When I was a kid going over to Oxford Plains Speedway, I'd sit high in those Section F grandstands and watch turn 3 with the intensity of a linebacker watching the quarterback's every move.I counted the cars in the first heat race to roll out onto the track from that turn 3 pit exit, doing a little quick math in my head to determine how many cars had shown up. I poured over the car numbers and paint schemes with my eyes to see which drivers and teams made unexpected trips to the .375 mile track.
Those were my Oxford 250 halcyon days -- the days before I thought I'd ever have the cell phone numbers of Racin' Ralph Nason or OPS owner Bill Ryan locked in my own cell; the days before I thought I'd be able to just walk up to Ricky Craven in a crowded pit area and ask him how his car was running; the days before I knew Cup drivers weren't just racing for the love of racing, they were doing it for the $15,000 appearance fees.
In the last few years, as a card-carrying member of the Maine Motorsports Media, my Oxford 250 excitement was waning. I already knew -- with very few exceptions -- who was going to show up before they even got to the track, and I had an idea how many would be there, too. And I could list the number of pre-race favorites on one hand.
Maybe it was a hazard of the job. Maybe it was a sign of the racing times.
But this year is a little different. I don't know who will be there for certain, and I don't know how many cars are going to show up, and I certainly don't know who will win. Part of it, certainly, has to do with a Late Model field I've admittedly covered relatively little of. Part of it, too, has to do with the ridiculous number of entries for Sunday's race.
For me, it's injected a little bit of life into the 34th running of the TD Banknorth 250. I know the field will be large -- by any standard you choose to measure it -- and there will be plenty of household New England racing names, from Rowe to Crouch, from Lepage to Leighton.
In my world of a wife, 2 toddlers and a mortgage payment, heading to the track weekend after weekend isn't always as much fun as it sounds like. To quote Ebby Calvin Nuke Laloosh in the greatest sports move of all-time, "Bull Durham": Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.
This time around, I think it's all about winning.
1 comment:
I never lost the excitement of the 250, but what I had missed was the true "who's going to win" feeling of the race. I know in my predictions since 2000 I was pretty good at getting 5 or 6 of the names right in the top ten and got the winner right on 3 occasions. Sure, there were exceptions to any predictability (Whorff winning, Ryan Moore on the podium, etc) but for the most part you had a good shot at knowing who had the track figured out over the past 6-7 years.
That's all out the window. Even regional Late Model experts aren't positive of what to expect and like you, I'm not expert on these drivers and cars. For all I know JR Baril or Thor Foss or Karl Allard are the people to beat!
There's a mystery to the 250 again and there's excitement for that first heat race coming out of the pit exit. Even after you see the cars on the track you'll be saying "who is that?"
Well said.
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