~ By Tom Boggie

Well, it’s about time.

The Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame announced this week that Champlain Valley Racing Association founder C.J. Richards will receive the Lenny Sammons Award for Outstanding Contributions to Auto Racing at the Hall of Fame ceremonies on July 20 in Weedsport.

My question is, what took so long?

That’s actually a rhetorical question, because the answer is obvious. When the Hall of Fame started, it was the DIRT Hall of Fame, and as we all know, DIRT (Drivers Independent Race Tracks) was the brainchild of Hall of Fame promoter Glenn Donnelly and when it came to promoting dirt track racing, Donnelly and Richards were two of the biggest rivals in the Northeast. Glenn had DIRT, C.J. had the CVRA and except for a handful of Schaefer Qualifiers run at Albany-Saratoga, they didn’t storm each other’s castles. They sold separate memberships, had their own sponsorship deals and were very happy to take money from anyone who wanted to enter their gates.

Yes, there was that one-year marriage in 1984, when both Albany-Saratoga and Devil’s Bowl ran under a DIRT sanction, but that was doomed from the start. That season was plagued by rainouts and marred by a drivers’ boycott (which, ironically, was rained out) and during the offseason, Richards made the bold move of outlawing big-block engines on the CVRA and instituting the 358s, a radical move that was way ahead of its time.

C.J. was a brash, young promoter at Fairmont Speedway at the Fair Haven Fairgrounds in Vermont in the early 1960s, and when he began to face increasing opposition from the good people of Fair Haven, he bought a piece of land a couple of miles up the road and built Devil’s Bowl.

He took over Albany-Saratoga, which had been a very successful asphalt track under the direction of Lou Figari and Larry Mendelson, in 1976, covered the asphalt with clay and Albany-Saratoga was reborn as a dirt track in 1977. Every Friday night, the best drivers from Fonda Speedway and Lebanon Valley would come in off Route 9 to do battle on the 4/10^th oval that became known simply as “Malta.”

C.J. Richards was a showman (remember that Day-Glo orange mini-stock he used to race at Albany-Saratoga?), a visionary and to many, a big pain in the ass. And now that the World
Racing Group is running what used to be Donnelly’s DIRT organization, and 10 years after his death, Richards will be allowed to take his well-deserved place in the Hall of Fame.

I was looking back at some old “Trackside” articles I had written and came across a conversation I had with C.J. in the fall of 1990. It makes for good reading.

Here’s the excerpt.

Up in the sponsors’ tower, which also doubles as an informal press box and general purpose meeting room for the Friday night regulars, track promoter C.J. Richards is looking out at the third turn, and talking out loud.

“There is no standardization of rules, and it’s going to come back and bite everyone in the ass,” C.J. said. “Promoters are so afraid someone is going to get a dime that they’re not going to get. I think we’ve been the leaders of the 358s, but as others change their formats, they leave their rules just far enough away from mine as not to benefit each other.

“I thought about going back to big blocks. Bruce (C.J.’s son, who is C.J.’s right arm in the day-to-day operation of the track) and I talked about it a lot. We would run our own class of cars as the second division. But then you’re talking about an $11,000 purse every Friday night and that probably wouldn’t work.

“My biggest mistake down the years has been paying these guys more than I should have been (at the time this article was published, the 358s were racing for $1,000 to win). They figure if you can pay it on a bad week, you must really be making a killing on a good week. It doesn’t work that way.”

C.J. wasn’t afraid to say what was on his mind, and he wasn’t afraid to make changes that, sometimes, seemed seriously out of touch with reality.

But he was always thinking. In that 1990 article, he made a comment about going back to big blocks. What he did four years later was change his 358 rules, which brought Jack Johnson and Ken Tremont Jr. back onto the scene, and convinced a young Brett Hearn to make his Friday night home at Albany-Saratoga.

And today, both big blocks and small blocks run together in the premier division, and a dedicated group of corporate sponsors continually put together high-paying races for all classes.

And it was C.J. Richards who got the whole thing started.

Three other people with local ties will be inducted with Richards in July. Former driver Erik Mack, one of the co-founders of DKM Fabrications, will receive the Mechanic/Engineering award, Melissa Lazzaro will be recognized as an Outstanding Woman in Racing and Billy Decker will be one of the three drivers inducted.

Mack got his start in racing when he would ride his bicycle to Maynard Forrette’s shop in Perth and watch “Cyclone” work on his car. Forrette took Mack under his wing and after a while, Mack was setting up Forrette’s race cars. Mack ran a sportsman for a while, picking up a pair of wins at Albany-Saratoga during the 2004 season, but when he couldn’t achieve his dream of racing a big-block modified, he went back to being an unsung hero, working on Stewart Friesen’s crew. And when Friesen won the Finale at the Fairgrounds, the last modified race held at the Moody Mile in Syracuse, Mack was the team’s crew chief.

Melissa Lazzaro, the daughter of dirt track legend Lou Lazzaro, grew up around racing and in recent years has made her mark as a pit road and victory lane announcer. She is currently a member of the DIRT Track Digest broadcast crew.

Decker is no stranger to victory lane at Albany-Saratoga, winning nine modified features during his career, including the USNA New York 200 in 2000.

SEASON ON HOLD

Albany-Saratoga promoter Lyle DeVore was determined to have the earliest opening date in speedway history, but that has been erased. The Twin 40s scheduled for Friday, April 1 have been canceled. A tech and practice session will be held on Friday, April 8, with an April 10 rain date, and the 57^th season of racing will begin on Friday, April 15.

There’s been a lot of speculation about who will and won’t be racing at Malta this season. I hate speculation. So I’m just going to show up on April 15 and see for myself.