Stafford Motor Speedway, May 27 2005 2005 May 30
On Friday, May 27 Walter and I headed to New England for a weekend of racing over Memorial Day weekend. The plan was to see three nights of racing in three states. The races included the NASCAR modified tour at Jack Arute’s Stafford Motor Speedway on Friday night, a regular show at Bear Ridge Speedway in Vermont on Saturday night, and the NEMA midgets at Twin States Speedway in Claremont, New Hampshire on Sunday night. All three of these tracks would be new to me.
The rain threw some monkey wrenches at us and we only saw one complete show of the three we had planned. However, we did see enough racing at the three tracks to count them as new tracks according to track chaser rules. We also adjusted plans and took in some road racing on Sunday afternoon at see Lime Rock Park in Connecticut. This was also a new track to me, so with the weekend over, I manged to get 4 new tracks.
Before going to the track we checked into the Days Inn in Windsor Locks and then went to the Roadhouse Tavern for some BBQ. I had an excellent BBQ pork sandwich with baked beans. It was more like chunked pork then pulled pork but it was delicious. After eating we headed to the track As I mentioned before I never been to Stafford before. When we showed up was really impressed with the facilities. The stands are large and in good condition, there is plenty of parking and the pit area is huge. The admission for the 150 lap NASCAR modified tour race and a few support divisions was a reasonable, but not inexpensive, $28.00. They started out with time trials for the mods and some heat races for late models, SK mods, and a limited late model feature. The next event was the late model feature. However, just before the race was half way through the rain came and didn’t et up and we were rained out without seeing most of the features. Oh well, what can you do? For those who are interested, the race has been rescheduled for Sunday, July 3. Hopefully, I’ll be able to use my rain check and make it to the race. After the rain out we ate at 99 Restaurant and Pub, which is apparently a New England-based restaurant chain. The food was really good, esp. for a chain and with any luck they will expand into New Jersey and chase away some of the less edible chain restaurants we have.
My 2005 racing stats after the May 27′th race (or what there was of it) at Stafford:
Races: 14
Tracks: 9 (2 new)
States: 6 (0 new)
I’ll report on the Bear Ridge, Twin States, and Lime Rock in separate posts in the next few days.