Jackson Gill wins at Can Am (30th April 2025 BLOG)
My original plans for last weekend involved three nights of New York racing.
Friday night was the season opener at the Can Am Speedway (Lafargeville), Saturday night it was the ‘High Banks Hold Up’ 358 DIRTCAR SERIES at the Fulton Speedway, and then a regular show at the Airborne Park Speedway (Plattsburgh) on Sunday .
The Weather Forecast leading up to the weekend was not good. All three events had rain expected some time during the day, and Saturday looked like it would be a complete wash out.
Fulton’s weekend races were canceled on Thursday night ( they also had sprintcars scheduled for Friday night)
On Friday morning I was up early , heading to the Cornwall Square Mall in the city .
The Cornwall Motor Speedway were staging their Mall Show. It was a three day event , taking place over the weekend . By getting there early , and soon after the Mall opened it enabled me to get pictures of the cars before it got too busy.
There was a nice turn out of cars and it was a great bit of publicity for the track.
Things were still going ahead at the Can Am Speedway on Friday night, so my plans for that were not affected.
I drove through a bit of rain on my way , but everything was good when I arrived at the track. The rain expected later that night never materialized and it turned out to be a good night of racing.
The program consisted of 358 Modifieds, Sportsman contesting a DIRTCAR SERIES race, Limited Sportsman , Crate Sprint Cars and Thunder Cars (Mini Stocks) .
I took my hot lap pictures from the outside of turn four, before moving to the center beside turn one.
The first feature race of the night was for the Limited Sportsman.
Genavieve Bartlett, daughter of the track promotors Tyler and Michelle was the winner of this one.
The Crate Sprint Car Feature was up next.
I’m happy to say .there was only one caution in this one as former Pro Stock driver, Bruno Richard from Gatineau , Quebec went on to take the checkers.
The Modified feature was dominated by Jackson Gill.
In the opening laps he was challenged by Chris Raabe and Billy Dunn.
After clearing Raabe following a caution, Dunn continued to challenge Gill, but never managed to gain the advantage.
As Raabe dropped back to fourth Tim Fuller and Lance Willix moved up. As the race wound down, Fuller looked the quickest out there , but not enough laps were left for him to challenge the leading two.
It was Gill, Dunn and Fuller as they crossed the line .
The DIRT CAR SERIES race for the SPORTSMAN followed this .
This turned out to be a very entertaining race as Richard Murtaugh dominated things until the last sector of the race.
Tyler Corcoran had worked his way up into contention, and was now challenging Murtaugh .
We had side by side racing between these two, and either one of them could of been the winner. At the time when it mattered , Corcoran had taken the lead , and was there to take the checkers.
By now it was past 10-15 pm, so I made my exit .
With Fulton cancelled on Saturday, I had a free agenda for the day .
I was able to return to the Cornwall Mall Show .
In the afternoon an autograph session was planned where the public could meet the drivers.
This was a great success , and Mall shoppers loved it.
I guess there was another advantage of the Fulton Races being cancelled .
It gave me the opportunity to watch on TV , the ‘sudden death’ Stanley Cup Playoff game for the Ottawa Senators against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Sens had lost the first three games and needed a win to stay in . Well, they managed to turn things around , they got the win and survived for a game five on Tuesday.
In the meantime, an early Sunday call was made by the Airborne Park Speedway canceling their show due to rain . This meant another race less day for me .
The sun came out on Sunday afternoon so I got the Thunderbird out.
Finaly , back to the hockey, and on Tuesday night the ‘Sens’ kept themselves alive with another win.
The series now stands at 3 games to the Leafs and 2 to the ‘Sens’ as they go to game six on Thursday night.