The 4th Turn

~ by Tom Boggie 

Can a 60-year-old driver win the richest dirt track modified race of the season?

The odds are stacked against 2018 Albany-Saratoga Speedway modified champion Brett Hearn, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from watching Hearn for the last 30 years, it’s don’t count him out, no matter how hopeless the situation looks.

Super DIRT Week 47 will kick off on Wednesday at Oswego Speedway, and Hearn will be chasing an unprecedented seventh victory in the crown jewel of Super DIRT Week, now called the Billy Whittaker 200.

Hearn has had an un-Hearn-like season. Despite winning championships at both Albany-Saratoga and Lebanon Valley, he’s only been in victory lane seven times (out of 53 starts). He’s looking at his first season without double-digit victories since 1980. Last year, he squeaked out 10 wins by taking the checkered flag in the Eastern States 200 at Orange County Speedway.

Like it or not, time is catching up with The Jet.

Racing is a young man’s game. While doing a little research, I came up with some interesting numbers.

Hearn, who turned 60 in September, won his first Super DIRT Week big-block modified race in 1985, when he was 27 and had five of his Syracuse wins by the time he was 35. Stewart Friesen, who is 35, won the October classic at the State Fairgrounds in Syracuse when he was 27 and has four wins overall. Two-time winner Matt Sheppard, who is 36, was 26 when he first made his way to victory lane in the Super DIRT Week big-block race.

See a trend here?

But Hearn also has the distinction of being the oldest driver to win the October race at Super DIRT Week. He was 54 when he took the checkered flag in 2012, in a race that was called off after 113 laps because of rain. That was his first victory in the biggest race of the season in 17 years.

And not to be prophetic, but just listen to what Hearn told Kevin Kovac after that race.

“You keep on doing this long enough it’s gotta turn around and come back your way, right?” he said. “I won the thing five times in 11 years [from 1985-95] and thought, ‘Man, it wasn’t that hard after all.’ And then the next 16 years I realized not only is it hard to win the race, it’s hard to finish the damn race. This puts it all in perspective.”

Two of Hearn’s victories this season have come in extra-distance races – the Outlaw 100 Super DIRT Series race at Outlaw Speedway and the Vermont 200 at Devil’s Bowl. He was also second to Ken Tremont Jr. in the Mr. Dirt Track U.S.A. race at Lebanon Valley.

But can he win the big one at Oswego? I wouldn’t count him out.

Hearn will be just one of a large number of Albany-Saratoga Speedway regulars who will be competing in a variety of divisions at Super DIRT Week next week. The entry list of drivers in the 200 for big blocks also includes Tremont, Jessey Mueller, Marc Johnson, Keith Flach and rookie Jack Lehner.

Rather than trying to compile a list of who’s going from what division next week, here’s a list of how Albany-Saratoga drivers fared last year.

Big blocks: Hearn 12^th, Flach 24^th, Tremont 26^th, Johnson 33rd.

Small blocks: Hearn 4^th, Tremont 36^th, Johnson 39^th.

Sportsman: Connor Cleveland 3^rd, Rocky Warner 5^th, Adam McAuliffe 6^th, Robert Bublak Jr. 9^th.

Pro stocks: Kim Duell 2^nd (1.037 seconds behind Rob Yetman, who recorded his fifth Super DIRT Week win in a row), Dan Older 6^th, Kenny Martin 7^th, Jason Corbin 12^th, Josh Coonradt 28^th..

If I had to handicap the 200 at Oswego, I’d probably make Friesen and Sheppard co-favorites, and put some money on long shot Erick Rudolph. But from a personal standpoint, I’d love to see Bobby Varin standing in victory lane with car owners Carole and Alton Palmer.

CHANGES AT FONDA

By now, everyone knows that Pete Demitraszek is no longer the promoter at Fonda Speedway, and Brett Deyo, the operator of BD Motorsports Media LLC, will be running the operation for the next three years, at least.

This is a huge change. For one, it marks the first time ever that someone local isn’t in charge of the speedway. From Ed Feuz to Jim Gage to the Compani brothers and Seymour Hayes to Ric Lucia to Matt DeLorenzo to Demitraszek (a former crew member on C.D. Coville’s 61 team), all of the previous promoters had ties either to the community or the speedway. Deyo, who knows of the history at Fonda through his former stint as a columnist at Area Auto Racing News, will continue to run Georgetown Speedway (specials only), as well as the Short Track Super Series, and has brought in Jamie Paige and his wife Denise, who operated I-88 Speedway in Afton from 2010-2016, as operations manager and concession manager, respectively.

Deyo has already gotten the drivers on his side, offering $2,400 to win a regular modified feature and raising the payoff to take the green flag for both modifieds and sportsman. Drivers in those classes will have to switch over to American Racer tires, the company that supports the SSTS point fund. But Deyo has also struck a deal with Glen Ridge Motorsports Park to switch to American Racers, which will allow sportsman drivers to use the same tires on Saturday and Sunday, as they did last season.

Deyo comes in with a good reputation and a solid background, and if he can get fans back in the stands and enhance the legacy of Fonda Speedway, I’m all for it.

I hate to see Demitraszek go, because he did everything he could to keep Fonda Speedway going, but as has been the case with many of the previous promoter changes, it all came down to who had the deepest pockets.

AROUND THE TRACKS

I was glad to see that Billy Decker, Ronnie Johnson and Jessey Mueller weren’t seriously injured in scary wrecks last weekend during Thunder Along the Mohawk Weekend at Fonda. Decker’s wreck was one of the worst I’ve seen in years. But just to show how tough he is, he was back in action on Sunday, finishing fifth in the Short Track Super Series race at Thunder Mountain.

Devil’s Bowl ended its season last Sunday, with Tim LaDuc winning the final sportsman/modified feature of the year. Ken Tremont Jr. finished third, and wrapped up his ninth championship at the Vermont track. He tangled with Joey Scarborough early in the feature and did significant damage to his right front suspension, but said after the race that the damage actually improved the handling of the cars.

Tremont also clinched the NASCAR Whelen All-American Vermont State championship.

Travis Billington, the 16-year-old limited sportsman driver from South Glens Falls who was a five-time winner at Devil’s Bowl this season, finished second in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Division II national standings, quite an accomplishment for the second generation driver. The national standings compare drivers at more than 50 sanctioned tracks, both dirt and asphalt, in North America. The Division II champion was Oklahoma driver Cody Jolly.

Racing in the area isn’t over yet. Dave Constantino recorded his 11^th crate modified win of the season last Sunday at Glen Ridge. The Ridge will be back in action Sunday afternoon, with heat races beginning at 4 p.m. Admission will only be $5 on “Showdown Sunday.”

The prelude to Super DIRT Week begins on Tuesday night at Utica Rome Speedway, featuring a 100-lap $4,000-to-win DIRTcar 358-Modified Series race, a $3,000-to-win Cole Cup for the 360 Sprints, and a $1,000-to-win DIRTcar Sportsman Fall Championship Series event.