Newsmaker of the Week

Stevie Smith had driven thousands of miles on dirt tracks in all four corners of the United States before coming back home to Central Pennsylvania this year. With the grandstands packed at William Grove on Friday night with warm, familiar faces Smith won the feature. But that was just warmup. The next night at Lincoln Speedway, the track on which …

It isn’t easy to win a race of any kind and when stakes are for upwards of in $16,000 in prize money, the competition is ruthless. Mix in the presence of one of the sport’s the winningest drivers of all time camped out on the leader’s rear bunper, and the drama escalates. Then, to ramp up pressure even further, have …

In asphalt Modified racing circles, there is no race more prized than the Race Of Champions. This year’s race, the 64th running at Oswego (NY) Speedway, was a hard-nosed affair and its winner, Chuck Hossfeld, rose to the occasion. Less than half the field finished the grueling 200 lap distance and many of the finishers were battle weary drivers steering banged …

Wed on Thursday, win on Saturday. That was the story for short track racing’s ‘power couple’ Stewart and Jessica Zemken Friesen at Utica Rome (NY) Speedway after the ‘just married’ husband and wife finished first and second in the rich Cole Cup for 360 Sprint Cars. Stewart led all the way but Jessica was the showstopper, passing Steve Poirier off …

Oswego Speedway’s Supermodified division is unique in all of auto racing. The wingless Supers race all year at the historic track in preparation for the Oswego Classic, a race that has withstood the test of time and adds to its legacy annually This year Otto Sitterly won the race for the fourth time in the past six runnings. On a …

It takes time to get to the top. This past week, two drivers who have won plenty of races at lower echelons were on top of the racing ladder after inspired drives. Tommy Barrett, Jr. of Millis, Mass., is a rookie in the NASCAR Whelen Modified Touring Series. He brushed aside earlier season woes with a spectacular drive at Bristol …

Brett Hearn’s storied racing career has had many peaks and very few valleys. It takes a special confluence of events for Hearn to truly stand out, to actually make news. And so it was this past week. First, Hearn won Lebanon Valley Speedway’s richest event, the $17,500-to-win Mr. DIRT Title Race. It was an event Hearn won for the eleventh …

Kevin Ward, Jr. was a 20-year old kid with aspirations of being a professional race car driver. He demonstrated considerable prowess over the past couple of years, building a team into a contender, developing his driving skills well. Last Saturday night, Ward came out on the short end of a racing accident at Canandaigua Speedway when he and Tony Stewart …

Earning high dollar wins in high profile races last week, two virtuoso drivers were the classes of their fields in a pair of events as dfferent as night and day. On Wednesday, Danny Johnson dominated the Super DIRTcar Series race at the three-eighths mile dirt Albany-Saratoga (NY) oval by setting a blistering pace that blistered tires. Not his tires, but …

There were two different, high stakes, high profile races two hundred miles apart last week. One was on dirt, the other on asphalt. One was promoted by an energetic lessor, the other by the second generation track owner. Both drew big fields, aiming not just for the first prize payoff but for some proportionately good money down the line. And …