Good night, Springfield! See you again next year!

Rick Ramstrom was a noticeable absentee from the media seminar I was part of on Saturday morning at Speedway Expo. Of course, judging from the way he worked the room later that afternoon, I'm not sure the father of PASS North Series driver Derek Ramstrom needed a briefing on how to get the media to pay attention to his race team.

"You're a good-looking guy," Rick says to me.

Wowsers. Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr. Ramstrom. Positively everywhere.

* Funny, but I knew more people in Springfield than I did at the Northeast Motorsports Expo in Augusta in January. Weird, huh?

* A clarification here. Steve Perry doesn't own the Late Model that Darrin Ripley's going to drive at Wiscasset Raceway this year. Bill Stilphen owns that ride -- and he's the one leasing Richmond Karting Speedway.

Perry is helping Stilphen run RKS, and that's where the confusion sat regarding Ripley's ride.

* Unfortunately, money almost always finds a way to win in racing — even in places where the rules are so prohibitive as to try and curttail such things.

On the heels of hearing that the American-Canadian Tour had to turn to an official fuel supplier (Torco Race Fuels) to curb the use of doctored gasoline in its events, comes a report that a local parts outfitter has sold more than half a dozen traction control devices — to people directly involved with ACT teams.

All the jokes about a lack of horsepower in those cars kind of fly out the window with something as gravely serious as that, don't they?

* And Bobby MacArthur, the guy running All-Star Speedway in Epping, N.H., had the gall to insult the way I look in the comments section of one of my recent blog entries. Let's just say this: what do the terms "cut-off pink sweatshirt," "acid-washed jeans" and "jeans tucked into work boots" have in common?

Yeah, right. My male-pattern baldness is a bad fashion choice. Good point.

* Dave Dion = class act.

Plain and simple.