The 4^th Turn

~ By Tom Boggie

“Malta Massive Weekend,” the first-ever three-day show held at the historic Malta track, is in the books, and it was a definite hit. Great racing for three nights, great storylines. What more could you ask for?

And in the last seven days, all the storylines have been rehashed over and over, from Anthony Perrego to Kenny Martin to Demetrios Drellos.

But one big story was missed. Tim Hartman Jr. won’t be returning to Albany-Saratoga Speedway next season.

In a symbolic gesture, Tim Hartman Sr. took the No. 22 pit sign off the fence last Friday.

I knew this was coming, because I had talked to Tim Jr. earlier in the night, when he confirmed he was leaving.

“It’s just not having fun here anymore,” he said. “We’re still going to run at Fonda, but I’m not sure about Fridays. I’d love to have Fridays off, but I’ll go where the boss (car owner Mike Parillo) wants me to.”

Hartman Jr., who won the sportsman championship at Albany-Saratoga last season, made a gracious exit. He won Friday night’s sportsman race, which paid $1,000 to win. In victory lane, he mentioned his new Donath Motor Worx engine, and got in a little jab on second-place finisher Kale Groff (“Kale’s gotten real good this year. But that is our left front shock on his car tonight”). He never said a negative word about the track he’s called home since the beginning of his career. Then he was gone.

Hartman’s win last Friday was his 14^th of the season, and the 50^th career sportsman victory of his career.

The Hartman Racing Team has been a fixture at Albany-Saratoga Speedway since the mid-1990s. Tim Sr. won his first sportsman feature in 1997, has three track championships and is second on the all-time win list with 26. Tim Jr. just completed his 10^th season in the sportsman division (he won his first budget sportsman feature at Malta on May 29, 2009), and had set his sights on surpassing his father’s win total (if I’m correct, his win last Friday gave him 23 at Albany-Saratoga). By winning the sportsman title last year, Tim Jr. and Tim Sr. are the only father-son duo to win a championship in the same division at Albany-Saratoga.

But there have been so many times that I’ve talked to drivers about how long they’ll keep racing, and they always say, “Until it’s not fun anymore.” Heck, earlier this year, Ken Tremont Jr. told me how much he still loved to race, but he was getting “fed up with all the bull… that goes with it.”

And let’s be perfectly honest. The sportsman division at Albany-Saratoga Speedway won’t really miss Tim Hartman Jr. It’s loaded with talented, young drivers who will keep the class thriving for years to come.

As Paul McCartney once wrote, “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, brah.”

WELCOME BACK, KENNY

Probably the most heart-warming moment (yes, contrary to popular opinion, I do have a heart) was when Kenny Martin Jr. rolled the No. 93 “Thunderstuck” pro stock out on the track for Thursday night’s feature. Martin, who now lives in North Carolina, had made the trip north to surprise Bob James, his former car owner and owner of Bobco Video who has been battling cancer. Kenny’s son, Sheldon, who also had a few wins in the No. 93, also made the trip, and served as the flagger for the pro-stock race.

Despite starting last in the 20-car field, Martin finished fifth (despite breaking a rear shock with about five laps to go), and returned on Saturday for the DIRT Pro Stock Series race before heading back to North Carolina.

“The No. 1 reason I’m here is for Bobco. I’m not here to race. I’m here to beat cancer,” said Martin after the race Thursday. “I’m glad I could come up here for this tribute for Bobco.”

Martin said the hardest part of the night was getting a crew to get the No. 93 away from James without blowing the surprise. “They said I was taking the car to Charlotte to practice with it,” he added.

Enough can’t be said about Demetrios Drellos of Queensbury, who won the 100-lap Super DIRT Series race and $10,000 on Saturday. Drellos is a rookie on the Super DIRT Series this season, but all the traveling and getting seat time at different tracks obviously paid off. Watching him ride the cushion at Albany-Saratoga for nearly 100 laps was worth the price of admission, and the fact that he went with a softer tire, which didn’t disintegrate at the end of the race, was pretty amazing.

Until his win Saturday night, Drellos was probably best remembered for his run-in with Tremont  last year that resulted in both drivers being suspended for a week. At the age of 21, Drellos now has wins at Albany-Saratoga, Fonda, Lebanon Valley and Devil’s Bowl (a feat accomplished by a very small number of other drivers), even though he didn’t make his debut in a 358 modified until 2015, when he raced at the Valley (he won his first race in his fourth time out!)

AROUND THE TRACKS

Fans did a lot of head-turning in the pits last Thursday night when Stewart Friesen showed up with a No. 20 Madsen Overheads Door car for the “Come ‘N Get It” race. Because Brett Hearn was attending his niece’s wedding on Thursday and wasn’t at the track, Friesen worked out a deal with the Madsen people to use the No. 20 and the throwback graphics on his Bicknell chassis. The color scheme was the one Friesen used in 2004, when he won the track championship at Utica-Rome for Madsen.

Friesen had a wild night. He had to qualify through the last chance qualifier because he wasn’t at Malta for the original race. That put him 26^th in the 30-car starting grid. Then, on lap 26, he was involved in a four-car tangle in the fourth turn, which put him at the rear of the field again (25 cars were still on the lap at that time). But in typical Friesen fashion, he put the Bicknell against the cushion, and charged back up to finish ninth.

You must have seen commercials when someone has two characters, one a devil and one an angel, sitting on opposite shoulders? One is telling him to be good; the other is telling him to be bad. That was Luke Horning last weekend at Albany-Saratoga. On Thursday, he was driving like he was possessed (a devil; get it?) and wound up taking out Chuck Dumblewski on the last lap of the pro-stock feature at Malta, giving the win to Dave DePaulo. Horning then came back on Saturday and won the 35-lap DIRT Pro Stock Series race. That was his 17^th win of the season.

Don Ronca had a horrible season this year, but if he gets a video of Friday night’s small block modified heat race, it might help get him through the winter. Ronca was locked in a battle for the lead with Matt Depew, and Erick Rudolph had come from the rear of the field to join the fray. Coming out of the fourth turn on the final lap, Depew slid up the track to block Rudolph, and Ronca rocketed through on the inside to get the win by a matter of inches. At this stage of the game, a win is a win, no matter when you get it.

Nice touch by Becca Sweet to sing the Australian national anthem on Saturday night for Peter Britten. That’s a first for me – three different national anthems at a race track.

If you’re a Tremont fan (or Ken himself), you might want to stop reading here, because I have to point out something. In the three nights of “Malta Massive Weekend,” Tremont finished 31^st in “Come ‘N Get It” on Thursday, 11^th in the small block modified race on Friday and 26^th in the Super DIRT Series race on Saturday. At the other end of the spectrum, Larry Wight was third on Thursday, fourth on Friday and fifth on Saturday.

I had a nice talk with Johnny Kollar last weekend. He told me he’s going to step up his game next season. He’s recently purchased a new Bicknell chassis and will be getting back into racing as a car owner on a full-time basis. He told me he’s got a driver in mind, but didn’t want to go any further than that.