Vacation hotspot: Old Dominion Speedway thrills (NASCAR.com)
July 22, 2010
It’s nice when a plan comes together.
It’s even nicer when a plan lives up to expectations—from getting there, to getting in, to the accessories, the personalities and getting out again.
And so it was at Old Dominion Speedway in Virginia last Saturday—the midpoint of the first two-week vacation in what seems like forever and probably just about has been.
It’s incredible when you look back on it, considering it was triggered by a piece of old-school race promoting that would have made Big Bill France proud—a sign stuck in the ground in front of a BP gas station, of all places—four or five towns away from the speedway.
It’s a little embarrassing to admit Old Dominion, which I’ve known about for going on three decades, was only 20 minutes from an area where I’ve spent a lot of time in the past five years, visiting my grandkids—but I never knew the track was there.
But once the proverbial cat was out of the bag, plenty of people sent me e-mails indicating how on-time the show was, how reasonable the prices were, and just what food items to regale my palate with.
Every prediction was right on the money—right down to that “little piece of heaven on a paper tray,” the “porky tater.”
Ron Hornaday had barely gotten out of his Late Model Stock Car after suffering a broken shock mount, when he caught wind of the presence of porky taters at this facility. Actually, he had no clue what they were.
But once he was clued in, “get me one” was the next thing out of his mouth.
So I’m here to tell you, this special-event stop on the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series schedule was totally on target for a number of people, including a handful of NASCAR and Grand-Am Rolex Series celebrities.
The coolest thing was that most of them weren’t even in an off weekend to do it! And what was the best part? Track owner Steve Britt had a plane in St. Louis to get Hornaday and fellow Truck racer Max Papis to Manassas Regional Airport—right near the track—and then another to get the pair and David Stremme back to North Carolina after they’d signed every autograph for the several hundred fans who streamed into the infield after racing was through.
Of course, Johnny Benson’s piddling around with any number of things while he tries to get enough sponsorship to get into one of Kyle Busch’s Camping World Trucks—or something else equally racy.
Stremme did have a weekend off from racing Bill Jenkins’ No. 26 Ford in Sprint Cup—but Old Dominion’s 150-lap Youth For Tomorrow Late Model Stock Car special was either his fourth or fifth race of the week. Even I lost track.
“I just love to race,” Stremme said later of his week’s path that had sent him from the Midwest to North Carolina and Virginia—on both pavement and dirt. “I’ve got a couple Late Models and a dirt [Modified] car—Kenny Wallace and [Ken] Schrader got me hooked on that.”
Stremme even jumped into a “UCar”—the track’s beginner class of four-cylinder “pure stock” cars, for some hot laps. How classic is this place? One of the guys that raced in the UCar feature said his car hadn’t been on-track in three years, saying “we knocked a bee’s nest out of it, and here we are.”
Former track hotshoe Curtis Markham did have a weekend off from spotting for Youth For Tomorrow founder Joe Gibbs’ Sprint Cup championship contender Denny Hamlin—and Markham was enjoying every minute of his homecoming, even though he took his lumps in the Late Model race.
“Not doing bad for an old guy, but these young kids here are tough,” Markham said during the mid-race break, which was held after Lap 100 to give the touring Virginia Sprint Series a chance to run its feature. “This always was a tough place to race, but the people here are great and I’m happy to be able to come back.”
Old Dominion appears to be living a charmed life as the venerable high-banked oval—which Hornaday said “was what short-track racing is like everywhere,” but when pressed said it really reminded him of I-70 Speedway in Odessa, Mo., where the Truck Series formerly raced—continues to avoid residential development.
Britt, on the track’s PA, already was drumming up support for the special event for 2011. All the gate receipts went to the Youth For Tomorrow charity for at-risk youth—and Papis led the charge into the stands at the break, after his Late Model broke in the first segment, for a driver-led passing of the helmet to gather an addition $1,000 for the charity.
But hand it to Hornaday and Papis, who had raced at Gateway outside St. Louis earlier Saturday afternoon, as well as Andy Lally and Virginian Spencer Pumpelly, who flew back and forth to Millville, N.J., where they raced on Saturday and Sunday in a Rolex Series event.
They went the extra mile and, in the final 50-lap segment of the LMSC event, Lally—who was ecstatic to be in a Late Model carrying the same number as his Busch Series car had in his 2007 NASCAR debut—held off Markham lap after lap until the checkered flag fell.
The fact he was a lap down and had restarted the final segment in running order—with the lapped cars interspersed with the leaders—only added to the show.
And it made Hornaday the hero of the night, to what should have been most in the stands. Hornaday was struggling mightily to move forward from his 19th starting position but had almost reached the top 10 when his car broke a rear-shock mount.
Hornaday debriefed with the crew and then went into “his” trailer to order a porky tater, but minutes later, when the driver he’d replaced for the night came into the truck to tell him the car could be fixed and asked, “what do you want to do?” Hornaday’s reply was priceless for a guy who has a championship pedigree in every degree of racing—or humanity—possible.
“These people came to see me race,” Hornaday said without hesitating. “So fix it—it’s pushing in and loose in the middle. Make an adjustment for that and I’ll do whatever you ask me to do.”
They didn’t have to ask him anything. Hornaday started on the tail and in short order passed Benson, passed Markham, passed Stremme, passed Lally and Pumpelly—passed a bunch of Late Model regulars and drove up into the top 10.
After a caution with less than 15 to go, he trailed back to the back of the field, later letting it be known “those guys were racing for points, and I didn’t want to get in the middle of that for them.” He’d made his point—and made the show that much better.
In addition to the NASCAR celebs, local celebrity Mike Darne, a former Old Dominion LMSC track champion, came back for this special event and showed how smooth pays off in championships—and trips to Victory Lane.
“This was huge, to come back here on this special night, with these guys here and to be able to race them and end up in Victory Lane,” Darne said on ODS’s frontstretch. “But I’ll tell you what was real special. Before the race I took one of my [hero] cards and got all their autographs.”
And then he took ‘em all to school.
But the whole kit ‘n kaboodle did that. It was a long time after racing had ended—after Hornaday had smacked his lips one last time over a thoroughly used up porky tater—and after midnight before the last plane left Manassas Regional with three of NASCAR’s best.
The latest legendary chapter in Old Dominion’s storied history had been written. And everyone who was there was glad to have had a chance to take part.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.