~ By Tom Boggie

It’s rare when I walk through the pits at a race track and have a “What do we have here?” moment.

It happened last Friday at Albany-Saratoga Speedway. After turning past the tech garage, I looked to my left and saw a black sprint car with green trim, with a big 14X on the wing, and Scott Duell was standing next to it.

Indeed, what do we have here?

“This is my dream,” said Duell with a huge smile. “I remember telling Bruce Richards (the former promoter at Albany-Saratoga), when I was helping you guys build the bleachers, that I was going to pull in here some night with a sprint car, and here it is.”

Duell began the season racing in one of the Bisson Excavating team cars, and put the car into victory lane after the sportsman feature on the second night of the season.

But Duell knew there were going to be changes to the racing team.

“I had talked about buying Dick’s car when he got sick during the offseason and thought about getting out. He said to me, ‘We’ll figure something out,’” Duell said.

What ended up happening was that Bisson gave Duell the 14X he had been racing in the sportsman division. “He said the car was basically mine, anyway, because most of the stuff, including the motor and the tranny, were mine, so he told me to just sell it,” said Duell.

“Basically, he just gave me the car and said not to worry about it,” Duell said.

The sprint car carries many of Duell’s previous sponsors, including Benson’s Pet Center, Saratoga Masonry and DeWalt, and he wanted to make sure the sponsors were OK with him making the switch.

“The first thing I did was talk to all my sponsors,” Duell said. “I know they liked me running here on Friday nights and I told them that racing the sprint car would be taking me a little farther away from home, but they were all for it.”

Duell said one of the reasons he wanted to get away from sportsman racing was the constant maintenance on his car.

“It was just too much of a grind,” he said. “I’ve got a great bunch of guys who were at the track with me, but during the week, it was just me in the garage and it got to be too much.”

Duell’s schedule for the remainder of the 2022 season in the 360 sprint car includes hitting shows with the SCONE, Patriot and Empire Super Sprint sanctioning bodies.

“I can probably do eight or so shows,” he said. “I talked to my wife and we might do a little more traveling next year. But I just want to get my feet wet this season.”

Duell made his debut last Saturday at Devil’s Bowl in Vermont for a SCONE series race, finishing ninth after starting last in the 13-car field.

And he was probably smiling all throughout the race.

MILESTONE FINISH

Scott Huber, the epitome of a low-budget racer, chalked up the best modified finish of his career last Friday, finishing second to Peter Britten in the 35-lap modified feature at Albany-Saratoga.

“This is like a win for this team,” Huber said when I caught up with him in his trailer after the race.

It wasn’t that long ago that Huber was taking his LSX7 Hunt’s Machine-sponsored No. 51 home in pieces. During the hot lap session prior to the modified feature on May 20, Huber got too wide coming out of the third turn, got over the cushion and slammed into the retaining wall that guards the end of the fourth turn. His car wound up on its side, and was then hit hard by James Meehan, who had also lost control.

“The car was just as fast that night as it was tonight,” said Huber. “Wrecking that night was really disappointing.”
Huber pointed to the team’s trip to Florida in February for the DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia County as one of the major reasons for his improvement this year.

“It helped us to go to Florida,” he said. “We tested some different things down there and we learned a lot from the big guys who were there. We’re getting close. We’ve been good in the heats here (including a win last Friday), but until tonight, we really hadn’t been able to run a whole feature. But we’re not that far off.”

Until last Friday, Huber’s best career finish at Albany-Saratoga had been a fourth on June 11, 2021, finishing behind Ken Tremont Jr., Matt DeLorenzo and Anthony Perrego.

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Although Britten kept his hopes of winning the modified championship alive with his second win of the year last Friday, he still can’t explain the inconsistency that has haunted him this year. The victory last Friday marked his first top-five finish since May 13.

“We’ve been scratching our heads as much as everyone else,” Britten said. “We were the fastest car here for the first month of the season, and then it just went away. Since then, we’ve been scrambling. There’s no other way to say it. Hopefully, this is a sign of things to come.”

Britten is now just 35 points behind points leader Matt DeLorenzo.

Brian Calabrese, who has been a regular in the sportsman division at Albany-Saratoga, moved up to the modifieds last week for the first time and brought the 21C home 13th after starting 23rd.

When the pro stock purse is increased at Albany-Saratoga, you can expect “Cousin” Luke Horning to be in the mix. Last Friday, he held off defending champion and four-time 2022 winner Chad Jeseo in the 30-lap Tatanka Yotanka feature, which paid $2,000 to win as part of Ron Mensing’s Native Pride program. In 2019, Horning won the 50-lap Fall Classic, which paid $5,000 to win.

The modifieds will be running for $3,500 to win Friday night at Albany-Saratoga. The card will also include the annual Mark Hughes Sportsman Memorial.

AROUND THE TRACKS

Rain washed out last Saturday’s $10,000 to win Bryan Goewey Memorial race at Lebanon Valley. That race will be held this Saturday.

After finishing fifth in last Thursday’s Super DIRTcar Series race at Land of Legends in Canandaigua, Stewart Friesen debuted a new Bicknell chassis the next night and went on a roll, winning at Utica-Rome on Friday, finishing third at Orange County on Saturday and winning the Firecracker 50 and taking home the top prize of $10,000 on Sunday.

Perrego won the Freedom 76 at Orange County on Saturday, getting the winner’s check of $7,600.

Calabrese finally got Rocky Warner to drive his sportsman car on Sunday, and the Flying Squirrel responded with a victory in the 602 sportsman feature at Fonda, which paid $2,000 to win. That was Warner’s first win since the retirement of his former car owner, Jake Spraker, at the end of the 2021 campaign.

In victory lane after the win, Warner said, “Brian asked me numerous times to drive this car, but I just don’t have much interest in running crates, especially after running modifieds. I told Brian it was a lose-lose situation for me because if I win, I’m a bully and if I lose, they will pick on me about it.”

Tim Laduc just loves to race. After recording his third sportsman/modified win of the season last Saturday at Devil’s Bowl, he took part in the track’s enduro and also won that, earning an extra $750 for the night. All three of Laduc’s victories at the Bowl this season have come in extra-distance races: two 50-lappers and a 100-lapper.

David Boisclair, who chalked up his first career sportsman win at Albany-Saratoga on June 24, finished second to Laduc at the Bowl.

The Buff racing team had a good weekend. Andrew Buff hauled out to Fulton Speedway on Saturday night and won one of the two sportsman features run there, and Justin Buff was first under the checkered flag Sunday at Glen Ridge Motorsports Park. Now, all three of the Buff brothers have at least one win at the Ridge. Andrew leads the way with three and youngest brother Zach has two.