Loss of Oberto leaves Pocono without a voice
With no crowds at NASCAR races, the booming sounds of the track’s longtime PA guy will be gone too
As the cars sped around Turn 3 at Pocono Raceway and started down the 3,740-foot front straightaway for the start of a race, Dino Oberto’s voice would begin to rise.
By the time the cars would pass the start/finish line in front of the grandstand with the green flag waving, Oberto would be yelling and telling fans to get up on their feet and cheer on their favorite drivers.
“Let ’em hear you folks!” he’d shout.
But the booming voice so familiar to Pocono fans will not be heard when NASCAR stages five races in three days at the end of the month.
With no fans allowed due to restrictions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there’s no need for Oberto to enthuse, entertain and inform over the track’s public address system as he’s done for decades.
While he may do some promotional work leading into the weekend, Oberto said he will not be there for the ARCA race, the two Cup races or the Xfinity and truck series events.
“I’m not going to be there, the staff is not going to be there. … basically no one is going to be there,” Oberto, a Hazleton native, said. “We are unfortunately at their mercy.”
Oberto said it will be the first time the early
1970s he will miss something at the so-called Tricky Triangle. In fact, he said he started go there as a kid in the late 1960s when there was a three-quarter mile track on the same grounds.
Don’t feel bad for Oberto. He will be kept busy in his roles as general manager at Mahoning Valley Speedway in Lehighton and president of the Eastern Motorsport Press Association.
“It was going to be a whirlwind of a weekend for me,” he said of June 26-28. “I was going to go from Pocono to Mahoning back to Pocono over to Big Diamond [in Pottsville] then back to Pocono. I would have felt like I was some kind of a rock star, doing a tour with stops at every little town along the way. Now that’s all taken away.”
As part of the media staff at Pocono where he shared announcing chores with Earl Krause, Oberto was as excited about the doubleheader weekend as anyone.
“You prep for a weekend like that,” he said. “You get excited. Naturally, there’s a lot of stories to do for the press association I work for, but you compile all of the stats to get ready for the roll. As an announcer, it’s not just about the hype at the beginning. You want to keep fans entertained throughout the program. They rely on you as their announcer to give them all the information. Now we have nothing to give.”
Advance ticket sales were humming for the weekend and not just for the grandstand.
“The infield camping sales and also for the perimeter on the outside was off the charts,” Oberto said. “That’s how much momentum they had for this and Pocono always does a tremendous job promoting their shows and that’s why they were outdrawing races at some of the other NASCAR facilities. Pocono always works hard to put people in those grandstands.”
Oberto said the Mattioli family, which extends to Nick Igdalsky, the current track CEO who is the grandson of founders Dr. Joseph and Dr. Rose Mattioli, will not be deterred by the absence of fans for what would have been a historic weekend.
“This family is resilient; they always have been,” he said. “They have been down before and they’ve just gotten up and stood taller. This was new territory with the Cup doubleheader. This is the future and how NASCAR is planning to go moving forward and Pocono will get another chance.”
Opening night at Mahoning
While no fans will be allowed at Pocono, Oberto expects a big crowd for opening night Saturday at Mahoning Valley. With Carbon County in the green phase of Gov. Tom Wolf’s reopening plan, larger gatherings are allowed at places like Mahoning than at other sports venues and Oberto said he has been receiving calls all week from people in New Jersey, New York, New England and even Florida.
“It has been overwhelming; something we haven’t seen probably since Ward Crozier reopened the track in 1988,” Oberto said. “We’ve been getting calls from fans and from drivers who want to participate. It’s so enthusiastic right now that we’re planning to open our main grandstand gates an hour earlier just to maintain the flow.”
Some big names, including four-time Wall Stadium modified champ Jimmy Blewett, will be racing as will former NASCAR truck and modified tour drivers Chuck Hossfeld and Ronnie Silk and many more recognizable names.
As for as complying with CDC restrictions, Oberto said there will be some guidelines in place, although the gathering limit of 250 might be exceeded.
“We understand it’s a delicate position and the numbers put before us,” Oberto said. “But we’re basing our experience on what has happened at other tracks like Lincoln Speedway in Adams County and Greenwood Valley Speedway in Bloomsburg.”
He said fans are recommended to wear masks, but they are not required.
“We’ve opened the last few weeks with no fans in the grandstand,” he said. “That was was basically our test run and it went relatively well. We had no issues. Everyone was respectful and mindful of one another. Other racetracks have been doing it and we’re going to get on board with it. We’re going to have hand sanitizers out there and screening put up in front of the concession stand.”
Oberto said short-track auto racing can benefit from the situation caused by the pandemic.
“The stick and ball sports really won’t be starting up right away and short-track racing is a form of outdoor entertainment here at everybody’s finger tips,” he said.