Irvine kept racing running in north Niagara
Racing community mourns loss of one-time Merrittville owner Bryant Irvine
As a driver, Bryant Irvine knew race cars from the steering wheel out and how to repair and finetune them from the business end of a socket wrench.
As owner of Merrittville Speedway, he knew track operations from the grandstand down and from the ground up.
Make that, from several layers of clay beneath a sloped, well-graded tacky surface.
Irvine, who died Sunday following complications from surgery at age 81, is being remembered for keeping Saturday nights at Merrittville on the racing calendar at a time when there were no takers for the Thorold track.
“It probably would have folded up without him taking over the track at the time that he did,” said Pete Bicknell, whose family along with the family of Randy Williams purchased the speedway in 2003 and ran it for 14 years.
“There was nobody else, there was nobody stepping forward.”
Bicknell, who like Irvine worked full-time operating a business while maintaining the track, found his friend of 30 years an invaluable resource after taking over the track.
In his hands-on ownership of the speedway from 1987 until 2002 Irvine learned everything there was to know about offering racing on a weekly basis.
“He knew every situation that would pop up,” said Bicknell, who races in the 358 Modified, the track’s premier class.
“Whenever an issue would pop up, he knew how to fix it. So every time I had a question, he was the man I ran to.”
Irvine’s love of stock car racing didn’t end when he sold the track. He regularly helped out throughout the 14 years of Bicknell-Williamson ownership and helped the new owner, Don Spiece, until Irvine’s health started to fail last year.
“He was just hands-on and he just loved doing the maintenance,” Bicknell said. “He was out there every day.
“When I owned it, I would be out there seven days a week and he would be right beside me working with me.”
Irvine owned and operated York Electro Plating Ltd. in Thorold for more than 50 years, but that full-time position didn’t prevent him from devoting countless hours to racing in his 16 years running the speedway.
“He spent most of his time there, he really loved it, that was his life,” Bicknell said. “That’s all he looked forward to was the track.”
The No. 1 thing Irvine taught Bicknell was track prep.
“He told me really what we need to do to keep a good track, how to prep it, right from the grading end of it to the watering and tacking,” he said.
“Everything I knew out there basically came from him.”
The Merrittville Speedway Wall of Fame inductee wasn’t just content to keep north Niagara on the racing circuit. Bicknell said Irvine was committed to making the experience better for fans and race teams alike.
“He’s the one who put new lightning in, he’s the one who put new guardrails in,” Bicknell recalled. “He built the big VIP tower.”
Bryant began racing Modifieds in the mid-1950s and became known to fans as Bee 99 for the speed of his No. 99 race car.
After learning Canadian competitors lacked a source for speed equipment, Irvine set out to secure engine parts.