~ By Tom Boggie

I take a lot of notes, and keep a lot of notebooks. The notebooks are filled with race results, some dating back to the early 1980s. I do it so I have information at my fingertips, rather than scroll through records on a computer.

In recent years, I started putting first-time winners in red ink (easier to pick out when you’re thumbing through the notebooks). Then, I started using red for drivers breaking into the top five for the first time.

Two weeks ago, Brian Calabrese earned red ink at Albany-Saratoga Speedway, finishing second to Kolby Schroder in one of the 35-lap modified features.

Now, because it was also Schroder’s first career win at Malta (and because the show was being hustled along because of the threat of rain), I never got a chance to talk to Calabrese about his career-best finish in a modified.

On a hunch, I went to the open practice at Malta on Tuesday and sure enough, Calabrese was there, by himself (more on that later) and I had a chance to get his feelings about the second-place finish.

“He (Schroder) had a better car,” said the 38-year-old driver from Johnstown. “I thought I might be able to get a shot at him on a restart, but I couldn’t cross over on him.

“I got a little defensive after that because I didn’t want to lose second. If you finish second or third, that’s what gets you back the next week. In a big block, it’s a lot easier to start third and finish 15^th than it is to stay in third.”

Calabrese is one of the hardest-working men in dirt track racing, literally. He owns and operates BC Repair, a small engine repair business that is housed in Bruce Dostal’s old A&B Speed shop in the south end of Johnstown. From his vantage point, Calabrese can see the comings and goings at the Benjamin Moore Paint warehouse down the road.

“I have to put in 60 hours of work before I can even think about racing,” he said. “I’ll be in my shop when the first-shift guys (at Benjamin Moore) are going in and sometimes, I’ll still be there when the third shift goes in. If I’ve got 20 mowers in my yard, I can’t stop at 5 p.m. to work on the race cars. But on Thursday night, I flip a switch and then it’s all race cars.”

Sometimes, he doesn’t wait until Thursday. Take this week, for instance. He wanted to get in a little test time at Malta on Tuesday, and then he hauled the five miles to Fonda for Wednesday night’s River Rage race for 358-modifieds, where he finished seventh.

He even thought about getting an early start to the week, after Devil’s Bowl postponed its season opener from last Saturday to Sunday.

“I thought about going to the Bowl, it was a $3,200 race,” said Calabrese. “On Sunday morning, I thought to myself, I could pull the motor out of my car, put in the crate and still get to the Bowl by early afternoon. But then I thought, That’s stupid, Brian, so I stayed home and worked instead.”

Calabrese is a throwback, in that he usually shows up at the track by himself. “I’ve got a guy who helps me once in a while, but he lives in Cobleskill and he can’t always get to the track,” Calabrese said.

And if he’s got a problem, he can usually handle that himself, too. That includes making repairs to his motors (as long as he hasn’t grenaded one, which, he quickly admitted, would be a disaster).

But he admitted that the long hours are starting to wear on him. “I like to race, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep up like this,” he said.

Although he’s becoming a consistent threat in a modified, Calabrese still runs 602 crates as often as he can. He makes an annual winter haul to South Carolina and Florida to run his crate, and if there’s a high-paying race (like last Sunday’s opener at the Bowl), he’s usually there.

“I try to pool my sponsors so I can make it profitable in Florida,” he said. “There’s money in crates. Last year when I went to Florida, it changed my whole career, because I met Jeff Brown and he gave me my first big block.”

Calabrese still remembers his first crate win, when he shocked the world by winning the Northeast Crate Nationals at Albany-Saratoga Speedway in 2018. He was driving a very plain black car, with very little sponsorship, and when he dropped to seventh early in the race after starting on the front row, everyone assumed his night was over. But he got hooked up late in the race, used a couple of restarts to his advantage and shocked the world.

One of the few decals he sported that night on the left rear quarter panel was LM Mason Contractor, owned by Larry McGillis, and McGillis still has a prominent place on Calabrese’s cars today.

“Larry McGillis got me going,” said Calabrese. “He’s done a lot for me. If it hadn’t been for Larry giving me gas money to get to Florida, I never would have met Jeff Brown.”

“I never thought I would win a crate race, but now, I’ve won a lot of them,” he added. “I could never win at Utica-Rome, then I ripped off three wins there last year. That felt good. I don’t know if I’ll ever win a big block race, but who knows?”

He did win a 358-modified race last season at Glen Ridge Motorsports Park, and he won the Charlie Laduc Memorial at Devil’s Bowl. In 2022, he finished second to Ken Tremont Jr. in the Vermont 200 at the Bowl, and walked off with a hefty paycheck that included $1,700 in bonus money for leading 60 laps.

Unless he gets completed burned out, Calabrese will keep racing as much as he can.

“When I got married, my wife said I should give it (racing) 100 percent,” he said. “She understands if I have to work late because I want to race. But it gets hectic this time of year.”

AROUND THE TRACKS

You know that $3,200 that Mike Bruno was paying out for the opener at the Bowl? It went to Joey Scarborough, who started 13^th in the Matty B. Memorial, a tribute to the late Matt Bilodeau. That was Scarborough’s eighth career win at the Bowl.

That last fact led me into a deep dive on Joey’s father Don. Anyone who was around the Champlain Valley Racing Association in the 1990s remembers the Brandon Bandit, Don Scarborough was the Devil’s Bowl modified champion in 1998 and was named the 1990’s Driver of the Decade at the Bowl, winning 20 races from 1993 to 1999. According to the Auto Racing Research Associates Web site, Don had 32 wins at the Bowl and is tied for fourth place with Vince Quenneville Sr. on the all-time win list. But according to records I have, he has 33 wins. His last three wins came in 2010, when the track switched back to an asphalt surface. On two separate times during his career, in 1996 and 1999, he won three weeks in a row.

I can’t overlook what Ronnie Johnson did this week at Fonda Speedway. He won one of the Twin 22s on Dave Lape Tribute night on Saturday and then went flag-to-flag to win the River Rage 358 race on Wednesday. RJ, who had two wins during the entire 2024 season, now has 96 career victories.

Justin Stone chalked up the third 358-modified win of his career last Thursday at Airborne Park in Plattsburgh. Mike Mahaney was second and Felix Roy was third.

Stewart Friesen broke his run of frustrating finishes in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series last weekend, crossing the finish line sixth at Kansas Speedway. He was later elevated to fifth when second-place finisher Layne Riggs was disqualified for a bed cover issue. That fifth was Friesen’s second top-5 run of the season.

Lebanon Valley kicked off its season last weekend, with Schroder taking the checkered flag in the big block feature. Chris Crane Jr. chalked up his first career win in the sportsman feature.

Albany-Saratoga has a busy night on tap Friday. The card, on Law Enforcement Night, will begin with the sportsman feature that was rained out on April 25. The big blocks will be running for $3,000 to win, and the regular sportsman feature will pay $1,060 to win through sponsorship from DKM Fabrications. The card will also include the Mini-Sprints of Upstate New York.

Lebanon Valley’s card on Saturday will include the Flying Farmer 31 for 358-modifieds, a tribute to the late Jason Herrington. There will be over $9,000 in bonus money, raised through sponsorship and donations.