Waterford Speedbowl, May 27 2006 2006 May 31
On Saturday May 27, 2006 I went to Waterford Speedbowl in Eastern Connecticut for the first time. The main reason for the trip was to see the ISMA supermodified tour. If you never seen a supermodified race, you really need to go if you like racing at all. The supers are the fastest short track car anywhere and put on one heck of a show. The Waterford Speedbowl was my 144′th track I’ve seen a race at. The drive to Waterford was OK despite it being a bust Memorial Day weekend. We did hit some traffic on I-95 in Connecticut, but we were able to get around it. When we showed up at the track, we found a scarcely populated grandstand and found some top row seats to watch practice from. The practice showed us that th e track would be really racy, – however a shower came and we headed for cover. Luckily, despite the clouds looking pretty bad, the storm passed through really quickly and didn’t come back.
By the time the advertised starting time for the nights qualifying races (5:00 PM) arrived the stands were starting to get pretty full. Waterford does a number of things that I wish more short tracks would do. The first thing was that they advertised both a starting time for qualifying, and one for features. This is good because if you are busy during the day, you may not be able to make it in time for qualifying, but you may be able to make it for the features (if you knew when they were supposed to start). I noticed a good number of people coming in the track just before feature starting time (7:00 PM) and I expect the same would be true of other tracks that followed this method. Another thing that should not really be amazing that the officials did, is they actually starting at the time they advertised. This was true of both the qualifying and the feature races. By the time the feature races start, the track was retty much packed – not quite standing room only, but still a huge crowd on hand.
The qualifying races were pretty good, but the features were even better. The first feature was for the 4 cylinder stocks which saw the leaders running side-by-side lap-by lap. The SK modified feature went 35 laps non-stop and was won by Frank Mucciacciaro Jr. over a hard charging Chris Pasteryak. And the 30-lap Late Model event Jay Stuart over second place Bruce Thomas Jr. who briefly took the lead from Stuart on a restart with 2 laps left. Trailing Stuart and Thomas was Tim Jordan, who actually finished in third while sliding across the line sideways!
The supermodified feature was a good one as well. There were a couple of long reds for some multi-car wrecks. Th second one took out the top three runners and some other contenders. From were I was sitting it was just too many cars going for the same spot in lapped traffic and it didn’t work. One of the cars involved int he wreck was Chris Perley, who I’m pretty sure would have won based on the fact he moved up from mid-pack to second or third at the time of the wreck. The ISMA raced finished at 9:50 PM and there was only one more race to go. However, despite the early time we decided to make a break for it and we drove back to New Jersey. All-in-all a great Memorial Day weekend outing at the racetrack, and another great track in Connecticut. I have now been to all 4 regular race tracks in Connecticut and they all are great tracks that are well run and would recommend attending a race at any of them. They all start on time, have nice facilities, and get nice crowds. I don’t think it is only a coincidence that tracks like Waterford who run good shows that start on time get good crowds. I still don’t understand why many short track promoters don’t get that simple concept. Connecticut and Maryland are the only two states that I’ve been to all of the racetracks in. Well, if the rumors that Barnyard in Rhode Island has closed are true, I guess I can say that I’ve been to all the tracks in that stay too… All zero!
My 2006 season race viewing stats after Waterford Speedbowl on May 27:
Races: 13
Tracks: 10 (7 new) (144 lifetime)
States: 9 (2 new) (34 + DC lifetime)