39 race teams take part in season-opening practice at Merrittville Speedway
39 teams take part in season-opening practice at Merrittville Speedway
Merrittville Speedway’s first practice session of the 2020 racing season almost had it all.
Cars from the regular racing divisions revving their engines, raring to go along pit row? Check.
In all, 39 race teams, including 12 from the Sportsman class, attended Saturday’s event.
A visiting class? Check.
Seven Sprint cars raced on the 3/8-mile clay track in Thorold, their adjustable wings keeping them grounded as they rounded the corners.
Head-turning individual performances? Check that box, too.
“I know Brad Rouse was really fast, as usual,” speedway co-owner Don Spiece said of the defending Sportsman champion.
About the only things missing were hard-earned points accumulating in the driver standings in the race for the track championship, food and drinks from the concession stands — and, oh yes, fans.
Ontario permitted dirt tracks to open, though for practice only and under strict COVID-19 protocols. Race teams were limited to five people, including the driver, and physical distancing had to be observed.
After passing tech inspection, drivers had opportunities to shake out their racers, many of them rebuilt from the frame up over the winter, on the D-shaped track.
“Everyone went on three times minimum,” Spiece said.
Three hours were set aside for on-track sessions, with the final gorounds simulating actual race conditions in terms of duration. Hotshoes in Merrittville’s premier class, 358 Modified, got the most seat time, with a 35-lap final session, followed by Sportsman, with 25 laps, and Hoosier Stock, with 20 laps.
“At the end, they did it like it was a feature race,” Spiece said.
There was a flag person as well as people in the tower
“We did everything normal. People in the tower, people talking to the race-car drivers,” added Spiece, who, along with his wife, Lorraine, owns the speedway.
Spiece, who had originally hoped to have the annual tech-and-tune inspection April 11, followed by the Spring Sizzler opener a week after that, was too busy enjoying having crews back in the pit area at “long last” to keep track of the informal races. He didn’t know which drivers fared the fastest in the battle for bragging rights.
“I don’t know. I didn’t pay attention to that part. I just let them have fun,” he said with a chuckle.
While Saturday’s event was five weeks in the making for crews anxious to test their cars under track conditions, practices aren’t the answer moving forward. Unlike NASCAR, which can sustain itself over the short term with TV deals and sponsorships, Merrittville can’t afford to proceed without spectators.
“That’s the biggest problem right now. If we could somehow find a way to race and pay the drivers without fans, then we would do it,” Spiece lamented. “But there is no way to do that.”
Elbow-to-elbow, the speedway can accommodate about 3,500 fans. He suggested the track would need to draw “about 850 fans” to stay in business while offering purses large enough to keep drivers coming back.
“I would think so because that would be about 30 per cent of capacity,” he said.
Spiece expects to decide by midweek whether the track will host another practice next weekend.
Veteran racer Pete Bicknell, a multiple-track champion and a former co-owner of the speedway, expects there will be racing sometime this season in Ontario. He pointed out tracks have already opened in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, and that a speedway in Cornwall, Ont., plans to host a program June 6.
“I think Quebec’s in trouble. I don’t think we’ll see anything there this year, or, if we do, it’s going to be in September,” said Bicknell, whose family owned and operated the track along with the family of Randy Williamson before selling it to the Spieces in 2017.
Bicknell said there’s no way tracks at the grassroots level, such as Merrittville, can operate without fans.
“Even when they do open up, are they going to get enough fans to pay the purse?” Bicknell asked. “If the fans aren’t here, we’re going to have to work with him because, obviously, he can’t lose money here. This is his living.”
Bicknell, speaking from experience, said there are “200 to 300 diehards who will come rain or shine. This isn’t going to stop them.”
Older clientele, on the other hand, can’t be counted on as a sure thing.
“They’re going to be a little skeptical to come out, so that’s the other problem,” Bicknell said.
Given that his company Bicknell Racing Products manufacturers race cars and supplies racing equipment from operations in St. Catharines and Niagara Falls, N.Y., getting back on the track wasn’t a “big deal” for the longtime racer.
“I just do it for fun any more,” he said. “If I’m here, I’m here; if I’m not, I’m not.”
Saturday’s practice was Chad Chevalier’s first opportunity to try out the Sportsman racer that he essentially rebuilt over the winter.
“Every year you take it down to the frame. Buy new parts for it,” the 43-year-old from Port Colborne said. “We work all winter long on it.
“I just come to shake the car down and, hopefully, nothing falls off it.
Learn a few things and wait for racing.”
For Chevalier, the practice was a long time coming.
“It seems like two or three months, but it’s only been a month,” he said.
Chevalier is confident that “maybe in July, we’ll start being able to hold a few fans in the stands, enough for these tracks to open up.”
He conceded payouts for drivers may have to decrease if attendance can’t equal past years.
“We don’t race for much now, but us as racers just want to get out there and race,” he said. “I’m sure you’d maybe take a minimal percentage off, but not cut it in half.
“That’s up to them (the tracks) and then I guess you decide whether you want to come and play or not,” Chevalier said.
Dave Mamo suggested the need to maintain physical distances will also affect Merrittville’s karting program.
“We only one have that one row where everybody watches,” said Mamo, whose sons Jacob and Noah both raced karts around the speedway’s infield track.
“It’s not like stands where we can put people.”
Noah Mamo, 18, of Port Colborne placed 15th in points as a rookie in the Sportsman division last year. In September, the graduate of Lakeshore Catholic High School will be studying welding at Niagara College.
If we could somehow find a way to race and pay the drivers without fans, then we would do it. But there is no way to do that.” DON SPIECE MERRITTVILLE SPEEDWAY CO-OWNER