Riverhead Raceway, Riverhead NY, May 14 2005 2005 May 15
Walter and I left his house a little after 12 noon to head to Riverhead Raceway. This was his first trip to the track while it was my second. I went there once before about two or three years ago. The worse thing about Riverhead is getting there. I don’t like dealing with traffic and until I get myself a private track chasin’ aeroplane, to get there you have to deal with traffic in NYC. Luckily, traffic wasn’t too bad by New York standards and we made it to the traffic in about 2.5 hours without too many issues.
Since we got to the track before the general admission (vs. pit) gates opened, we decided to eat at Applebee’s across the street. We both had a very tasty steak covered with cheese and shrimp. This turned out to be a good move for while the food at the track looked OK, it wasn’t too cheap. A small cup of fries cost $3.75. After eating we bought our $20.00 admission ticket (again not cheap for what was basicaly a regular show) and found a seat in the middle of turns one and two.
One of the things I like about Riverhead is they advertise the time the heat races start and the time the features start. In today’s case heats were to start at 4:30 and features at 6:00. They started heats almost right on time. but due to a long red flag to clean up oil over the track they started the main portion of the show a little late. Another thing I like is that they don’t take any intermission. However between victory lane celebrations and photos and bringing the cars out for the next feature they end up take many mini-intermissions. I wish they’d speed that part up a little. The racing itself was pretty good but they had too many yellows that put too much liquid down which always takes a while to clean up at a paved track. Hopefully this was just first race of the year issues.
Overall the racing was good even if the officials made a few bad calls in my opinion. First they sent New Jersey driver Jimmy Blewitt to the rear of his modified heat for spinning out someone who really spun out himself and then they let someone keep his spot in one of the stock car races even though he spun out causing other people to spin out. They claimed they did this because he spun into the infield and wasn’t the cause of the yellow. Well, he caused the other spinners so he was the cause of the yellow and whatever happened to keeping your spot in line under caution? The highlight racing wise though was in the latemodel division was where a driver (Roger Oxee?) came from the back to win. A tough feet to do on a small 1/4 mile paved oval. The figure 8 races were neat also. Anyway, racing was finished about 10:30 PM and we had a nice 2.5 hour drive back to Walter’s house and then another 40 minute drive for me to get home from there.
By the way, because of Rivehead having two tracks, the figure 8 track and the regular 1/4 mile oval, this visit counts as two tracks under Track Chaser rules (and my personal track chasing rules), while it still counts as only one event in my count down.
My 2005 racing stats after the May 14′th race at Riverhead:
Races: 13
Tracks: 8 (1 new)
States: 6 (0 new)