SCSCA hoping for a smashing final weekend
The Swift Current Stock Car Association is back on the track this weekend for a pair of race days to close out a tumultuous 2020 season.
The SCSCA will hold the Hydrodig Race Night on Friday at 7 p.m. and the Tune-a-matic race day on Saturday at 2 p.m.
Saturday’s event will feature something unique with the Bumper to Bumper Bump to Pass race.
“We top them out at six cylinder cars, so nothing more than a six cylinder. It’s an enduro, so it’s 50 laps, but it’s full contact. So it’s whoever makes 50 laps first or whoever is the last man standing,” explained the SCSCA’S Alicia Smith.
“The only reason the race would be stopped is if somebody rolls, starts on fire, or it just gets too dangerous,” Smith added.
The club was looking for something to replace the Appetite for Destruction Demolition Derby, which has been a very popular event the past few years.
“It was something to keep people’s interest in demolition type stuff without having to rent the track at another time and pay more for insurance for a demolition event. We were able to cover it with our rent and cover it under a regular race day insurance because of the way we’re doing it. It just didn’t make sense to hold a demolition derby without allowing the 700plus fans that normally comes.”
This enduro will be a relatively new racing format in Swift Current. “I’m not actually 100 percent sure. I’ve heard guys talk about just a bump to pass where they would just kind of hit each other and pass, whereas this is going to be more contact.”
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the SCSCA held their first event of the season on August 7-8.
“It went pretty good actually,” said Smith. “We sold out the second night. We had a couple tickets left over from the first night, so that was really good. Everybody did really well with all the social distancing rules and things like that. That was awesome. We had a good enough car count that we were able to run our three classes, the mods, the streets, and the minis. That was good because we were worried. A lot of people didn’t know what was going on so they didn’t work on their cars. But everybody kind of pulled it together.”
COVID-19 has certainly presented the organization with a whole new set of challenges this season.
“Yeah it definitely makes it difficult financially because with only 150 fans it doesn’t even cover the rent we pay to rent the facility. Obviously there are people that haven’t been working so we were short a couple cars due to people just not having the finances to race. Or there’s people that had to find other work and don’t want to ask for time off because you never know when there’s going to be work,” said Smith.
The SCSCA often features a lot of out of town drivers during weekend events. “We got our very regular travellers, but not the guys from Alberta that we normally would have got. People just aren’t travelling as much.”
The organization is expecting a strong turnout this weekend.
“We’ve had a lot of feedback at a lot of the other tracks in the province that we’ve gone to. We’ve gone to a few races in Kindersley, Outlook, and Tisdale and there’s a few guys from those places saying they’re coming, from Estevan. We’ve heard their might be some more Mods. We’re hoping for a big show.”
About one third of the tickets had sold after the weekend. They are on sale at Tune-amatic this week or by contacting the SCSCA through its Facebook page.