Jim's Journeys - April 26th 2008

Jim's Journeys: Saturday, April 26th – Merrittville Speedway
By Jim Clarke, Clarke Motorsports Communications

Like a good little race-chaser, I got started early.  I was watching The Weather Network more than a week before I'd planned to hit the road for the season opening Super DIRTcar 358 Modified series event at Merrittville Speedway.  If it had been possible to get a long-range forecast for a longer period, I would've been stressing over the weather much longer.  Every forecast I saw showed cloud and showers...even thunderstorms.  I was hoping to get an early season racing fix, but I wasn't optimistic.  After waking-up to sunshine, my level of excitement certainly changed.

I was on the road from my Belleville, Ontario home-base a little after 11:00.  It was smooth sailing and other than a little shower near Port Hope, there was no sign of rain the entire day.  Of course, there were the usual delays going through Toronto - and while tuned-into one of my favourite radio stations Q107 - I was thrown a little curve.  The announcer talked about a delay on the Burlington Skyway Bridge.  A couple of songs later, the DJ was back, saying there'd been accidents in both the east and westbound lanes and the westbound lane (the direction I was headed) was closed and traffic was expected to be backed-up for at least 6 hours.  So many thoughts went through my mind and after a quick phone call to my friend Rick Young, who was about 2 hours ahead of me, I decided to venture on.  There was no delay at all and clearly the radio station had been given a bogus report.

One of my first orders of business at any track is talking to the people and there were plenty of folks at Merrittville to chat with.  Rick Young and Roger Aubin showed-up around 4:00.  Roger took a seat in the stands, while Rick and I wandered the pits.  I keep a scrapbook of photos to document every season and added quite a few to my 2008 book at Merrittville.  Rick and I stationed ourselves inside the barrier in turns 3 and 4 to snap the drivers during hot laps.  Once the racing started, I headed back to the pit area.

Just before the 100 lap 358 modified race, Merrittville's sportsman teams ran a 40 lap main event.  It was a caution-filled affair, with many yellow flags.  It made me wonder what might happen once the mods took to the track.  I was pleasantly surprised, as the only yellow flag appeared on lap number 9.  Some might have thought that made for a boring race, but I loved watching Dale Planck of Homer, New York work his way through the pack.  He lapped everyone in the field, except second place finisher Danny O'Brien (of Kingston, Ontario) and collected $4,500 for his efforts.  Chad Brachman, Todd Burley and Pete Bicknell completed the top 5.

Merrittville notes:  While wandering the pits, I asked track owner Pete Bicknell if he'd be wearing his 'promoter' or 'driver' hat on the night.  He said 'both', and then started to tell a story about having to cut-short a driver's meeting so he could fix a toilet.  He was called away to look after something, so he never finished the story....Danny O'Brien was running a car usually campaigned by Todd Kendrick.  O'Brien said the call came around 2:00 and when he arrived at the track, he didn't even know what the car looked like and planned to just drive around the pit area until someone called him over.  The team also runs cars for Scott George and Tim Jones www.kendrickracing.ca.... Defending Mr. DIRTcar 358 Champion Mario Clair needed a 3rd place finish in the night's second consolation race to make the field.  O'Brien, who was the runner-up in 2007, like his brother Pat in 2006 made it to the big dance by finishing 2nd to Rich Richner in the night's 4th and final qualifier....Lance Willix won the first heat race of the night and drew the pole position for the feature.  He was driving a car borrowed from North Country veteran Billy Cook and finished 19th....Track General Manager Erica Bicknell told me she was worried about how the weather might affect the crowd...and especially nervous since running a 'series' race so early in the year was her idea.

This week:  The NASCAR Canadian Tire Series MOPAR test day Wednesday, April 30th - Kawartha Speedway at Fraserville, Ontario.

In the distance:  Saturday, May 3rd (tentatively) - Can Am Motorsports Park at Lafargeville, New York.  Sunday, May 4th Advance Auto Parts Super DIRTcar Modified event - Rolling Wheels Raceway Park at Elbridge, New York.