Nothing Like a Down Home Local AutoRace

Driver we Sponsored winning a Race

This picture is of a Driver Dadio and I sponsored. He won Rookie of the Year in the Detroit Iron Class. Going to the race was a fun experience. This was a small local racetrack not like Nascar. Half the fans knew each other. This race was 19 years ago and things have changed a lot since then. Back then you could bring bottles and alcoholic beverages in the stands. People brought Coolers with their BBQ rib left-overs and put their plates, knives and forks on the wooden benches. They were not going to be denied a picnic while watching the auto-race :-]  Kids would run all over the place and stand right down near the track behind an old wire fence. Over the loudspeaker a person would yell out the raffle numbers that were on your ticket to recieve prizes. In between races the loudspeaker would belch out old country tunes. One thing I saw that was groovy was when I looked up in the sky, it had this purple color to it. I suppose all that auto exhaust had something to do with it. Some weird chemical reaction I guess. This Racetrack was so local, I had to drive down 2 miles of dirt road to get to it and park on grass. It gave a kind of down home feeling but that was dissapated quickly by my fear of getting a flat tire. These local races are very entertaining to watch because they would have a crash every 2 laps. This guy would come on the track with a pickup truck and sweep the broken auto parts into a big shovel and toss them in the bed of the pickup. Another guy would spray any other oil and debris with a hose. If a racecar could not move off the track, 3 or 4 guys would come out of the Pits to push the car into the infield. Sometimes 2 drivers would get into a fight over a wreck. What was really cool was the little homemade stand with steps they built for the guy to wave the caution yellow flag, the warning red flad, the green go flag and the checkered winning flag from. It was fun watching 3 or 4 different races. One race had little tiny cars and some races had pickup trucks racing. They even have bus races but never saw them. Here's the Website of the Racetrack I went to.  http://www.springportmotorspeedway.com/ and the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springport_Motor_Speedway