Riverhead Raceway, Riverhead NY, August 6 2005 2005 August 7
On Saturday, August 6 I headed to my third NASCAR modified tour race of the year. This race was at Riverhead Raceway out on the eastern end of Long Island. We were a little concerned about summer traffic. However, we got out there pretty easily with very few slowdowns. Once we got to the track, we BBQ’d some chicken and drank a few beers and waited for the gates to open. The one thing that Riverhead did (and some other asphalt tracks do) that I don’t understand is they didn’t open the grandstands until 3 PM, but they started practice before that. Don’t they think fans want to see practice?
At about 4 PM they had heat races for the two support divisions and just about 5:45, as scheduled) they started qualifying for the mod tour. The biggest surprise about qualifying was that Jamie “The Jet” Tomanio didn’t qualify. According to the announcer this was only the third tour race he didn’t qualify for since 1985. Normally “The Jet” can rely on a past champions provisional, but Wayne Anderson took that.
The race itself started out with a number of cautions, but some drivers who didn’t have great qualifying runs such as Teddy Christopher, Jimmy Blewitt, and Eric Beers where able to move up in to (or near) the top 10 pretty quickly. Unfortunately for these three they caught up into some trouble and had to go to the back again. Jimmy Blewett got the worse of one accident and went into the pits for an extended period of time. However, Jimmy did come back out laps down and showed how he earned the name “Showtime.” He passed the whole field, including the leader and then pulled away and kept on passing cars. If he ran like that and wasn’t laps down he would have been the winner. Anyway Donny Lia won the August stop at Riverhead for the third year in a row.
Riverhead is a tight quarter mile and it is hard to pass, but it was still a good race, although I thought the $30 admission was a little steep. So did the people sitting near me who took every opportunity to complain about anything. They complained about the starting time, no heat races for the mods, the time the modified race started, the size of the crowd, etc. I’m not sure why they even showed up. The mod tour hasn’t ran heat races in years and the schedule of events was available before hand on the web and in some local racing papers. Maybe they just like to complain?
My 2005 racing stats after the August 6′th race at Riverhead Raceway:
Races: 31
Tracks: 19 (9 new)
States: 13 (3 new)
You know what the biggest shame is. Jimmy Blewitt is one of the most taleneted drivers I ever seen race. I seen him race all over the North East. His driving is top notch and I will never knock him for that. But his attitdude at times makes him seem like suck an a**. It’s a shame. He is NASCAR driver material. Just needs to act like NASCAR material.