RICK @ the RACES ( 25/26/27 April 2014)
25 April Can Am Speedway, Lafargeville NY
26 April Can Am Speedway Kart Track, Lafargeville NY
This last weekend was one that I’d been looking forward to for some time, with the return of the SUPER DIRT SERIES to the Fulton Speedway NY. on Saturday 26 April, which was to be , day two of a weekend feast of racing.
I planned to give the Friday night show a miss, and instead , I would attend the Can Am Speedway’s season opener.
Well , the great weekend that I’d been hoping for didn’t materialize, and for various reasons, and it was a bit of a disappointment.
It started off badly with a trip to the dentist on Friday morning, and after a repair job had been done, I got ready for my two hour drive to Lafargeville NY, and the Can Am Speedway.
It had been an overcast day, but dry, and on my arrival at the track , a steady flow of race haulers were lining up at the pit gate.
The program consisted of a variety of divisions but it was the ESS Sprint Cars and Sportsman that topped the bill. Can Am’s version of Dirt Pro Stocks are called ‘Pro Street’ and their races were boosted by a few familiar faces from the ‘Dirtcar world’ who were there to take on the locals.
I was there early enough to have my customary pre race wander round the pits and chat.
I don’t try hiding the fact, that the Sprint Car division ( apart from the elite World of Outlaws) are not my favourite form of racing , but that doesn’t mean I don’t have some good friends who are involved with them. There’s ESS officials , Dean Reynolds and Sylvain Mercier to name just two,
and there were three that were competing that night, Lee Ladouceur # 51 ,Jessica Zemken # 1z
and her partner ,Stewart Friesen # 33. Stewart of course is one of the top Dirt Modified drivers and he was there to guest drive the Doug Emery Sprint Car.
We had a good chat in the pits and discussed the close race he’d had at the Bridgeport Speedway NJ the previous week.
There were plenty of good friends in the pits from the Sportsman division too, and it was good to chat with veteran driver Billy Cooke # M70 .
Once the racing got under way, I took my usual ‘Can Am’ position on the centre , beside turn three, to get some pics .
The previous week while on my Easter Road Trip, I’d been having a bit of trouble with my camera, and hadn’t been happy with the way it performed at the Bridgeport Speedway. It appeared to be stuck in ‘auto’ mode, which was OK for pit and Victory Lane shots, but no good for action. The same issues were happening again at Can Am, so my picture taking opportunities became restricted. After getting a few poor quality action pics I retired to the media room to watch the Features.
Shawn Kirby won the Pro Street race where as Shaun Donath won in the Sprints. By the time I’d finished doing the Victory Lane shots for the Sprints, it was getting close to 10-30 pm and I had to make a move. Unfortunately this meant missing out on seeing Brandon Hagan win the Sportsman feature. The reason for leaving early, was because I had a room booked at my usual Holbrooks Motel in Phoenix NY (a few miles from the Fulton Speedway) and I didn’t want to arrive there after mid night.
As I left Can Am and headed south on I81 the rain started to fall, and it continued heavily for all of the journey, and was still coming down when I arrived there dead on mid night. After down loading my Can Am pics and seeing the poor results, I knew I had to do something about my camera.
I awoke Saturday morning to the sun shining through my window and was relieved to see the rain had stopped. There was no bad news on the Fulton Speedway website when I left my room just before 11-00 am, so decided to take the five minute drive down to the track. There were a few campers in the parking lot and a handful of race cars and haulers, left in the pits from the previous night.
With plenty of time to kill before the evening races, I headed to the nearby Great Northern Mall to check out camera prices at the Best Buy store and have a late brunch of Mac’n Cheese at the Panera Bread Shop. Not only do Panera Bread sell excellent food, but they have free Wi Fi too.
While checking out my Face Book updates, I heard the bad news that the evenings races had been called off due to the bad weather, which was just about the same time I looked outside and noticed it was raining again. The forecast for all of the North East looked pretty grim, so rather than risk another wasted journey , I decided to head for home, instead of attempting another track area.
Before crossing back in to Canada, I stopped off at Lafargeville once more, where surprisingly enough, the Can Am Kart track had survived the weather, and the kids Kart practice was taking place.
After taking a few pics I carried on back home to Cornwall , Ontario.
Saturday night was spent on the couch watching TV , but I had some new plans for Sunday.
I made a trip to Henry’s Camera Store in Orleans ( near Ottawa) to get my Nikon checked out. The Bad news, was the confirmation that there was a problem, but the good news was, I still had two months left on my guarantee . So with luck, I should be good to go for the coming weekends