Lawrenceburg Speedway, Thursday Aug 18 2005 August 21
On Thursday night, August 18, I went to see my first race ever at Lawrenceburg Speedway in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. This was my first race of 4 over 3 days at 4 different tracks. All four of these tracks are new to me. I was planning on driving, but I found a cheap last minute air+rental car package to Indianapolis so I decided to fly. It was somewhat of a gamble to take the flight since it was on Northwest airlines and a strike was looming. As I write this I’ve checked into my return flight and so far things are good (even though the strike is on). Hopefully they’ll stay somewhat on schedule.
Anyway, back to Lawrenceburg. On tap was the first night of the three night USAC Indiana Midget Week. Three consecutive nights don’t make a week to me, but I guess it is good enough for USAC. Apparently they are hoping to grow this into a 6 to 8 event schedule like Indiana Sprint Week, but they still have a lot of growing to do and if the crowd at Lawrenceburg is any indication it won’t be easy. When I showed up at the track about 5 PM, almost no one was in the stands. While the number of fans slowly increased I think the overall crowd was way down from what they hoped for. The track is really nice. Apparently everything but the track itself and the starters stand (which is actually on the inside of the front stretch instead of the much more common outside location) was rebuilt about 2 years ago. They had some serious flooding problems back then. One person I talked to said the local casinos helped rebuild the track and the fairgrounds that it is on. Besides the starter stand location, the other thing that sticks out about Lawrenceburg was the lack of any real straight. The track is basically a circle.
Besides the USAC National Midget Series, they also had their regular traditional (non-wing) sprint division on the schedule. The midget race was good but not great, with Jay Drake taking the win. The sprint feature was better and the show ended about 11:00 PM. All-in-all a fun night at the track.
My stats for the year after the August 18 show at Lawrenceburg:
Races: 34
Tracks: 21 (11 new)
States: 14 (3 new)