkins a call.
1:03:22
I am very glad I did, and I am very glad that Gary said he would participate
1:03:26
in this, 'cause I thought Gary, in addition to everybody else here on
1:03:30
the panel, was absolutely fabulous.
1:03:32
I did not anticipate that we would have the Moody Mile guy
1:03:36
here, and that is such a treat.
1:03:38
And Mr. Donley, I'm so glad you were able to come.
1:03:40
Just wanna thank everybody that participated in the panel.
1:03:43
I thought they were all fabulous.
1:03:44
You need to give them a, a round of applause, if you would, please.
1:04:22
My name is Kip Seider.
1:04:23
If you weren't here for the morning session, on behalf of the International
1:04:26
Motor Racing Research Center, I wanna thank you for coming out today for our
1:04:30
Syracuse Mile: A Look Back program.
1:04:32
If you, uh, were not here for the morning driver session, shame
1:04:36
on you, 'cause it was great.
1:04:38
As far as I was concerned, we could've still had that going.
1:04:40
These, these gentlemen were just terrific.
1:04:42
Before we get into the, uh, the meat of this program, there's really a lot of
1:04:46
people I need to thank, and because I can't do this extemporaneously, 'cause
1:04:51
I will forget someone, I wanna thank all the gentlemen that are participating
1:04:54
in the afternoon session: Dr. Gary George, who will give you an absolutely
1:04:58
amazing history of this fabulous track; Jeff Hockman from the World Racing
1:05:02
Group; Gary Thompkins again; and our kind of our moderators, co-moderators,
1:05:06
Joe Marotta and Gary Montgomery, who worked seamlessly together this morning
1:05:11
as they have for many, many years.
1:05:12
And I also got to thank everybody that works, the staff of the IMRRC for
1:05:16
dealing with me for the last couple weeks, 'cause it's been stressful.
1:05:20
Anyway, I'm gonna turn this over to, uh, Joe Marotta.
1:05:23
I am so thankful for being able to be given the opportunity to do this program.
1:05:28
I lobbied for a couple years to do this, thinking that Syracuse
1:05:31
was such a historic track.
1:05:32
At the time we actually put this on our schedule, we have to do these things
1:05:35
about a year in advance almost, the jury was still out as to whether Syracuse
1:05:40
would be running more races or whether this was gonna be the final year.
1:05:43
Obviously, as we all know, this was the final year, ending a
1:05:47
tradition that goes back to 1903.
1:05:49
Several people said to me, "You should make this a political
1:05:53
statement." The politics are done.
1:05:55
Syracuse is done.
1:05:56
So it doesn't make sense to make it a political statement.
1:05:58
What I preferred to think of it as was a celebration of the great men and women
1:06:02
who drove this track, a lot of people that lost their lives at this track.
1:06:06
It is such a historical part of the motorsports landscape.
1:06:10
I was there, along with I'm sure many of you, for this year's final dirt
1:06:13
race, and it just seems, uh, impossible to me that it won't be around anymore.
1:06:17
Now, Glen Donnelly, along with Wes Moody, Glen started saying, "Well,
1:06:20
I don't like to look in the rear view mirror, I like to look ahead."
1:06:23
I wanted to stop him and saying, "But Glen, we are here to look in
1:06:25
the rear view mirror" actually.
1:06:27
He did a lot of that in addition to, uh, talking a lot about this new facility
1:06:31
that he's developing, and it promises to be a showpiece, and Super Dirt Week
1:06:34
will go on courtesy of State of New York funding and Jeff Hockman and his
1:06:38
World Racing Group, and it promises to be a real showpiece, so, uh, we'll
1:06:41
probably all gather there next year.
1:06:43
But for this afternoon, we're here to celebrate the
1:06:45
history of the Syracuse Mile.
1:06:46
And at this point I'm gonna turn the mic over to Joe Marotta.
1:06:49
Sit back and relax and have fun.
1:06:51
Kip, thank you for all your hard work in putting this together.
1:06:54
It's really kind of neat
1:07:01
The Syracuse Mile.
1:07:03
I grew up probably a mile away from it.
1:07:06
Grew up in the village of Salve.
1:07:08
I used to be able to go up into my backyard and look down
1:07:11
into the State Fairgrounds.
1:07:12
In 1949, just after Labor Day, my dad said to me, "We're going to the races."
1:07:19
Wasn't called the Moody Mile back then.
1:07:21
It was just called the Syracuse Mile.
1:07:24
I said, "The races?" He says, "Yep, we're gonna see the
1:07:27
Triple-A Champ Car races." "Wow.
1:07:30
Okay, let's go." So we go down, my father and a couple of my
1:07:35
uncles, and here was all these people sitting in this grandstand.
1:07:39
And then all these cars were pitted on the racetrack, and all
1:07:43
of a sudden they start firing up.
1:07:45
And I heard this noise that I'll never forget.
1:07:49
It was an Offy.
1:07:50
And boy, I gotta tell you, it rattled the State Fairgrounds, it rattled Salve And
1:07:56
it certainly impressed seven-year-old me.
1:07:59
Anyways, I sat there and watched the race.
1:08:02
I remember the dust flying.
1:08:04
I remember the cars cranking sideways as they came down the front straightaway.
1:08:08
And another thing that I remembered on that given day was a guy in the
1:08:13
tower by the name of Chris Economaki.
1:08:15
Man, he really impressed me.
1:08:18
I remembered the lines that he used.
1:08:20
That following couple days, couple weeks, couple months, I impersonated
1:08:25
this guy by the name of Chris Economaki.
1:08:29
The offies really impressed me, and I did try my hand at race car driving,
1:08:34
but I was much better as an announcer.
1:08:35
So anyways, this Chris Economaki really, really impressed me, and I
1:08:40
could not wait until the next year, the Saturday after Labor Day, until my
1:08:45
dad took me to the State Fairgrounds again to see the AAA champ cars.
1:08:51
There were drivers like Tony Bettenhausen there, Bobby Sweikert, Jack McGrath.
1:08:56
They just totally, totally impressed me.
1:08:58
And again, I heard that voice of Chris Economaki.
1:09:02
Many years later, I was announcing a race down at the Charlotte Motor
1:09:06
Speedway at the dirt track, walking through the pit area, and I run across
1:09:10
this guy by the name of Chris Economaki.
1:09:13
I walked up to him and I says, "Chris, my name is Joe Morato.
1:09:16
I'm the announcer at Syracuse." He said, "I know who you are." I says,
1:09:21
"Chris," I says, "I remember in 1949, the first race my dad took me to." He
1:09:26
says, "Really?" I said, "At New York State Fairground, Syracuse, New York." He
1:09:30
looked at me and he said, "Hey, is Pizzo's Restaurant still behind turn number two?"
1:09:37
I says, "Yes, it is." He says, "Boy, I tipped many a brew there." One of the
1:09:42
things I said to Chris Economaki, I said, "I remember those first couple years that
1:09:46
I went, you used some terminology like the throttle jockey." "Oh, the throttle
1:09:51
jockey out of Tinley Park, Illinois, Tony Bettenhausen." I said, "I also
1:09:56
remember you using the speed merchant."
1:09:58
"Oh, the speed merchant. That was Bobby Sweikert." He really impressed
1:10:02
me, and so did racing, and so did the New York State Fairgrounds.
1:10:06
Later it became named the Moody Mile.
1:10:09
We threw the final checkered flag just l- a little over a month ago.
1:10:12
I'll never, never forget the memories, and I think today is gonna be a day, I
1:10:17
don't wanna call it a eulogy, I wanna call it a tribute to the Moody Mile.
1:10:22
Dr. Gary George is here.
1:10:24
Tuesday we had a meeting up at Wheatsport.
1:10:27
I had pages and pages of notes, and I still have some of the
1:10:30
notes that I wanna talk about.
1:10:31
But after I saw Dr. Gary's presentation, and I says, "Man, this is history.
1:10:37
This is it." Ladies and gentlemen, as my good friend Jack Burgess always said,
1:10:41
"You've gotta have a favorite out there."
1:10:44
Syracuse was my favorite, and here is Dr. Gary George
1:10:55
Well, thank you, Joe, and thanks everybody for coming out today.
1:10:58
I got, uh, quite a story to tell today.
1:11:00
Being a retired college professor, I will be asking questions, and yes, there will
1:11:05
be a test after And probably some of my students out here are smarter than I am.
1:11:10
They always were when I taught.
1:11:12
I don't expect, you know, you're gonna get me probably on a few things.
1:11:15
Anyways, let's move on to this first slide.
1:11:18
I could not have done this, and I think, uh, we've already mentioned
1:11:22
that Jeff Ackerman and Mike Maney, they're motorsports historians
1:11:25
also, really worked hard to put this together, so it's not just me.
1:11:29
Some facts about the fairgrounds.
1:11:31
I'm not gonna go through every one of these in detail.
1:11:33
I think the important thing to realize about the State Fair is it's the oldest
1:11:37
state fair in the United States, and it was really started by a bunch of farm
1:11:41
folk and some legislatures and, you know, some politicians, unfortunately,
1:11:45
at times, w- especially w- in light of what ha- has happened to Syracuse,
1:11:50
to promote a larger than a local fair.
1:11:52
So it was originally held in Syracuse, and they had quite a crowd the first
1:11:57
year, and they did big things like plowing contests, which was a big deal back
1:12:01
then, 'cause everybody was in farming.
1:12:03
They were starting to look at manufacturing goods that were being done.
1:12:06
The second fair was in Albany, which a lot of people don't know, and then it changed.
1:12:11
It traveled all over the state to 11 different cities.
1:12:15
Now, you can imagine that every city was vying for the State Fair, so it
1:12:20
became a tremendous political football to try to figure out what town was gonna
1:12:26
wedge its way in to get the State Fair because eventually the, they knew the
1:12:31
state would be involved with money.
1:12:33
And that politics continued, if you look at the history of the fair itself, right
1:12:38
through to the end, for us at least, with the State Fair, uh, the racetrack,
1:12:43
the Moody Mile as we know it now.
1:12:46
So Mr. Geddes, and you know when you pull in by the track, you see the town of
1:12:50
Geddes, he donated most of the land for the original fairgrounds, which was quite
1:12:54
small compared to what we have there now.
1:12:58
And in 1890, 1892, I believe, they decided to let the state in, and the state took
1:13:04
over the facility with an 11-member fair commission appointed by the governor.
1:13:08
Let's look at what we're really after today.
1:13:10
This was the track, the mile track, when it was first built.
1:13:14
Now, I want you to notice, you see the railroad tracks
1:13:17
here, the West Shore Railroad?
1:13:19
The track now, the front straightaway is right against that.
1:13:22
So originally the track was built at a skewed angle that ran
1:13:26
from the railroad track all the way up to State Fair Boulevard,
1:13:29
which is that road you see there.
1:13:31
And the fairgrounds facility was pretty small.
1:13:33
There's a dotted line there that you see, and that was the grounds.
1:13:37
This map here is 1917.
1:13:39
Before that, in 1890, they built a half-mile track inside
1:13:44
that ha- the mile track.
1:13:45
The mile track came at a later date.
1:13:47
And they ran horses there.
1:13:49
But Mr. Geddes wanted the biggest harness race in the world to come to Syracuse.
1:13:56
That was the Hamiltonian.
1:13:57
So in the early 1900s, they started bidding for a license to run
1:14:03
the Hamiltonian at the Syracuse Fairgrounds, and it was a mile.
1:14:06
They built a mile track.
1:14:08
This is the proposed new track that we knew it a few weeks
1:14:11
ago with the dotted lines.
1:14:13
The old track was over there.
1:14:15
The old track had a giant wooden grandstand, not as big as the one that
1:14:19
would be built on the proposed track.
1:14:22
Now, there's something interesting to notice here.
1:14:24
This was pro- proposed in 1912.
1:14:26
Nothing really happened until the early '20s.
1:14:30
Anybody know what happened between 1912 and the early 1920s?
1:14:35
World War I, very good.
1:14:37
Guess what they did with the fairgrounds?
1:14:39
They used it for a army training base, so there was no racing there.
1:14:43
It took a while for the army to move out and for the fair to get back going again.
1:14:48
So the '20s, the roaring '20s, as a lot of people know them, a lot of kind of
1:14:53
stuff happened, and a lot of racing.
1:14:55
I'm gonna show you some pictures.
1:14:57
I wanna talk to you before I show you the pictures, though.
1:14:59
There was something very fundamentally different happening in America.
1:15:02
The track building for horses coincided with something very new.
1:15:07
It was called the motor car, and the fairgrounds provided a perfect place for
1:15:12
people to see these new contraptions.
1:15:14
You gotta remember, in the early 1900s, very few people had cars.
1:15:18
It was a novelty to see a car coming down the road.
1:15:21
Wow, the fairgrounds was the perfect place to showcase them, so let's go race them
1:15:26
and make some money for the fair board.
1:15:27
They were always looking for that cash, weren't they?
1:15:30
And the first race was won by Jules Gounaud at an astonishing, the
1:15:34
crowd went berserk, and they had about 40,000 people there for that
1:15:38
first race, 60 mile an hour average.
1:15:41
Wes Moody, 100 mile an hour in 1970.
1:15:45
So this was pretty darn fast for cars that were literally like that.
1:15:50
You can see the guy's got a seat, he's got a radiator, and he's got a
1:15:54
gas tank, and he's dressed in a suit and tie, and he's off to the races.
1:15:59
Here's, uh, down the front straightaway.
1:16:01
They had the judges stand there.
1:16:03
This is the crowd.
1:16:04
You can see the grandstand, a big covered grandstand, large crowd.
1:16:08
Well, the first overall big winner was Ralph DePalma, seven victories.
1:16:14
He liked Syracuse and he ran very well there.
1:16:16
Another picture, uh, this picture, don't think the track is that wavy.
1:16:20
Sometimes we think it is here at Syracuse, I think, but it isn't.
1:16:23
It's the picture itself.
1:16:25
But I do want you to notice one thing.
1:16:27
How many of you are familiar with that building that is just past the grandstand?
1:16:32
The police station.
1:16:33
Yeah, I know it.
1:16:34
I've been in there before.
1:16:35
It wasn't pretty.
1:16:37
I don't wanna go in there again.
1:16:38
That was there.
1:16:39
This picture is about 1924.
1:16:42
So the track has been turned around, and take a look at the guardrail they got.
1:16:46
Picket fence.
1:16:47
And these are six cars, I think there's six there.
1:16:51
By the way, they only started six cars in a main event, a 100-mile race.
1:16:56
Any idea why only six cars?
1:16:59
How many race cars were there around the United States to
1:17:02
run at the national level?
1:17:04
About six.
1:17:05
And secondly, the dust was so bad if you tried to run any more, it turned
1:17:09
into a very dangerous situation.
1:17:12
Here's a line-up here for one of the races.
1:17:14
You can see the cow barns back there in the third and fourth turn.
1:17:18
Here's a picture of a car getting fueled up at the fueling area.
1:17:23
This was the start of a race.
1:17:24
Now you can see the picket fence a lot better.
1:17:26
In the '20s, uh, how many, how many of you have heard of barnstorming?
1:17:29
Well, barnstorming was basically air shows with race cars and
1:17:33
motorcycle racing, and they would run triple shows at the fairgrounds.
1:17:37
The top picture there is the motorcycles, and they got a large amount of people
1:17:41
just come out to see the motorcycles.
1:17:43
And then you had the air show, and this is a great picture in the '20s
1:17:47
of an airplane flying in front of the grandstand at one of the air shows.
1:17:51
So it was the barnstorming era.
1:17:53
Well, why don't you take a look at this prize list.
1:17:55
Take a look at what they paid to win for a 100-mile national championship event.
1:18:00
$5,000. That was a lot of money in 1923.
1:18:05
Lots of money.
1:18:06
I want you to look at something too down here.
1:18:09
Here's your flags.
1:18:10
Look what they've got for a red flag Course is clear.
1:18:14
Now, why in the dickens would you have a red flag go and the green
1:18:20
flag you're starting your last lap?
1:18:22
Any ideas?
1:18:23
Color traffic.
1:18:24
Traffic lights.
1:18:25
Absolutely.
1:18:26
There weren't any traffic lights.
1:18:28
How did we learn red means stop, green means go?
1:18:32
Traffic lights.
1:18:33
So to them, this made sense.
1:18:35
Well, there was some tragedy, and I know Joe has got a few comments on this.
1:18:40
Jimmy Murphy, 1924 French Grand Prix winner, was killed
1:18:44
in turn two in, uh, 1924.
1:18:47
It was a month, he got on a boat, came over here and raced at Syracuse and died.
1:18:52
Jimmy Gleason in 1931, a terrible crash on the front straightaway.
1:18:56
Now you see the cars are starting to look like kind of sprint car type things.
1:19:00
Jimmy Murphy was probably, I think, the only active Grand Prix driver
1:19:05
to ever drive on the Syracuse Mile, and I believe that to be a fact.
1:19:10
Mario Andretti ran there, but he wasn't an active Grand Prix driver at that time.
1:19:14
He went on to win the world championship.
1:19:16
Seven before he was.
1:19:17
Okay.
1:19:17
Well, we, we were debating that fact the other day up at Weedsport, so
1:19:21
that's an interesting fact, okay.
1:19:23
But it's pretty significant this guy won the French Grand Prix the week be- or the
1:19:26
month before and then died at Syracuse.
1:19:29
Joe, you got some comments you want to say on that?
1:19:31
I'll give you the mic here.
1:19:32
Well, Jimmy Murphy had wrapped up the championship, but he
1:19:35
came to Syracuse to race anyway.
1:19:37
And of course, there were open races around the United States at that
1:19:40
time, and there was a big race one week later in Sacramento, California.
1:19:45
A car owner came up to him and said, "I'd like you to drive my car in Sacramento,
1:19:50
California." There were no planes, there were trains, and you certainly
1:19:54
weren't going to be able to drive across the country in a week back then.
1:19:57
So he committed to drive in Sacramento, California, and he also said, "I
1:20:02
don't like to do this, but I'm gonna, I'll do, I will take the train."
1:20:06
Just prior to the race, the owner of that race car gave him tickets for the train.
1:20:13
He put it in his inside lapel pocket.
1:20:16
Back then, as you could tell, they didn't wear fire suits.
1:20:18
They wore, uh, suit and ties He had the tickets inside his lapel pocket.
1:20:24
When he was killed, he was speared with one of the fence posts that we
1:20:27
saw there, and it went right through those tickets through his heart.
1:20:32
And that's a true story.
1:20:33
A terrible accident.
1:20:34
Probably the worst racing accident in motorsports history happened in 1911.
1:20:40
Lee Oldfield, who had been battling for DePalma with, for the lead at
1:20:45
Syracuse with a few laps to go … Well, actually, 10 laps to go, started
1:20:49
to have a tire going down on him.
1:20:51
The tire was burning up, flapping, and he did not pull in.
1:20:54
He ended up blowing a tire near the second turn and went through the fence.
1:20:59
If you look at the pictures, look at how close up there in that
1:21:01
right picture the people are to the stands, to the racetrack.
1:21:05
They're all over the place, so it was easy if a car went through.
1:21:07
It's amazing they didn't kill more in this.
1:21:09
Anyways, uh, Lee Oldfield, no relation to Barney, by the way,
1:21:13
who won some races at Syracuse.
1:21:15
They had a police guard outside his door at the hospital.
1:21:18
He did get injured in this wreck.
1:21:20
And they were gonna arrest him for manslaughter.
1:21:22
Ralph DePalma came back from the next race, took the train back to
1:21:26
Syracuse to testify to the grand jury in defense of his fellow driver
1:21:32
that he had been racing against, and got him out of Syracuse, literally.
1:21:36
I don't have enough time to go through every race winner
1:21:38
through the '20s and '30s.
1:21:40
They didn't race during the war.
1:21:42
They restarted in '49.
1:21:44
You know, the war was over in '45.
1:21:46
Why did it take them four years to get started racing again?
1:21:49
Any idea?
1:21:51
It was absolutely.
1:21:52
It was an Army air base where they used the middle of the mile track for an
1:21:57
airstrip, and the government didn't…
1:21:59
well, the Army didn't wanna move out of there.
1:22:01
Made a nice camp.
1:22:01
They liked it.
1:22:02
It was by the lake.
1:22:03
It was cool.
1:22:04
They liked it.
1:22:04
Didn't like the winters, I guess.
1:22:06
Anyways, this was a program from the 1949 race that Joe talked
1:22:10
about that Tony Bentenhausen won.
1:22:12
Then we move up to '54.
1:22:16
1954, Bob Sweikert and Don Freeland put on an unbelievable race there.
1:22:20
Fought it out for the whole way.
1:22:21
Again, take a look at the crowd, how close they are.
1:22:24
They're right there by that concrete wall, and these cars are going
1:22:27
over 100 mile an hour easily.
1:22:30
Sweikert won that race at 90 mile an hour average, which was a first.
1:22:34
Well, Sweikert gets number two, and boy, that picture shows it all.
1:22:39
That Syracuse Mile is tough.
1:22:41
And there's George Amick on the side.
1:22:43
Shows him up there racing George Amick, and he went on to win that one.
1:22:46
You gotta remember, these were on l- the Labor Day type weekend,
1:22:50
during the day, and it was hot.
1:22:52
Tony Bentenhausen wins number three at Syracuse.
1:22:55
There he is.
1:22:56
Now, who's that guy right there?
1:22:59
Chris Economaki.
1:22:59
There's Chris Economaki that, uh, Joe was talking about, and he did love Syracuse.
1:23:04
If you read his articles and his column back in the '50s, he always
1:23:09
talked about going to visit Harley Marsh and his buddies in Syracuse.
1:23:13
Well, they wrecked them pretty good.
1:23:14
This is quite a picture of McGill up on top Jack McGrath.
1:23:18
You can see his helmet there.
1:23:20
He got a couple black eyes, they said, out of the whole thing.
1:23:22
Uh, I don't think I'd wanna do it again.
1:23:24
Take a look at the crowd, how close they are.
1:23:27
Got some kid waving there or something it looks like.
1:23:29
Jimmy Thompson put on some great shows, especially in '58.
1:23:34
There's a good picture of the back straightaway, the start coming off
1:23:36
turn two, I believe, and the midway, and all the people standing there.
1:23:40
Thompson wins it.
1:23:42
Thompson leads the pack.
1:23:43
Look at the crowd.
1:23:44
The big cars in that timeframe were extremely popular.
1:23:49
The people loved them, 'cause it was a big IndyCar drivers came to
1:23:53
Syracuse, and that's when I was looking up in the air at them.
1:23:57
This is a lineup on the back straightaway further down for that day.
1:24:01
Take a look at Jimmy Thompson coming off the turn.
1:24:03
That's racing.
1:24:04
Let's move on.
1:24:05
Al Unser made his appearance here, and boy did he ever, with
1:24:08
that double ed Ford camshaft car.
1:24:11
Teammate with Mario Andretti, which I have a picture right there.
1:24:14
Well, the city of Syracuse kind of brought central New York into the
1:24:18
realm of USAC and the tradition of AAA, with the city of Syracuse special.
1:24:24
They had a championship car as well as a sprint car.
1:24:26
They did run sprint cars in the '60s.
1:24:29
There was a lapse with the big cars due to some change of date problems.
1:24:32
They changed the date from the fair weekend to the next weekend,
1:24:36
and people just didn't come out.
1:24:38
They went to the fair, but they went to see the races when they were at the fair.
1:24:41
Gary Bettenhausen was their driver, Tony's son.
1:24:44
Now, the 1974 crash was a terrible crash that ended Gary Bettenhausen's IndyCar
1:24:49
career for all intents and purposes.
1:24:52
He did go through the top of the building in the first turn.
1:24:55
It was an absolutely terrifying wreck.
1:24:57
I was there.
1:24:58
I saw it.
1:24:58
Roger Penske visited him in the hospital and said, "Please, please
1:25:03
do not race those midget sprint cars or championship cars on the dirt.
1:25:07
They're dangerous." And according to what Speed Sport News said,
1:25:11
"They're good enough for my old man." Roger fired him on the spot.
1:25:15
He went on to have a good career though, still.
1:25:17
'75, Bruce Walkup and Sheldon Kinser at the fairgrounds.
1:25:22
If I had to do all of the Indianapolis car stars that really raced at the
1:25:27
fairgrounds, we'd be here for a long time, and I wouldn't have enough
1:25:31
slides to put all the pictures.
1:25:32
I picked some of the ones that were kind of my favorites most likely.
1:25:36
I was probably biased.
1:25:37
Definitely A.J. Foyt.
1:25:39
Roger Ward won, too, in the early '60s.
1:25:42
Parnelli Jones was always a top runner here and did like Syracuse.
1:25:45
Roger Ward, quite honestly, from what I've read, did not like Syracuse.
1:25:49
He ran good here, obviously.
1:25:51
Lloyd Ruby, the famous Bobby Marshman, uh, from down in Pennsylvania, Don Branson,
1:25:57
Len Sutton, Jim McElreath, and of course the famous Troy Ruttman, and many, many
1:26:02
others that you've already kind of seen.
1:26:04
So there was something new.
1:26:06
We're about ready to do another social change here.
1:26:09
After World War II, the IndyCars and the big cars and midgets were still
1:26:12
extremely popular, but man, they were killing drivers right and left Everybody
1:26:17
that came back from the war thought they were a race driver, and they were
1:26:20
getting in these champ cars, big cars, and they were getting hurt, killed.
1:26:24
Guess what?
1:26:25
Everybody could get a stock car.
1:26:26
There were a lot of pre-World War II coupes and sedans that were
1:26:30
available to every backyard hopeful.
1:26:32
Hot rods and roadsters had been raging in the West right after the
1:26:37
war, and actually before the w- war.
1:26:39
Some of your big Indianapolis car drivers, like Johnny Parsons,
1:26:42
drove hot rods out there.
1:26:44
Kind of think stock cars developed in North Carolina.
1:26:48
Really, stock cars started in 1903 at Syracuse with stripped down regular
1:26:55
cars with the fenders taken off, the seat left, the radiator, like
1:26:59
the car you saw on the second slide.
1:27:01
In the West after the war, this w- this type of racing was really raging.
1:27:05
They were running seven days a week.
1:27:06
So I reveal, he raced there for many, many years in the big cars and the champ cars.
1:27:13
He, uh, was a promoter.
1:27:14
Joe has already talked a little bit about him.
1:27:16
He took the opportunity to stage a stock car race.
1:27:20
This was something new for the Northeast.
1:27:22
Hadn't seen these stock cars.
1:27:23
They're just starting to hear about Bill France and NASCAR.
1:27:26
So why don't we have a state fairgrounds race to supplement the champ cars in 1945?
1:27:32
They did, and did they come out.
1:27:34
They came from all over the United States to race at Syracuse on the Mile.
1:27:39
This was a very interesting race.
1:27:41
This was unheard of in the champ cars.
1:27:43
Women in a race car?
1:27:46
They can't do that.
1:27:47
They're not strong enough to get around those turns and slide the cars.
1:27:51
Who was the first woman to ever win a race at the State Fairgrounds?
1:27:57
Anybody know?
1:27:58
Okay, I got ya.
1:28:00
In reality, there were two women in it.
1:28:02
Sarah Christian won her first heat, finished fourth in the feature,
1:28:06
contending with the men for the win.
1:28:09
Dorothy Baldwin was in the event from Baldwinsville.
1:28:13
I don't know if there's a relationship there, but I suspect so with the naming
1:28:16
of the town, and she turned out to be Ira Vail's right hand person for
1:28:21
many, many years as a head scorer for all the races they had under Ira Vail.
1:28:26
Ray Hill won that first race.
1:28:28
He was from Connecticut.
1:28:30
Sarah Christian, by the way, came all the way from Atlanta, Georgia.
1:28:33
She was a NASCAR driver down there.
1:28:36
And you can see the car, the door's open.
1:28:37
They chained them shut or taped them shut or whatever they could shut them with.
1:28:41
Many entrants.
1:28:42
There's a picture down looking through the pit area, front straightaway.
1:28:45
Lots of cars, but many found the wall.
1:28:48
Many found the wall.
1:28:50
We heard some about this, that this morning.
1:28:52
Well, take a look.
1:28:53
Here's what we got.
1:28:53
These are kind of a collage of the races.
1:28:56
Three abreast.
1:28:56
They started them three abreast.
1:28:58
And boy, they're just looking for trouble at Syracuse, aren't they?
1:29:01
And they did.
1:29:01
They wrecked a lot of cars.
1:29:02
These are the flatheads.
1:29:04
I just want to bring up something here real quick about the stock cars.
1:29:07
The rules were in flux.
1:29:09
It was like trying to hit a moving target.
1:29:11
They were changing year by year.
1:29:13
It was very hard to figure out what the rules were.
1:29:16
They mainly ran flatheads up there till the early s- till '68.
1:29:20
Then they went to the overheads, 'cause all the other tracks, the
1:29:22
flatheads had pretty much faded away with the exception of Waterloo and a,
1:29:26
a couple specials different places.
1:29:28
In this timeframe, I, I'm gonna talk to you about some of the really
1:29:32
famous drivers that drove there.
1:29:34
And at this point, I would like to have one driver and a son of a
1:29:37
driver that were racers at Syracuse.
1:29:40
One in particular, Roy Coterie, is here.
1:29:44
He's got a lot of stories about his dad to tell.
1:29:46
I'm gonna show you some good pictures that I think are his pictures.
1:29:49
And I'd also like to have a driver that raced Syracuse a couple times,
1:29:53
a guy by the name of Bucky Dew.
1:29:55
He's from Trumansburg, New York, just inducted into the
1:29:58
Hall of Fame up at Morris.
1:30:00
Many time track champion at Glen Aubrey, Syracuse favorite.
1:30:08
Believe it or not, a lot of the champ car guys said, "Well, those
1:30:11
stock cars are a bunch of junkers." There was some really neat innovation
1:30:15
going on, some good, some bad.
1:30:17
Here's a guy by the name of Suicide Al Sanders.
1:30:20
He drilled holes through his car for two things, to let air out that got in, but
1:30:26
also to put the radiator in the trunk to give it downforce from the weight.
1:30:31
Now, that car was kind of totally destroyed at Syracuse in the '50s.
1:30:35
Fortunately, he walked away.
1:30:37
I want you to take a look at something.
1:30:38
Cliff Cotterie was really trying to come up with neat technical ideas.
1:30:44
Take a look at the side of the car on the bottom, the '60.
1:30:47
What does it look like it's got?
1:30:49
It's got a plexiglass window.
1:30:51
It's hinged.
1:30:52
You can pull the hinge down to get in and out of the car.
1:30:54
But he was using that, and Joe talked a little bit about that, about using
1:30:58
drafting and coming up against the wall to conserve the airflow so it
1:31:03
didn't get disrupted into turbulence.
1:31:05
He had all these little tricks that added up into amazing one, two,
1:31:09
three, four, five, six State Fair championships in three various cars.
1:31:15
And there's a picture of Cliff down on the bottom left there.
1:31:18
Well, how could I forget one of my favorite Super
1:31:21
Modified drivers, Nolan Swift.
1:31:23
And there he is racing with Cliff Cotteri at the fairgrounds.
1:31:26
And there he wins a tough Labor Day hot afternoon race.
1:31:30
They gave a plate away to the winner.
1:31:32
Well, boy, there were some brutal crashes, and I told you that already.
1:31:36
This one up here on the left, Jeff Ackerman, I asked him, I said, "What's a
1:31:40
state trooper doing there?" He was asking for a sobriety test and his license.
1:31:45
And you can see 29.
1:31:46
That's Sam Carista, a Super Modified driver for many years.
1:31:50
He took a bad tumble there.
1:31:51
And this one down here on the left is, uh, Kenny Mill, where the top
1:31:55
was completely tore off the car.
1:31:57
It's darn lucky he did not get killed in that.
1:31:59
There, I believe on the back, is the beginning of about a 40 car pileup.
1:32:03
And you can see the S33.
1:32:04
That is the original Bill Wimble car.
1:32:07
There were a number of different drivers in it, so I'm not sure exactly
1:32:10
who might've been driving that.
1:32:11
All right, well, I, I know the S33 had a lot of different drivers in
1:32:14
it, but that was, eventually would be the Bill Wimble car that w- a lot
1:32:17
of us would be more familiar with.
1:32:19
Well, here's quite a story right here.
1:32:21
Larry Nye.
1:32:22
I kind of let the cat out of the bag.
1:32:24
I was gonna ask you a question.
1:32:25
Who was the first driver to ever win at Syracuse that had a
1:32:27
fire suit on in the stock cars?
1:32:29
Well, you got the answer.
1:32:30
I, I let you cheat a little bit on this, so… But he's got a fire suit on.
1:32:34
This is the end of the race, the last lap going into the first turn.
1:32:38
That is Cotteri on the inside who'd blown a motor.
1:32:41
Mike Miller got in the oil and ended up touching the wall and cutting a tire down.
1:32:44
Larry Nye is back in third spot, you know, watching all this happening, and all of
1:32:49
a sudden he's got the checkered flag.
1:32:52
He was about as surprised, he said, as anybody in the whole place.
1:32:55
According to the stories I have heard, he did not tell me it was not true when
1:33:00
I interviewed him, he was so nervous with that trophy, and it's a heavy trophy, too.
1:33:04
He has it, and I've held it.
1:33:06
He dropped the trophy on the trophy's girl toe and broke her toe So, and how
1:33:11
can I forget my good friend Dutch Hogue?
1:33:13
He came in when the overheads were starting to dominate, and
1:33:16
they were running the overheads.
1:33:17
And with his famous Turner Brother cars, he won too.
1:33:20
Another dear friend of mine, Don Diffendorfer.
1:33:22
I interviewed Charlie before he passed away.
1:33:25
Two-time champion in the old Bentley-Warren car, and they
1:33:28
were playing with aerodynamics.
1:33:30
Take a look at how they've bent the roof down and played with little wings
1:33:33
in the back and all kind of stuff.
1:33:35
Diff was a great guy.
1:33:36
Irish Jack Murphy, he was very popular.
1:33:39
He was kind of the one that would have a lot of crashes, but he was
1:33:42
a good runner, and a top Super Modified driver by the way too.
1:33:46
Well, I got a question for you.
1:33:47
First night of night racing at Syracuse.
1:33:50
It wasn't in the '70s like a lot of people think.
1:33:54
Any ideas?
1:33:55
It was an Ed Otto promoted show, 100 miles.
1:33:58
1962 Well, you're starting to get there, but you're a little early.
1:34:03
I'll tell you.
1:34:04
How about Tim Flock's 1955 win in the Keir car, those famous 300, 301, 302 cars.
1:34:11
He won that first night race.
1:34:13
And by the way, an interesting story that Mike, uh, Manay and I … Well, he
1:34:17
actually found it buried in the National Speed Sport News in a small article.
1:34:21
Two weeks later, Ed Otto said, "Well, I got the lights in there,"
1:34:24
the temporary lights, and he probably leased them for a month.
1:34:26
He said, "Let's run a stock car, midget," and by all things you would ever think
1:34:31
about, a sports car race on the mile.
1:34:35
And they ran a … Jim Luke won the modified.
1:34:37
Vern Harriman won the midgets, and the, the sports car race was … I
1:34:41
did not keep up with Skoda back then, or wasn't very familiar with them.
1:34:44
But they did run.
1:34:45
And they actually, another thing, they had planned to build a road course at
1:34:49
the fairgrounds and run a true road race there, using part of the mile
1:34:53
track and the roads that we drive on there to get into our camping areas,
1:34:57
which would've been quite an interesting
1:34:58
I think I've been on some road races back there during Super Dirt Weeks,
1:35:02
and they weren't pretty either.
1:35:03
But anyways, they canceled that show.
1:35:05
Uh, these are the Grand National NASCAR.
1:35:08
Ed Otto did almost all these promotions, if you're familiar with him.
1:35:11
Famous NASCAR promoter.
1:35:13
You had Buck Baker, I think somebody was talking about that,
1:35:16
over Speedy Thompson in '56.
1:35:18
They brought the convertibles in, and, uh, Curtis, uh, Turner won in '56.
1:35:22
'57, the convertibles came back, and a guy by the name of Possum Jones won it.
1:35:27
These races had quite a few of the local guys in it.
1:35:29
Dutch Hogue would usually enter.
1:35:31
Uh, you'd get True Love out of New England would come out and run.
1:35:35
He was a NASCAR driver, and there were some other guys.
1:35:37
You had Chuck Mahoney.
1:35:38
I mean, I can name quite a few you see in the finish.
1:35:41
There were some Salt City races that they had there in various forms, and
1:35:46
they ran the first one in '58, and a guy by the name of Ned Jarrett, who was
1:35:49
trying to make a name for himself, he was racing for points for the National
1:35:53
Sportsman Championship, which he won.
1:35:55
He won that race.
1:35:56
'59, '60, '62, and
1:36:00
'64, if you remember those races, Bill Rafter was dominant.
1:36:02
I don't know what he had in it for horsepower, but it was quick, 'cause
1:36:05
that was the most of those races.
1:36:07
Kenny Mills snuck in in '63.
1:36:09
Talk a little bit about the disaster of the '70 USAC race.
1:36:12
Well anyways, the Salt City race was normally associated with
1:36:17
the modifieds, and they ran that usually three weeks after the fair.
1:36:21
One of the worst wrecks ever was Bill Wimble in the 33,
1:36:25
turned two, the terrible fire.
1:36:27
Uh, he was pulled out of the car by Ernie Gaham.
1:36:30
Good friend of his.
1:36:31
What be, would be ironic is that before that year was over at Daytona, Marvin
1:36:35
Panch out of a burning car, both those drivers, among other people, Tiny Lund
1:36:40
was one of them, and ended up with a ride that won the 500 in 1963, I think.
1:36:45
1970s, Rich Harmon won a USAC stock car race.
1:36:48
That was a disaster.
1:36:49
It really was.
1:36:50
They had a terrible wreck on the back, just at the beginning
1:36:53
of the back, uh, straightaway, uh, coming off turn two again.
1:36:57
Turn two kind of turned into Calamity Turn, if you're familiar
1:37:00
with Daytona or Charlotte.
1:37:02
You know, Calamity Turn is turn four.
1:37:05
Turn two is Syracuse Calamity Turn.
1:37:07
There was a big wreck on the back.
1:37:08
Jim Champine, driving Roger McCluskey's backup car, was involved in it and
1:37:13
ended up briefly in the hospital.
1:37:15
He made it to Oswego to race that night.
1:37:17
But anyways, a driver did get hurt very seriously, and he died about three or four
1:37:22
weeks later, which there wasn't a lot of publicity on, which didn't need to be.
1:37:26
It is a point of history.
1:37:27
That was the end of the USAC, uh, stock cars.
1:37:29
Hey, anybody ever go see the motorcycles run on the mile, the big mile in that?
1:37:34
Boy, some kind of racing, huh?
1:37:36
And I'm not a two-wheel type guy really, but I did keep going to
1:37:40
those races and really enjoyed them.
1:37:42
They raced there for a number of years, and then they just didn't do them anymore.
1:37:45
Maybe Joe can give us some idea of why that might have been.
1:37:48
How about the trucks?
1:37:50
Anybody go to the truck races?
1:37:51
They were kind of neat.
1:37:52
Uh, Shawna Robinson, I got told, tore down the half the back straightaway one time.
1:37:57
She was a upcoming star with NASCAR and, uh, still, I think
1:38:00
is still involved in racing.
1:38:02
And hey, snowmobiles.
1:38:03
We talked a little bit about snowmobiles today.
1:38:05
They were fast, and I think Joe's got some stories to tell about both those things.
1:38:09
So I'm gonna put him back on.
1:38:10
Then we got one more slide, and we're gonna take a break and, uh,
1:38:13
come back for the afternoon session.
1:38:15
You're gonna see a quick video right to start with.
1:38:17
Really good one.
1:38:18
Gary, you've done a wonderful job.
1:38:20
Fantastic.
1:38:21
How about a big hand for him?
1:38:28
Well, the thing I'm gonna comment about, a couple of stories, uh,
1:38:31
kind of funny stories in a way.
1:38:33
One of them is the snowmobile racing.
1:38:35
Can anybody tell me what champion from another sport ran snowmobiles?
1:38:43
From another sport.
1:38:45
Boxer.
1:38:46
A boxer.
1:38:47
Smokin' Joe Frazier.
1:38:49
Smokin' Joe Frazier was quite a snowmobiler at heart.
1:38:53
Glen Donnelly was promoting the races, and they decided to have a pro-am race.
1:38:58
So Smokin' Joe Frazier was there with his entire family and a
1:39:01
fleet of Arctic Cat snowmobiles.
1:39:03
And we're announcing from the old tower then, from the infield looking out.
1:39:07
It was colder than heck cold.
1:39:11
Other than the snowmobile racing, some of the big rigs that, uh, he showed
1:39:15
up there, the big rig racing that took place, and there was some really
1:39:19
exciting racing that went on during that.
1:39:21
Charlie Baker was one of the drivers.
1:39:23
Randy Slack was one of the drivers.
1:39:26
Shawna Robinson had been a racer, and I believe she's married,
1:39:29
Gary, to a racer as well.
1:39:31
Married to Elton Sawyer.
1:39:32
Elton Sawyer.
1:39:33
Could be, yes.
1:39:33
She come off at turn number two at one time, got a little bit wide, and took
1:39:37
the back wall down and totally down.
1:39:40
We had to stop the race and rebuild that wall back there at that time.
1:39:44
Other drivers, uh, Dick Murtagh, he was kind of the big runner back then.
1:39:48
And then there was another guy that made appearances in the big rig, a
1:39:51
guy by the name of Kenny Schrader.
1:39:54
So it got to be very popular.
1:39:56
And when you saw that slide, that grandstand was totally filled.
1:40:01
Yeah, go on back to it.
1:40:02
Look at that grandstand.
1:40:03
It was totally filled.
1:40:04
The unbelievable thing, there was hardly any race fans that we knew
1:40:10
that were in that grandstand.
1:40:11
It catered to a totally different audience, the truckers.
1:40:15
And not only did they run at Syracuse on the mile, but they ran at other given
1:40:18
tracks, including Cayuga, Canada, which they drew some very, very big audiences
1:40:23
and very, very big crowds on that.
1:40:26
Was mentioned also that there was motorcycle races there, and I happened to
1:40:29
be the announcer of the motorcycle events.
1:40:32
The promoter of that event was a guy by the name of Jack Brandt.
1:40:35
Jack contacted me one day up at Fulton Speedway, and he says, "Joe, I'd like
1:40:39
you to do the, uh, motorcycle races for me." I says, "Motorcycle races?"
1:40:43
He say, "Yeah.
1:40:44
What do you know about a motorcycle?" "It's got two wheels." "Good,
1:40:47
you're hired." So that got me into the snowmobile business.
1:40:50
But boy, there was some outstanding riders, and you don't call them
1:40:53
drivers, I found out that day.
1:40:55
They're riders.
1:40:56
Kenny Roberts from Laguna Hills, California, was one
1:40:59
of the top runners back then.
1:41:01
Jay Springsteen.
1:41:02
They put on some fantastic shows.
1:41:05
Here again, the audience was fantastic.
1:41:08
A- and here again, it drew right from another crowd.
1:41:11
During the era of the godfather, Glen Donnelly, and his promotions at the
1:41:14
mile, obviously he catered to the modifieds, obviously to the small
1:41:18
block modifieds, and then of course brought the sprinters in and brought
1:41:22
the World of Outlaw Sprinters in.
1:41:24
But one of the things he always tried to do is draw attractions from the outside.
1:41:29
And some of the attractions he drew from the outside were from
1:41:33
other speedways and specialty cars.
1:41:35
One of them being Super Modified cars from the Oswego Speedway.
1:41:39
Whoever saw Super Modifieds, as we know them, on the dirt,
1:41:44
on the mile at Syracuse.
1:41:47
Everybody said it isn't gonna work, but I think we had 30-some
1:41:50
cars down there the first year.
1:41:52
They were turning some fantastic speeds.
1:41:55
The guy that set fast time was a guy by the name of Bobby Stelter.
1:41:59
He drove car number 04, the Salve Automotive car.
1:42:02
He was fast.
1:42:03
He set on the poles.
1:42:04
Matter of fact, when we time trialed, uh, and I think on a Thursday
1:42:08
night, Gary, I think you were there.
1:42:09
Thursday, Wednesday night, or Friday night.
1:42:11
It was in the dark.
1:42:12
Purely in the dark with no lights.
1:42:14
Bobby Stelter turned fast time.
1:42:16
The race went on, and Bobby was leading them back to second, back
1:42:20
to third, back up to the number one spot, and all of a sudden come out of
1:42:24
turn number four, and he pulled the car to the outside, and the car quit.
1:42:28
So caution came out, tow trucks came out, the safety crew came out,
1:42:33
and a radio call came to the tower.
1:42:35
"Glen, we got the car, but the driver isn't here." Now, Dick O'Brien, who
1:42:40
was the manager of, um, the Oswego Speedway, and he was also a newspaper
1:42:46
writer, he would be up in the tower with us and kind of seated to our right.
1:42:50
And Bobby Stelter had been known over the years to tip a few.
1:42:54
So when we got the call that the car was there and not Bobby Stelter,
1:42:59
Dick O'Brien quickly said, "He jumped the wall. He's up at Bridge Street
1:43:02
Tavern." And the race continued
1:43:08
By the way, winners of the Super Modified race were folks like Joe
1:43:12
Gosek, Gene Lee Gibson, and also a guy by the name of Bentley Warren.
1:43:17
And one time they mixed the sprinters with the Super Modifieds.
1:43:22
The Lloyd Sprinters were the hot ticket back then.
1:43:25
Jimmy Champigne was racing in his Super Modified.
1:43:29
He was doing pretty good, probably running seventh or eighth position, and when the
1:43:32
Lloyd Sprinter went by him in the back straightaway to take his position, and
1:43:37
went by him so fast, Jimmy looked over and says, "I am buying one of those cars,"
1:43:44
and ended up buying a Lloyd Sprinter.
1:43:46
As a matter of fact, you mentioned Andy Fusco, or we
1:43:49
talked about Andy Fusco earlier.
1:43:51
Andy Fusco wrote a book about Jim Champigne, and there's a complete
1:43:54
chapter in there about his dirt car, sprint car racing, and he
1:43:58
talks about the Lloyd Sprinter.
1:44:00
Other things that have happened down at the State Fairgrounds, auto thrill shows.
1:44:05
Back in the day, back in, uh, starting after World War II and through the
1:44:09
'50s, there were some auto thrill shows, guys like Joey Chitwood Irish
1:44:14
Horan, Jack Kochman, just to name a few.
1:44:18
That brought in some big, big crowds, and it certainly was a
1:44:21
big attraction for the Moody Mile.
1:44:23
We talked about sprint cars, and Glen Donnelly got together with
1:44:26
a guy by the name of Ted Johnson.
1:44:28
Ted, of course, was the owner promoter of a outfit called The
1:44:33
World of Outlaws, and they brought the Outlaws to the Mile at Syracuse.
1:44:38
And probably the biggest word that I could say is fast, F-A-S-T.
1:44:44
Extremely fast.
1:44:45
As a matter of fact, we're talking about 100 mile an hour laps.
1:44:48
How about a 26-second lap by Billy Paluch, which stood right up, uh,
1:44:52
well, it's still the track record even, uh, when we put the checkered
1:44:56
flag out, uh, a couple of weeks ago.
1:44:58
There has been some terrible tragedies at the Moody Mile.
1:45:01
One of them that I can recall happened on a Fourth of July night.
1:45:05
We were running the sportsman cars.
1:45:07
Coming out of turn two was a young fellow from up in the North Country,
1:45:10
up in the Watertown, New York area, by the name of Kevin Fleming.
1:45:14
His car came down out of turn number two.
1:45:16
About halfway down the back straightaway, got mixed up.
1:45:19
Car was turned sideways.
1:45:21
Kevin was okay, but another car coming out of turn number two from Canada,
1:45:25
apparently the caution he did not see, and he T-boned the car at full speed.
1:45:30
Glen Donnelly came over next to me and he said, "I just
1:45:33
had Doug Milton on the phone.
1:45:35
He was in charge of the safety group.
1:45:37
He says we got one dead and possibly another death." I mean, what do you say?
1:45:41
What do you do?
1:45:42
Glen Donnelly being the promoter that he was, never quit.
1:45:46
I said this earlier today, the show must go on.
1:45:50
He says, "We're gonna clear the wreckage in the back straightaway.
1:45:53
We're gonna lower the lights," being that it was a Fourth of July night, "and then
1:45:57
we are going to shoot the fireworks off."
1:46:00
We completed the entire fireworks show, which was probably about a half-hour
1:46:04
show, cleaned up the racetrack.
1:46:07
All of the safety people took care of their duties and what they had
1:46:10
to do, and then the race continued.
1:46:13
We all knew what happened, but you just didn't say it, and we
1:46:16
always remember Kevin Fleming.
1:46:18
Now, one of the other things that happened at Syracuse that was kind of a tragic
1:46:22
situation, the only time, and I believe it was the year 1976 going into '77.
1:46:28
In 1976, we tried to get Super Dirt Weekend two times, I believe,
1:46:33
and was canceled, so we brought the race back in April of '77.
1:46:39
Coming out of turn number two, there was a terrible accident.
1:46:43
Guys who were involved, Wayne Rodeman, his complete roll cage was ripped right
1:46:48
off, but they probably destroyed six or eight race cars in the back straightaway.
1:46:53
Gary, I think you were working with me at that time.
1:46:58
Okay.
1:46:58
One of the fellows, he had the little Scottie dogs on the side of the car.
1:47:02
Ty Scott.
1:47:03
Okay, that was an easy one.
1:47:04
He was involved in the situation as well.
1:47:07
As they were cleaning up the accident back there, an Air Force jet came
1:47:12
over and broke the sound barrier.
1:47:15
Ba-boom.
1:47:16
Now let me tell you, you saw the pictures of that tower at Syracuse, that
1:47:20
grandstand and where we were suspended underneath the roof of the thing.
1:47:24
At different times, during windstorms, during crashes, during fireworks, that
1:47:30
baby shook, and it rocked and it rolled.
1:47:32
Gary, you can remember some of those days up there.
1:47:35
Well, when that jet broke the sound barrier, it rocked the
1:47:39
living hell out of that tower.
1:47:42
Lindy Vicari was standing behind me.
1:47:44
I says, "Holy mackerel, if this grandstand goes down, if this tower
1:47:50
comes down, there's no ambulances. They've all left for the hospital."
1:47:55
And Lindy, in his wisdom behind me, says, "Hey, this tower come a-down, don't worry.
1:48:00
That's all you need is undertakers."
1:48:07
How about if we take that break?
1:48:08
Yeah.
1:48:08
Okay.
1:48:14
Okay, I guess we're gonna take a break right now.
1:48:16
I just wanna acknowledge two people, Mike Manet and Jeff Ackerman, who
1:48:21
really helped me put this together.
1:48:23
Give them a hand
1:48:38
I went to a lot of races there, but not nearly as many as you did, and I never
1:48:41
did any motorcycle stuff or truck races or snowmobiles or any of that stuff.
1:48:45
But one story that I'll, the only story that I'll share with you relative
1:48:48
to early experiences at Syracuse.
1:48:50
Well, I was there the day of the, the Wimblefire that they showed.
1:48:53
I forgot what year that was.
1:48:54
I better remember.
1:48:55
'63. So I remember that because of the fire.
1:48:58
In 1956, showed on the screen here earlier, there was a NASCAR Grand National
1:49:02
race, and I was, uh, 13 years old, I guess, in '56, summer of '56, and knew
1:49:07
about these guys, Lee Petty and Herb Thomas and the Flocks and so forth.
1:49:11
And I don't know how I managed this, but my brother, who's a few years
1:49:14
younger than I am, and I, we got in the pits early before the races started,
1:49:18
and we had a program or something.
1:49:20
I wish I knew what that was and where it wa- is now.
1:49:22
But I was getting autographs, and I'm not an autograph collector, but at the time
1:49:26
I thought that was a neat thing to do.
1:49:28
And Lee Petty and Herb Thomas were sitting in the back of probably a race
1:49:32
car that they'd actually run, run a race there that day, but they were in
1:49:34
the backseat of a vehicle of some sort.
1:49:36
And I handed this document in for their signatures, and they both
1:49:39
signed it, and we walked away.
1:49:40
And later on that day or the next day, we were going through this, I believe it was
1:49:44
a program, and there were the signatures that I thought I had, but there was
1:49:48
another one there, and it was Tom Thumb.
1:49:50
Well, by process of elimination, we discovered that that Tom
1:49:54
Thumb was actually Lee Petty.
1:49:55
And so from that day forward for a few years, I didn't have anything good
1:49:59
to think about or to talk about Lee Petty because he had signed my, didn't
1:50:02
sign my autograph book appropriately.
1:50:05
Several years later, I encountered him at Daytona.
1:50:07
All this is a very long time ago, but, uh, I shared this story with him then.
1:50:11
And he chuckled and let on that at least he remembered having done that,
1:50:15
and of course not for me, but… And so he may have done it for a
1:50:17
lot of people, I'm not certain.
1:50:18
And I shared with him how I really didn't like that, and he said, "Well,
1:50:21
if I'd have signed it Lee Petty, we wouldn't be having this discussion
1:50:23
today, and we wouldn't know each other, and, uh, so that was the good thing."
1:50:27
And from that day forward, for a number of years, I would see
1:50:30
Lee and Richard and so forth.
1:50:31
We always exchanged this Tom Thumb story, and he always acted like he
1:50:34
remembered it, so not certain of that.
1:50:36
But, uh, but I remember it very well, and, uh, after that exchange in Daytona,
1:50:41
he became my favorite, and then his son my favorite, and his grandson and all the
1:50:46
rest of those Pettys as well, including Adam, which didn't last very long.
1:50:49
But Joy, I just marvel at your stories, your memory.
1:50:51
Again, we worked a lot of these things together.
1:50:54
I don't remember them, and you do.
1:50:55
I can't even remember what year or century, uh, century I
1:50:58
got, but the, the rest of it.
1:51:00
But all of this is just outstanding.
1:51:02
We had a great presentation this morning.
1:51:03
I think at this point there's more to do here with Gary.
1:51:06
Gary Tompkins.
1:51:07
Jeff, I'd like you to come up here as well.
1:51:09
Gary Well, you spoke quite a bit in the morning session here.
1:51:13
You were kind of a fixture at Syracuse for quite a number of years.
1:51:18
One of the things I remember in particular about you, you had a great, great year.
1:51:21
You're a former Mr. Dirt champion, and you drove for a guy back
1:51:25
then by the name of Jim Beachy.
1:51:27
Yeah, he was, uh, he was a different individual.
1:51:30
All class, though.
1:51:31
You know, it… Everything was first class with him.
1:51:33
Like we talked about before, um, you know, he had three, uh, corporate
1:51:36
sponsors on the car and, you know, everything had to be done right.
1:51:38
And not that he was a jerk about it, I'm just saying, you
1:51:40
know, we did everything right.
1:51:42
The team prepared the car right.
1:51:43
Unfortunately, they showed that video of Tim Fuller winning and I'm second, so
1:51:46
thanks a lot whoever put that up there.
1:51:48
But it just, it was probably the best couple of times, two years of my
1:51:52
life really, that I could drive, uh, equipment that everybody else had.
1:51:55
The same equipment.
1:51:56
And, uh, and we proved that we can be competitive with everybody
1:51:58
else, uh, when we did that.
1:52:00
Just to back up the story a little bit if you weren't here this morning.
1:52:03
Jim Beachy, uh, had a driver prior to you by the name of Alan
1:52:06
Johnson, who was here this morning, drove the Pillsbury Doughboy car.
1:52:10
Won the Mr.
1:52:11
Dirt Championship.
1:52:12
On, I believe, Christmas Eve of that year, Alan Johnson resigned
1:52:16
from the li- uh, from the ride.
1:52:18
Beachy called me practically crying on Christmas morning.
1:52:21
He says, "I can't believe it.
1:52:23
He resigned f- from the ride." And he says, "I, I, I just don't know.
1:52:27
I don't know if I'm gonna pull out.
1:52:28
I don't know what I'm gonna do."
1:52:30
I says, "Come on, Jim, you gotta stay in there." Couple times after Christmas
1:52:33
we talked, and he says, "Who are some of the drivers you would think about to
1:52:38
put into the car?" I named about four or five drivers, and when I got to, like,
1:52:42
driver number three that I mentioned, it was a guy by the name of Gary Tompkins.
1:52:46
He said, "Do you like him?" I says, "Yeah, he's a pretty good shoe," even though he
1:52:49
tore up a Mopar in his young day, okay?
1:52:52
He says, "Keep it under your hat. I kinda like him." And you were given
1:52:56
the ride, and that had to be quite a phone call, quite a conversation.
1:52:59
Yeah, and you know what?
1:53:00
He called me, I didn't call him, so that even makes it even better.
1:53:02
Well, you were one of the names on the hat, let me tell you.
1:53:04
But I knew there was a lot of guys that called him looking for a ride.
1:53:07
I, there, when we were meeting, actually, there was a couple times where people
1:53:09
were calling up looking for that ride, and named drivers, very good drivers.
1:53:13
But, uh, I was very fortunate he picked me, and like I said,
1:53:16
uh, we had two awesome years.
1:53:18
I, I mean, we finished third in points in, in 2005, but there was a lot of other
1:53:21
issues, the reason why we didn't do that.
1:53:22
The performance was there.
1:53:23
Other than that, you know, we had some issues, uh, reliability, but it
1:53:26
wasn't because of what the crew did.
1:53:28
It was parts reliability that really hurt us.
1:53:30
We were, or else we might've been, you know, won a championship again.
1:53:32
Uh, one quick note about Alan Johnson.
1:53:34
Uh, first off, Alan Johnson is one of my favorite drivers of all time.
1:53:36
I've followed him since I was a little kid.
1:53:38
I always wanted to drive like him, but then I found out once I was
1:53:40
driving I can't drive like him.
1:53:42
You know, he drove for Bill Trout.
1:53:44
They parted their ways.
1:53:45
I got that ride.
1:53:46
And then he drove for Jim Beachy.
1:53:48
He, they parted ways.
1:53:48
I got that ride.
1:53:49
One day at Rolling Wheels, uh, we parked next to Jeffrey Rubelavich,
1:53:52
and Alan was driving for him.
1:53:53
And actually, he parked in the spot where we usually park up by the fence,
1:53:55
where, uh, Paige Trucking car parks now.
1:53:58
I said, "Hey, Jeff, you're in my spot," but no big deal.
1:54:00
Next year I'll be in his spot, 'cause I'll be in the other ride.
1:54:02
And, uh, and Jeff didn't think that was funny, but all the crew did.
1:54:04
But, uh, alluding to what Alan went through last … You know what?
1:54:06
Those guys, for whatever reason, they do what they do.
1:54:09
You know, obviously everybody knows that Alan can drive anything you put him in,
1:54:11
as long as it's pretty close to quality.
1:54:13
I don't know why he quit.
1:54:15
I never really asked.
1:54:15
I don't really care, 'cause I got the ride.
1:54:17
And look, we're all here for racing.
1:54:19
You know, that's why I do this.
1:54:20
But for me, too, I wanna be friends.
1:54:22
I wanna make it fun to go to the racetrack, and, uh,
1:54:24
it was fun those years.
1:54:25
Even, you know, obviously we had success, but we had fun, too.
1:54:29
Um, my wife got along with all the wives.
1:54:31
We're all still very good friends to this day.
1:54:33
It was just a, two magical years.
1:54:34
Well, one of the things I wanna talk about, Jim Beachy was probably one
1:54:37
of the classiest guys that ever owned a dirt modified, without a doubt.
1:54:41
His, his presentations, everything he did was with class.
1:54:46
And that first year that you drove for him, you win the Mr. Dirt championship.
1:54:50
We talked about this earlier today.
1:54:52
Tell us about the banquet and the uniforms.
1:54:56
Or I should say the tuxedos.
1:54:57
The year before when Aylon won, they wore tuxes, typical tuxes, black and white.
1:55:01
So we went Mr. Dirt.
1:55:02
We, all right, this is, we're gonna go, all gonna go, we're
1:55:04
gonna get fitted for tuxes.
1:55:05
Okay, so we all go get fitted.
1:55:06
He wouldn't let us see what they were.
1:55:08
We didn't know what they were until we showed up to the banquet, and we go into
1:55:11
his room, and he's got the tuxes there.
1:55:12
They're all white with, I believe the vest was blue, red cummerbund, red tie.
1:55:18
So needless to say, uh, it was a class act, but still, of course,
1:55:22
racers being racers, uh, I, I got about nine or 10 drink orders, people
1:55:26
trying to order drinks from me, but, but, uh Yeah, but you kept the tips.
1:55:30
Yeah, well, you know, that's, you gotta do what you gotta do to make a buck.
1:55:32
But, uh, you know what?
1:55:33
But he wanted to make a statement and make it memorable, and he did.
1:55:37
Of course, we got out on Bad Boys as soon as we could, as soon as
1:55:40
all our presentations was over.
1:55:41
But, and then when you listen to him when he went up on stage, and they,
1:55:44
and they asked him, you know, how it came about, you know, and he went
1:55:48
through the list of people to thank, and it's just every little person.
1:55:51
Nobody was too small to get thank if they helped in some little way.
1:55:54
Uh, it was just amazing.
1:55:55
Now, actually, when I drove for him, I still drove the Honeoye Auto Parts car.
1:55:58
Yeah.
1:55:58
So I drove that on Saturday nights.
1:56:00
He welcomed Doug with open arms, welcomed that whole team with open arms.
1:56:03
We actually became almost like a three-car team because Randy Kasakie
1:56:06
kept the series car at his house, Jamie kept the short track car at his house,
1:56:09
and then we kept the Honeoye car for Saturday nights at, uh, in Honeoye.
1:56:13
So it was, uh, it was something else.
1:56:15
Now, I get the ride.
1:56:17
They just picked up a new car.
1:56:18
Jim owned the Torro store on Erie Boulevard in Syracuse.
1:56:21
Yes.
1:56:22
It was a cold, roads were slippery night.
1:56:24
They had put the new car there, our new series car, in
1:56:27
a, in one of them cube vans.
1:56:28
All four tires are bald.
1:56:30
He goes, "Take this down to Randy Kisacki's house."
1:56:32
Okay, no big deal.
1:56:32
You know, I wanna please my new owner.
1:56:34
We get in that thing and we're, me and, uh, a friend of mine
1:56:37
were … We were probably sideways as much as we were straight going
1:56:39
down 81 down- Dirt track can help.
1:56:41
Oh, yeah.
1:56:42
And, uh, going up the hills, uh, in Johnson City, uh, down by Binghamton,
1:56:45
you know, you think a team like that would have some big, huge shop.
1:56:48
We pull in the driveway, there's a three-car garage.
1:56:51
One bay is for the race car, and then s- come racing season, two bays
1:56:54
are for the race car, but there's always one bay for the wife's car.
1:56:57
And that's where they worked on the car.
1:56:58
They had a three-car garage attached to the house, and, you know, like,
1:57:01
a truck body out back that had some parts and stuff in it, and that's where
1:57:04
three championships were won from.
1:57:05
And three in a row, too, with two different drivers,
1:57:07
which is pretty impressive.
1:57:09
But that's how they did it.
1:57:09
They didn't care about being fancy.
1:57:11
They got done what had to be done.
1:57:13
To this day, it still resonates with me because I think there's times
1:57:16
I still get rides because I was a f- former dirt champion, you know?
1:57:18
And, uh, but yeah, it was definitely a, definitely a fun time.
1:57:21
Thinking of the mile, you came so close.
1:57:24
And to win at the mile, that is like winning a World Series championship,
1:57:29
winning a Super Bowl championship, winning a free dinner from Jeff Hochman.
1:57:34
You know, all of those three things, uh, combined together.
1:57:37
Tell us about your experiences on the mile.
1:57:39
For some reason, I don't remember the first time I was there.
1:57:41
I'd, uh, in a Bla- Big Block.
1:57:43
I remember there as in a Sportsman, and I remember that because I spent a lot of
1:57:46
time getting the car ready to go up there.
1:57:48
And since I'm a tin smith, I made a lot of special body panels a
1:57:51
lot of other guys didn't have.
1:57:52
And, uh, we'd go up there and immediately have motor problems
1:57:54
and I didn't even make a lap.
1:57:55
Talk about heartbroken.
1:57:56
I don't remember the first laps, per se, of going around there.
1:58:00
I just remember seeing that huge grandstand, seeing the
1:58:03
people lining the racetrack.
1:58:05
When you're making laps around that place, for me anyway, I can sense the
1:58:08
people watching, 'cause you can see the people standing up by the fence.
1:58:11
Go through turn two, there's always campfires in turn two, and the smoke
1:58:14
always drifts across the track, and you can always smell the campfires.
1:58:17
Go down the backstretch, you can see that huge scaffolding at the end of turn three
1:58:20
where everybody's standing up there.
1:58:21
Of course, you come out of turn four and that huge grandstand's
1:58:23
just staring right at you.
1:58:25
And just the humanity.
1:58:26
It's not a race, and it's, it's an event.
1:58:27
I mean, even when we went there for 4th of July, Labor Day, stuff like
1:58:30
that, it was still a special place.
1:58:32
There was no place like it, obviously.
1:58:34
Yeah.
1:58:34
You know, it's a mile track.
1:58:35
I mean, I'm sure there's USAC fans here, but, you know, I, I read a book once when
1:58:38
I was in school about the mile tracks.
1:58:39
I really s- so wish I had it.
1:58:41
It just, like it just raised them up on a pedestal, and this, this is one of them.
1:58:44
This is one of the mile tracks, and it's unfortunate it's gone.
1:58:47
You know, I, I've, fortunately I never crashed hard there.
1:58:49
I'd, I've gotten close.
1:58:50
Uh, actually, probably my worst crash there was, uh, 2012.
1:58:54
They'd put clay on the track actually that year.
1:58:56
I know Glen was talking earlier about, you know, he always wanted to make that track
1:58:59
fast, always drew him to make it fast.
1:59:00
Well, all I could think of was dollar signs for tires,
1:59:02
'cause it just killed tires.
1:59:03
But the last few years it really hasn't hurt tires.
1:59:06
2012, uh, we went there with our short track car, time trial it sixth.
1:59:09
Was leading the heat pretty comfortably, really.
1:59:11
I just started cruising.
1:59:12
I caught lap traffic.
1:59:13
The guy that I was getting ready to lap, some Frenchman, I have no idea who he
1:59:17
was, but he had one heck of a motor, but he could not turn the car, 'cause
1:59:19
he would stop getting into the corner.
1:59:21
And, uh, I caught him at a bad time getting into turn three.
1:59:24
And people don't realize what turn three is, but there's a concrete
1:59:26
abutment on the inside of the track.
1:59:28
And there's jersey barriers up to it and jersey barrier behind it,
1:59:30
but it sticks out a little bit.
1:59:32
And if you hit… Actually, there's a lot of guys that hit it this year
1:59:34
and peeled their left fronts off.
1:59:35
Well, I hit it and pulled the left front right off the car,
1:59:38
and I just limped into the pits.
1:59:39
I couldn't believe it.
1:59:40
That's actually probably the worst I've ever wrecked there, m- um, leading, you
1:59:43
know, when I was leading a heat race.
1:59:44
But the fact that, you know, it's a big production, and I love the
1:59:47
fact that you're camping there, you wake up in the morning, go to
1:59:49
the pits, and you start racing.
1:59:50
That's a racer's dream.
1:59:51
You know, you don't have to drive down the road or nothing like that.
1:59:53
You just walk across the track and there you are in a race car.
1:59:55
It's unfortunate it's gone.
1:59:56
I really do hope that Glen's race will become something big, but it
1:59:59
will never, ever replace what that is.
2:00:01
You can't replace that.
2:00:02
Yeah, you can't replace that.
2:00:03
Yeah.
2:00:03
And I, and I wish people would stop trying to say that they're gonna replace it.
2:00:06
You can't.
2:00:07
There's no place you're gonna go, there's no track that we're gonna
2:00:09
race is ever gonna equal what that place meant to us as racers.
2:00:13
You know, I know going to Glen's track next year, I can take my
2:00:15
Seriate car and I can be competitive.
2:00:17
You really can't do that at that place.
2:00:19
Uh, there's just so much more going into it that, uh, you have to be prepared for.
2:00:22
It's not only mentally tough, 'cause you have to think of all
2:00:24
scenarios while you're driving.
2:00:25
Your crew has to think of all scenarios, uh, tire wear, fuel mileage.
2:00:29
When do I pit?
2:00:29
Who's everybody else pitting?
2:00:31
Who's broken?
2:00:31
What lap speeds are we, you know, we're trying to keep up to do all this?
2:00:35
How is the car?
2:00:36
And you're doing that for 200… Not 200 laps, 200 miles.
2:00:38
Uh, there's no track that we're in the car longer.
2:00:41
The next day you're just mentally shot.
2:00:42
And like I said, I, I don't, I don't see how there's ever will be
2:00:45
any race that will compare to that.
2:00:47
Well, Gary, I gotta tell you, you were a great competitor at DeMile, and, uh,
2:00:50
you're doing a great job here too today.
2:00:51
Would you like to be an announcer sometime?
2:00:53
Believe it or not, I have stage fright.
2:00:56
Can you believe that, folks?
2:00:58
Can you believe that?
2:00:58
That, that's why I'm not really looking out into the audience.
2:01:01
I'm sort of looking down at that podium there.
2:01:02
But, you know, I, I've gotten over it a little, over.
2:01:04
It's been a challenge to do that.
2:01:05
Well, you know, a lot of times when I do banquets, when I first
2:01:08
did banquets, I'd get very nervous because everybody was staring at
2:01:11
me, and I go, "You know, I announce in front of," well, wait a minute,
2:01:15
"behind tens of thousands of people."
2:01:18
So I would ask everyone in the banquet to turn around and face the back so
2:01:21
I could see the back of their heads, and it worked out a whole lot better.
2:01:25
You know, I got to relate a little story.
2:01:26
Earlier today, we talked about the Gary Blue car, and of course,
2:01:29
the Gary Blue car is on display over there at the research center.
2:01:33
Glenn talked about it a little bit.
2:01:36
I remember the exact days and times.
2:01:39
It was on Thursday afternoon when this hauler came into the New
2:01:42
York State Fairgrounds and, uh, it went over to the farm machinery
2:01:47
building, which is now all destroyed.
2:01:49
It, it, it burnt down.
2:01:50
And they waited until just about everybody had done their inspections,
2:01:55
and then they finally brought it in.
2:01:56
And Gary Ballou's crew did have some guys maybe called muscle men
2:02:02
to keep people away from the car.
2:02:04
Well, I had the right badge, and I muscled my way in, and they unloaded
2:02:08
this car, and I went, "Holy cow.
2:02:11
Look at this thing.
2:02:12
It's unbelievable.
2:02:14
Wow." Now, you didn't have cell phone cameras to take pictures of it back then.
2:02:19
So I immediately leave the building, and I hightail it all the way up to the tower,
2:02:23
and I said to Glenn, "Glenn, have you seen that Gary Ballou car?" "Yeah, it probably
2:02:29
isn't gonna do a damn thing." "Wow, it sure looks fast to me." "Yeah, well,
2:02:34
we'll see tomorrow." So the next day, which I believe was Friday, beautiful day.
2:02:39
In the pit area, there was a section all roped off with se-
2:02:44
Blue security guards around it.
2:02:45
They had the car totally covered, and finally, the big moment came
2:02:50
when they uncovered the car, and they fired it up, and they brought it out
2:02:54
onto the speedway racing surface.
2:02:57
It took about two slow, maybe three slow laps.
2:03:01
The fast cars were turning probably thirty-fours, maybe a couple of them
2:03:06
in a thirty-three nine lap, and all of a sudden, Gary Ballou gets into it.
2:03:10
Now, I got my trusty stopwatch.
2:03:12
I carried that stopwatch with me all the time.
2:03:14
It's the one that I gave to Wes Moody.
2:03:16
And I click off, and I look down, and I go, "Wow, thirty-three two."
2:03:23
Glenn looks at me, and he says, "You ought to throw that damn thing
2:03:26
away. It's no good. That ain't the right time." I hit it again.
2:03:31
Next time around, it's a thirty-one.
2:03:34
Now, there were two or three other guys standing up alongside of me, and
2:03:37
they all got their watches out, and they're down into the thirty-ones.
2:03:42
Glenn looks over, walks over to the corner of the tower, picks up the
2:03:46
phone and calls his compadre, Howie Commander, who was in the press house.
2:03:51
"Howie, I think we're in trouble." And that's how the week kicked off.
2:03:57
We saw a lot of innovations that week.
2:04:00
A lot of guys took their roofs and made them larger, made a wing out of them.
2:04:04
But no one, no one ever compared to the Gary Ballou car, and
2:04:08
that's the one that's on display.
2:04:09
Couple things I remember of it during the race, probably the
2:04:12
only time he didn't lead is when he came in to make his pit stop.
2:04:16
He made his pit stop, came back out, quickly made his way
2:04:19
back up to the number one spot.
2:04:21
The show was being recorded that week by, um, ESPN.
2:04:25
Gary knew exactly where the cameras were, and if you ever see
2:04:28
a replay of it, he waves at the cameras once he gets into the lead.
2:04:33
That's how dominating that car was.
2:04:35
I asked Gary on many occasions, "Did you ever show all your cards?"
2:04:40
He'd look at me and give you that quirky smile and said, "No."
2:04:44
So the car had a whole lot more potential in it.
2:04:46
If you take a look at the car in there, take a look at some good things.
2:04:49
The roof design, that roof, I understand, weighs about 400 pounds.
2:04:55
It is a wing.
2:04:57
And like we said today earlier, all the rules back then were minimum rules.
2:05:02
They looked at the rule book and says, "Well, there's no maximum rules."
2:05:06
So they went wide and high and won the race.
2:05:09
Jeff Hockman, come on over I think you got some videos that
2:05:13
you would like to show us.
2:05:15
I got some videos coming up, but before we get into the videos, the
2:05:18
one we played earlier, uh, Gary, I had a little something to do with that.
2:05:21
That was a pre-video though, pre to the event.
2:05:24
I didn't even know you were gonna be here.
2:05:25
Something cool in that video, I think you saw Gary Ballou say, "Thank you to
2:05:30
all the fans that are booing me." This year, I, uh, one of the cool things, uh,
2:05:34
I get to do is welcome the drivers up to stage at pre-race and wish them luck.
2:05:39
And Brad Hearn walked up, and he's the new Gary Ballou, and everybody
2:05:43
booed him, and he looked at me and he says, "Well, I guess I still matter."
2:05:47
So I think that's pretty cool.
2:05:49
The guys that get booed are the ones that you gotta watch out for.
2:05:51
Before we get into the video, I, you know, my, uh, my experience with Super
2:05:56
Dirt Week hits all kinds of levels.
2:05:58
I started out as a fan.
2:05:59
I worked for a sponsor.
2:06:01
Now I'm, uh, part of the group, World Racing Group, that's a
2:06:04
current promoter of the event.
2:06:06
You know, started going to the races with my father, who sold pit passes for Glen.
2:06:10
My first race, 1978, Gary Ballou won that year in a normal looking car.
2:06:16
Got to enjoy that, and, uh, I remember getting a program in 19… I, I don't
2:06:22
know what year it was, 'cause Gary and I were talking about it earlier.
2:06:25
The first race I remember is '78, but the first program I
2:06:28
remember had Toby Tobias on it.
2:06:31
And I think he won in '74?
2:06:33
'75. There you go.
2:06:35
You guys know more than me.
2:06:36
But, uh, so I r- I remember that.
2:06:38
But Super Dirt Week to me at that time was going to watch fast
2:06:41
cars, doing what my dad does.
2:06:43
You know, that was going to the diner in the morning and having breakfast.
2:06:46
Sorry, a little choked up.
2:06:48
Dad's no longer with me.
2:06:50
Then I got to work for the SKOLA Racing Super Dirt Car Series, and, uh, got to
2:06:54
promote, promote these drivers, Gary Tompkins, Brad Hearn, Murf Trickler back
2:06:59
in the day, Kenny Brenn, and, uh, got to promote the Super Dirt Car Series.
2:07:04
I, if you go to the Dirt Hall of Fame, you'll see me holding a
2:07:07
banner behind the winner of a race.
2:07:09
And, uh, now went on from there to work in, uh, NASCAR for 15 years.
2:07:14
Got this opportunity to come back and, uh, get back what I love with dirt car racing,
2:07:20
and now a part of a group that puts on not just Super Dirt Week, but we got the
2:07:24
World of Outlaw Sprint Cars, Late Models, including the Super Dirt Car Series,
2:07:29
doing events throughout the country.
2:07:31
So, uh, it's pretty exciting.
2:07:33
This was a, uh, special year for us.
2:07:36
First year was '78, then I was a Will Cagle fan.
2:07:40
Will Cagle in, uh, Wedsport and all excited, and next thing you know,
2:07:45
Will Cagle's thinking about retiring.
2:07:47
I'm not gonna tell you the year yet.
2:07:48
We're gonna roll into a video.
2:07:50
But this year and this event kinda took me over the edge and really put me into
2:07:54
the motor sports for the rest of my life.
2:07:56
These cars doing the same thing, not handling as well as it was.
2:07:59
Here we go onto the last lap, headed down into turn number one.
2:08:08
Yeah, the crew just praying, just hoping that that car's gonna make it work.
2:08:13
They know he's running on fumes.
2:08:15
He told them on the radio that he's concerned.
2:08:17
McCreadie, of course, driving hard.
2:08:19
He's got plenty of fuel as they head down into turn number three.
2:08:24
It is still Earnhardt right behind him.
2:08:27
Johnson and McCreadie making one final bid as they come
2:08:30
out of the final straightaway.
2:08:31
Jack Johnson goes for one final shot.
2:08:34
It is not enough.
2:08:35
Brad Hearn, number 20, the youngster from New Jersey has won the Shaver 200.
2:08:41
And in this part of the country, Brock Gage, that makes you an instant legend.
2:08:45
Right, Steve, and it's just about like winning the lottery as well,
2:08:49
as he'll take home over $50,000.
2:08:52
Back with the winner.
2:08:53
Incredible scene down here.
2:08:55
Everybody done.
2:08:59
Brad- Unbelievable … you run out… Did you just run out of gas?
2:09:00
We, we just ran out of gas coming down off of turn four.
2:09:03
You were, you were worried about fuel, the crew said, for quite a while.
2:09:07
With 10 laps to go, I couldn't tell if it was we run out of fuel or if
2:09:10
we had carburetor trouble, but it started sputtering with 10 to go.
2:09:12
I- A fantastic effort.
2:09:14
Beautiful.
2:09:14
I, I can't believe it.
2:09:16
All right.
2:09:16
What a show by Brad Hearn.
2:09:18
A victory here.
2:09:19
Okay, let's go to Steve.
2:09:20
All right.
2:09:20
Thank you, Jack.
2:09:21
You know, I said earlier Brad Hearn was popular.
2:09:21
Look at this.
2:09:23
Up on top of his race car at the finish line.
2:09:25
What a celebration.
2:09:27
Okay, let's go to Brock with the- So here I was, a guy, a
2:09:29
young kid without a driver.
2:09:31
Will Cagle's retiring, and this young, cool guy with a really
2:09:36
cool-looking car goes out and wins, to me, was the Super Bowl or the World
2:09:41
Series or the Daytona 500, and that really kinda put me over the edge.
2:09:45
At that point, I was gonna be in motorsports forever.
2:09:47
So like I said, I, I went away for a while and got this opportunity to come back.
2:09:51
Uh, Super Dirt Week, I was there for its glory days.
2:09:55
Glen Donnelly was, uh, surely a visionary and somebody I still look up to.
2:09:59
Super Dirt Week kinda took, not a turn, but it was kinda
2:10:02
on its down for a little bit.
2:10:04
And, uh, about 10 years ago, I came back on board.
2:10:07
About six years ago, saw this opportunity to not only work in modified racing,
2:10:13
which I loved, but to be the, one of the key promoters in putting on this event
2:10:19
that I called the Super Bowl as a kid.
2:10:21
You know, was able to, uh, get hooked up with World Racing
2:10:24
Group, and, uh, they gave me the opportunity to, uh, lead the charge.
2:10:29
You know, this year everybody's gonna say, or, that this year's crowd
2:10:33
was because it was the last one.
2:10:35
That's true, but there's a lot of last ones.
2:10:37
There's a lot of last ones of big events that don't have big crowds.
2:10:41
I like to believe that the last five years, not just because of the drivers,
2:10:46
not just because of the competition, but also because of the event, has
2:10:50
developed what you saw in the last Super Dirt Week at the Moody Mile.
2:10:55
You know, it's tough for me to say up here, but Super Dirt Week still lives.
2:10:59
The Moody Mile may be gone, but Super Dirt Week will live, and it's my
2:11:04
job to make it 75% 80% of, as Gary said, and I agree 100%, there will
2:11:11
never be another Super Dirt Week like at the New York State Fairgrounds.
2:11:15
But it's my job and World Racing Group, it's not all me, to make sure that it's
2:11:21
80%, 90%, whatever we can do to maximize that event, and I'm looking forward to it.
2:11:27
Looking forward to the challenge.
2:11:29
I'm excited that Glen's putting together a state-of-the-art facility.
2:11:32
He knows what the event needs.
2:11:35
So, um, I, I think I got the right man right by my side to
2:11:38
get ready for next year's event.
2:11:40
How about a big hand, ladies and gentlemen?
2:11:42
Jeff Hochman.
2:11:43
Thank you
2:11:47
Recalling some of the memories, boy, I got quite a few of them.
2:11:51
One of the things we used to do back in the day when it was a 200
2:11:54
lap event or even a 188 lap event, and they would call it the Miller
2:11:59
300, and that was 300 kilometers, but it equaled out to 188 miles.
2:12:04
The halfway point paid $10,000, and this became a race within a race.
2:12:14
A lot of guys figured, "I don't have a chance for that big $50,000
2:12:19
win at the end of the 200 or 300," whatever you wanted to call it.
2:12:24
But man, $10,000 is a big, big payday.
2:12:28
Now, keep in mind, the cars did not get the mileage that they get now.
2:12:34
To go 88 laps, to go 100 laps, it was tough.
2:12:40
And like I said, it was a race within a race.
2:12:43
And some of them, what they tried to do, if there'd be an early caution coming out,
2:12:47
let's say lap 10, lap number 10 or 20, 15, whatever, they would dive into the
2:12:52
pits, just take on fuel, come back out, and hopefully get good track position.
2:12:57
Then maybe when they got up around lap number 65, 75, another caution come out.
2:13:02
The leaders would come in because they were looking for the big payday at
2:13:06
the end of the race, and these other guys would position themselves up.
2:13:10
And so many of them, so many of them would get up there.
2:13:14
Now, let's say it was a 200 miler and there was 100, and when they got
2:13:17
up to the 100 lap, doggone it, lap number 98, they'd run out of gas.
2:13:22
Lap number 99, they'd run out of gas.
2:13:25
Joe Plazek from Canada so many times almost made that halfway
2:13:30
point, but ran out of gas.
2:13:32
And then you had the guys like a Pat Ward or a Vinnie Vitale come
2:13:36
along, and they would be right there to take that halfway point.
2:13:40
And that was a big, big part of Super Dirt Week and the big race.
2:13:43
And the guy that you really owed a lot of credit to that was one
2:13:46
of the guys behind the scenes.
2:13:48
His nickname was The Chief.
2:13:50
His name was Aaron Freshman.
2:13:51
He passed away in 2008.
2:13:54
He was inducted into the Dirt Car Hall of Fame in 2008.
2:13:58
And I did his induction, and I said his nickname was The Chief, and
2:14:03
it was the Chief of Connections.
2:14:05
And this guy just absolutely had all the connections, and he would procure
2:14:11
that sponsor for that halfway thing.
2:14:14
And most of the times it was PNC Food Markets.
2:14:17
Some of the other people that I would like to acknowledge that was a big,
2:14:20
big help in producing Super Dirt Week, we mentioned him earlier, I think
2:14:26
it was also on a video, Andy Fusco.
2:14:29
Andy Fusco passed away this past March.
2:14:32
He was a good friend of mine.
2:14:33
He was a good friend of everybody in the racing industry.
2:14:36
Andy Fusco was an attorney.
2:14:38
Andy, uh, his first position was with Glen Dolly, and then he
2:14:42
built his law practice in Auburn, New York, married, two children.
2:14:45
And he was just- Just an absolutely fantastic behind the scenes guy.
2:14:51
You know, you've seen in movies like The Godfather where they
2:14:54
always worked with their concierge, well, he was the concierge.
2:14:58
He was the guy, the go-to guy.
2:14:59
He was a big, big help.
2:15:01
Earlier today, Jack Spino was here.
2:15:03
Jack has probably been at every Super Dirt Week doing Victory Lane
2:15:07
and doing a doggone good job on it.
2:15:09
Then there was a guy by the name of Maury Holbrook.
2:15:11
His name probably never came out in the headlines.
2:15:16
He had an assistant by the name of Mark Kosiski.
2:15:18
They were the guys that took care of the track.
2:15:21
They were the track groomers, the preparers.
2:15:24
And I gotta tell you, Gary Montgomery can attest to this, Glen Donnelly
2:15:27
never said no, never said quit, never finished a race unless it was finished.
2:15:32
Those guys were always prepared to take their equipment out on the racetrack.
2:15:36
Now, one year we ran into a saga of rain.
2:15:40
Rain, rain, rain.
2:15:42
We got into Sunday, it rained, and it continued to rain.
2:15:46
Glen was constantly looking at the monitor, turned around and
2:15:49
says, "Boy, we're screwed." And I says, "Well, what are we gonna do?
2:15:53
Come back tomorrow?" "Nope." And all of a sudden Glen turned around
2:15:57
and said to me, "Joe, your parking lot packers." It stopped raining.
2:16:03
Now, the parking lot packers were people with passenger
2:16:06
cars out in the parking lot.
2:16:08
As a matter of fact, Gary Montgomery took a rented car out there.
2:16:12
And on that one given Sunday, we had
2:16:16
248 cars on the Moody Mile.
2:16:19
We also had one guy mooning the entire grandstand.
2:16:22
But that just put in a little bit of humor Now we got the race in,
2:16:28
but we started the race under a green caution for about 20 laps.
2:16:35
I being the announcer, I believe you were there with me that year, Gary.
2:16:39
We never said we are canceled.
2:16:41
Never said that we were canceled.
2:16:44
So the race goes on.
2:16:46
We started under a green caution.
2:16:48
We brought them in after 20 laps of precautionary yellow, stayed out
2:16:52
so they could clean the side of the cars so we could score the cars from
2:16:55
the tower, and the race went on.
2:16:58
Jimmy Horton won the race.
2:17:00
Pat Patterson did his live TV show from the fairgrounds.
2:17:05
There were race fans at the Marriott, at the Holiday Inn, at the Hampton
2:17:10
Inn, at the Quality Inn, that said, "The announcer said it was canceled."
2:17:15
We never said it was canceled.
2:17:17
Never.
2:17:17
We were on a hold, but never said it was canceled.
2:17:20
They took Jimmy Horton into the little booth.
2:17:23
They interviewed him right at the conclusion of the race, even prior
2:17:26
to the trackside ceremonies, and then we got phone calls from the
2:17:30
Holiday Inn, from the Marriott, and I happened to have a phone next to me.
2:17:34
I pick it up, "Hello, this is so and so.
2:17:36
I'm calling from the Marriott here in Syracuse.
2:17:38
The announcer said that you canceled." I said, "Nope, never said it.
2:17:42
The race is on, the race is done, and it was won by Jimmy Horton.
2:17:46
Goodbye." And those are the type of things you run into when you put on a production
2:17:50
like Super Dirt Week and like Syracuse.
2:17:53
It seems though, if there was one little cloud in the sky, boom,
2:17:57
it would drop down onto Syracuse.
2:17:59
I've talked enough.
2:18:00
Dr. Gary George.
2:18:02
I got a couple more stories, but I want you to- Well, I hope everybody had a
2:18:05
good appreciation of the history of the Syracuse Mile and the Moody Mile.
2:18:10
I tried to cover 100 years in a very short time.
2:18:13
If I missed some of your favorite drivers, and there were a lot of them that won
2:18:17
races, especially the fair races, some great champions from tracks, uh, all over
2:18:23
the northeast, I am sorry about that.
2:18:25
Otherwise, we would never get out of here tonight, and Joe and I have both run out
2:18:28
of steam talking, if that's possible.
2:18:30
Anyways, uh, the important thing is, and I did not bring this out, and I
2:18:34
want you to take this home with you, is that of all the mile tracks, and I
2:18:38
think Gary Tompkins talked a little bit about that book, and by the way, that
2:18:42
book is in the archives over here if you wanna come down someday and read it.
2:18:46
It's, it's there.
2:18:47
I know the one you're talking about.
2:18:48
Anyways, the Syracuse Mile is the, was, well, will be the old, third oldest
2:18:54
mile dirt track in the United States.
2:18:57
Indianapolis, uh, at one time was partially dirt, whatever it was, and
2:19:01
of course, you had the Indiana State Fairgrounds, which is a big competitor
2:19:06
to the New York State Fairgrounds even today as far as grandeur and all that.
2:19:12
Syracuse is third.
2:19:13
One race, only one race I had of the fabulous Milwaukee Mile, and I
2:19:19
think that's very, very significant.
2:19:22
We now lose that legacy.
2:19:24
Although today we've celebrated that history, and I hope that I
2:19:28
was able to give you some insight into some of the great drivers
2:19:32
that raced here up until 1972.
2:19:35
Joe was pretty much, and some of the drivers that were here,
2:19:38
filled in that portion of it.
2:19:40
We decided to do a format like this to get the drivers.
2:19:43
And I've never been in a race car.
2:19:46
I've worked on a lot of them on pit crews, lettered them, and all
2:19:49
kind of other stuff, promoted race car shows and things like that, but
2:19:53
never sat in a race car, but have been going to the races all my life.
2:19:56
We thought it was important for the show that we have that type of
2:19:59
insight, and of course, Jeff's insight from the promotional angle about
2:20:04
those races that he's so graciously given us some great video on.
2:20:09
We've got a dedication, a grand finale, very short.
2:20:12
It's gonna bring tears to your eyes.
2:20:14
That's the grand finale.
2:20:15
We will always, always cherish the memories here at Syracuse.
2:20:20
From the days of AJ Foyt, from the days of Tony Bettenhauser and Maury Rossi, all the
2:20:25
way up to the Big Block Modifieds, to the big wrecks that ran here, the snowmobiles
2:20:30
that ran here, I'll never forget it.
2:20:33
Thank you.
2:20:34
Thanks for the memories.
2:20:35
I believe that concludes our program today.
2:20:37
I hope everybody enjoyed it.
2:20:47
I'm sorry, what a mistake for New York State to close this place.
2:20:51
This has just been a tremendous day.
2:20:53
I am so thankful for everybody who has participated.
2:20:56
I don't know about you, but I couldn't watch that without
2:20:58
getting a little bit teared up.
2:21:00
That is a piece of history that we are never gonna have back
2:21:03
again, and I think it's a shame.
2:21:04
But I am immensely thankful for all of you who showed up, and
2:21:08
thank everybody who appeared this afternoon as well as this morning.
2:21:11
Thanks a lot.
2:21:17
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