The 4^th Turn

 

~ By Tom Boggie

The War Eagle has landed.

Jack Speshock, who has been having a simply miserable season behind the wheel of the Donnelly Construction Inc. sportsman, finally got the monkey off his back when he drove to his first career win at Devil’s Bowl Speedway last Sunday.

All it took was bringing out a new car.

“This is a brand new car and I just wanted to test it out before the Vermont 200,” Speshock told Devil’s Bowl officials after the win. “We didn’t expect to win, but we really needed a good night.”

Ken Tremont Jr. has dominated the sportsman/modified division at the Bowl this season, but he was involved in a first-lap melee and only managed to finish 15^th in a badly bent up race car.

To say that Speshock needed a good night is an understatement. Running on Friday nights at Albany-Saratoga Speedway and Saturday nights at Airborne Speedway, Speshock, who lives down the road from the track in Malta, has had more than his share of problems. He does have two second-place finishes at Albany-Saratoga, however; one coming in a photo finish to Tim Hartman Jr. on June 14 and the other to Connor Cleveland last Friday. He’s fifth in points, but it’s a distant fifth.

He’s struggled at Airborne. In 13 starts, he only has two top-five finishes and is 15^th in points.

Ironically, I had heard of the Speshock name long before Jack got behind the wheel of an open wheel car. In 2010, I did a story about Hunter Bates winning the Champlain Valley Racing Association Driver of the Year award at the age of 15, when he was running sportsman at both Albany-Saratoga and Devil’s Bowl. One of Bates’ major backers was Donnelly Construction Inc., where Jack Speshock’s father Paul was the business manager. Both Bates and Jack Speshock were top-notch go-kart racers, traveling all around the Southeast to race, before they progressed to open-wheel cars.

Paul Speshock died in 2014 at the age of 47 from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of cancer that begins in the brain, but the Donnelly Construction Inc. legacy lived on through teammates Jack Speshock, Bates and Mike Coffey Jr.

Jack Speshock has one sportsman win at Albany-Saratoga, that coming on July 15, 2016, and he picked up his first career win at Airborne last season, on Aug. 1.

When Speshock is introduced by Albany-Saratoga Speedway announcer Mike Warren on Friday nights, Warren always refers to Speshock as “The War Eagle,” which comes from Speshock being a recent graduate of Auburn University, where he majored in business analytics.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story of Speshock’s Auburn experience. The 6-foot-4 Speshock played four years of lacrosse for the Tigers as a defenseman. The Tigers‘ team is a club-level program, competing in the Southeastern Lacrosse Conference with 21 other teams, including Southeast Division foes Alabama, Georgia, Georgia Tech, Mississippi and Vanderbilt.

Just for clarification, Auburn’s sports teams are known as the Tigers. “War Eagle” is a battle cry used by supporters of Auburn teams, especially the football team, which has used an eagle to fly over Jordan-Hare Stadium prior to football games since 2001.

Two weeks of racing, two disqualifications at Albany-Saratoga Speedway.

Two weeks ago, Neil Stratton had his win taken away when his engine was found to be illegal in postrace inspection. Then last Friday, Rocky Warner was disqualified from his second-place run to Ronnie Johnson.

Here’s what happened.

Following the feature, Bill Mueller protested, wanting tech inspectors to check the stroke and bore in Warner’s engine. That came after Jessey Mueller, who runs a big block, finished fourth while Warner brought his small block home second.

According to promoter Lyle DeVore, officials didn’t have the proper tools at the track Friday to check stroke and bore, so the only alternative was to have Warner’s engine impounded.

This is where it gets a little weird. The car that Warner runs at Albany-Saratoga Speedway on Friday nights is the same car that he had used to win three out of four modified features at Glen Ridge Motorsports Park, and Glen Ridge was scheduled to run a 50-lap race paying $2,500 to win on Sunday. If the engine was impounded, Warner wouldn’t have that car available for Glen Ridge.

So he refused to allow the engine to be impounded, and was disqualified, losing all money and points earned for the night.

Then, in the irony of ironies, Glen Ridge had to cancel on Sunday.

Car owner Jake Spraker got on social media earlier this week and said he’d have the same car with the same motor back at Albany-Saratoga this Friday night. For good measure, he added, “I wish we could run the Fonda car, they would really cry then.”

I’m not even going to start to get into the fiasco that took place Saturday night at Orange County Speedway in the$100,000 to win Centennial Weekend 160-lapper. Trying to describe everything that went on, from the early downburst that took out a dozen cars to switching rules in midstream to Matt Sheppard’s expletive-filled tirade (for which his privilege of competing at future events at Orange County Speedway was suspended by track owner Chris Larsen) to Mat Williamson’s $100,000 win for car owner Jeff Behrent would just take up too much time and space.

A lot of local drivers took home a good chunk of change from the three nights of racing (although who knows how much it cost them to compete?) Stewart Friesen’s total take for three nights was $41,250 to lead the group. He was followed by Mike Mahaney ($8,650), Brett Hearn ($7,500), Peter Britten ($4,500), Marc Johnson ($2,800) and Jack Lehner ($2,800).

Friesen’s weekend included a third-place finish in Friday night’s 80-lap big block race in which he ran the final 42 laps with a blown left front tire and bent wheel.

Erick Rudolph won Tuesday night’s DIRTcar 358 Series race at Airborne. Mahaney was fifth, and Warner finished ninth. Mueller was involved in a wreck with 10 laps to go, with his car winding up on top of the car of Steve Bernier.

While many of the Albany-Saratoga regulars were at Orange County last weekend, Ronnie Johnson was picking up his third win of the year at Malta. “Middletown is an exciting place, but this is home,” said Johnson after his win. “I don’t race for a living. If I can’t go there feeling we have a top five car, I’m not going.”

Luke Horning suffered a broken foot after he slammed into the fourth turn wall during the one of the pro stock heat races at Albany-Saratoga after he made contact with Darrell Older.

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. On the second lap of last Friday’s modified feature, Keith Flach jumped the berm in the first turn, and when he came down, landed on Bobby Hackel IV’s car. On the subsequent restart, Hackel’s damaged car didn’t make it through the first turn, and Hackel was done for the night.

Jeremy Pitts, a three-time sportsman champion at Albany-Saratoga, had a big block under the hood last week and was running with the modifieds. He finished 15^th.

Cleveland refuses to give up in his quest for the sportsman title at Albany-Saratoga. After his win last Friday, he’s only 12 points behind defending champion Tim Hartman Jr. with two nights of points racing remaining.

David Schilling made a rare appearance at Albany-Saratoga last Friday and came away with a 10th place finish in the modified feature. Albany-Saratoga Speedway fans may remember Schilling from his days of running the legends cars when the track had a NASCAR sanction in 2011. He also recorded a sportsman win on June 17, 2016.

Albany-Saratoga will be having its annual backpack giveaway Friday night, as well as a second session of kiddie rides.

I’d like to thank the members of NESCOT for giving me their Superior Achievement in Motorsports Award. If they think I’ve made outstanding contributions to motorsports, who am I to argue?