Central PA Speedway

It’s good to see someone with a racing background take over Central Pa Speedway. The track, is one of the best tracks to watch a race in Pennsylvaina. The new owner, Tim Bainey Sr. said “Our goal is to bring bigger and better racing to the fans, higher payouts to the drivers and teams, and produce a highly attractive atmosphere for participating sponsors.” If he does the second of these three things the track should prosper. The teams will come, the fans will follow, and the sponsor’s will want to get involved. By keeping Ken McLaughlin as the facility’s general manager and director of competition, I think he has taken a step in the right direction. Ken started the track back up in 2003 and had the track going in the right direction in 2004 before it was sold to the Paden’s for the 2005 season.

For this year the track will only run special shows with three announced so far. I would like to see a Hagerstown Speedway, Octoberfest type event at CPS. LM, BB Mods, SB Mods, Street Stocks. A two day show would put some money into potential sponsors pockets from Clearfield, motels, restaurants, bars, gas stations and so forth. And it might even get them involved for next year. The weather is still good the first couple of weekends in October. They should be able to pull a lot of the Mods and LM’s from back east, because most tracks are done racing by then. Anyhow, what ever they do, it’s good to see the track we won our first Track Championship at get a new lease on life. I think the new owner wants to move forward and will do what it takes to make it all work. Here is the link to Central PA Speedway’s new Web Site

Web Sites are a great place to post information… you would think!

Being a internet geek, I sometimes find it hard to figure out why it is so hard for race promoters to get information out to race teams and fans. Tracks and series have web sites, they pay money to have them, yet fail to keep them updated or put out information needed by race teams and even fans. For instance, why would you have a special race and not post the rules and payout for the race on your web site. It makes no sense what-so-ever, yet seems to be the norm anymore. The race teams and fans turn to message boards for information, and just in case you don’t know I’ll let you in on a little secret, everything you read on a message board isn’t ture. The other option would be to call the track. Should you have to? And if you do, what do you have in the end? You may find when you get to the track, the rules you got over the phone are wrong. You then get the old “I don’t know who told you that”. And of course there sits Mr. Big with his car 100 pounds less than yours and with softer compound tires. I’ll go back to the SHOULD YOU HAVE TO. In my opinion, if you are having a race there are seven things everyone should know. In no particular order, what divisions are racing, the rules, the payout, where it is, when it is (date and time), how much it cost to get in, and if there is a rain date. These seven things should be included in any and all press releases. Press Releases should be posted on the tracks web site where the race is being held and if it is a series race it should also be posted on the series web site. Hagerstown is one track that does a great job at this, when you go to race at Octoberfest you have all the information in one pamplet, along with the entry form. If there is a race going on, someone has to have all this information, SHOULDN’T EVERYONE? That’s my Two Cents feel free to comment.

On a side note I’d like to say there is a great place to find information on what drivers are doing. Doug’s Dirt Diary is one site where you hear it right from the drivers mouth. Doug has some real good interviews posted on there check it out, there is a link to it in Racing Links.