~ By Tom Boggie

OK, I’ll admit it.

During the last five laps or so of last Friday night’s modified feature at Albany-Saratoga Speedway, all I could keep thinking was, “Don’t screw this one up.”

As anyone who follows racing at Malta knows, Don Ronca has been in position to win a number of races over the last couple of years. But then he’d jump the cushion, get beat on a restart, blow a tire (not sure if he ever did that one, but you know what I mean).

So while he was pushing his modified around the outside Friday night, all I could think was, “Don’t screw this one up.”

He didn’t.

Ronca added to his family’s legacy with his 14^th career modified win at Albany-Saratoga. At the age of 65, he’s the oldest driver to win a modified feature. He’s won modified features in five consecutive decades (1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s). And if you add in his three hobby stock wins in 1979, he’s been to victory lane in six consecutive decades.

The Roncas are the first family of Albany-Saratoga Speedway. Yeah, I know C.J. Richards built the dirt track into one of the gems in the Northeast, but Nick Ronca, the patriarch of the Racing Ronca family, was racing at Albany-Saratoga Speedway long before C.J. ever came around.

Nick Ronca won his first Charger division feature at Malta in 1969, so that adds another decade of Roncas in victory lane at Albany-Saratoga. Can any other family out there make a claim of seven consecutive decades of winning races at one track? I doubt it.

Nick, who is now 83, won the Charger division championship at Albany-Saratoga in 1970. He later moved up to modifieds, racing against the likes of Richie Evans, Bugsy Stevens and Eddie Flemke on Friday nights. But just when it looked like he was finally starting to get comfortable in the modifieds, Albany-Saratoga shut down.

I did a story about the Roncas for “Trackside” magazine in 1992. In that story, Nick explained, “I was doing real well on blacktop. I was running Malta, the Bowl (Devil’s Bowl) and Plattsburgh, but then they dropped the modifieds up North, and I started running Malta, Shangri-La and Utica Rome.

“I raced modifieds until 1974, but then the country had the gas shortage and it was a real problem getting to Shangri-La every week, so we stopped traveling and when Malta closed, we went to Fonda.”

Don Ronca and his younger brother, Mike, began racing in the hobby division at Albany-Saratoga when Richards reopened the facility as a dirt track in 1977. Don made the move to modifieds in 1981, while “Hungry Mike” dominated the hobby division in the early 1980s, winning 11 races and the track championship in 1981. He came back in 1982 with 13 more wins, including a streak of seven in a row. But two years later, Mike walked away from racing entirely, and when he returned five years later, it was to do engine work for his older brother.

People may forget than Don Ronca’s career got a big boost when former NASCAR National Sportsman champion Rene Charland, a longtime friend of the Ronca family, convinced Don to start racing at Drummondville in Quebec on Saturday nights. In fact, the first four modified wins of Ronca’s career came at Drummondville in 1982 and 1983 under The Champ’s tutelage.

He continued to struggle at Albany-Saratoga and Devil’s Bowl, however. But that all changed in 1989. Even though he didn’t win a race that season, his consistency played a huge role as he chalked up his first modified championship at Albany-Saratoga and also won the overall Champlain Valley Racing Association championship and the top prize of $15,000. The point battle between Ronca and Don Ackner went right down to the wire, and practically drove Ronca nuts.

“I couldn’t sleep for a month,” he said for that same “Trackside” story. “The season went into October and it came right down to the last race, me and Ackner. It was nerve-wracking.”

A lot has changed over the years for the Ronca family. Don suffered a broken back in a freak accident in the shop, which put him out of commission for a number of years. That prompted the “other” Ronca brother, Rich, who had been a crew chief for Don’s cars, to begin racing in the Sportsman division. After all, they had all that equipment just sitting around the shop.

Mike, who was the modified champion at Devil’s Bowl in 1996, suffered a fatal heart attack in January 2012, but still, the Roncas kept racing.

In the final tally, the Roncas have a total of 65 victories at Albany-Saratoga (that’s unofficial because a lot of support division results from the late 1960s and early 1970s are a little sketchy). Mike leads the way with 33 victories (30 hobby, three modified), Don is next with 18 (four hobby, 14 modified), Nick has six Charger division wins, Rich has five wins (four sportsman, one modified) and Don’s son Christopher had three Limited Sportsman wins in 2015.

Before Albany-Saratoga turns into a housing development, promoter Lyle DeVore should have a Tribute Night for the Ronca family, and pull out all the stops. Put Nick, Don and Rich; their families; their crew members; anyone they want, in the VIP Tower, with good food and free beverages. Let them share a night at the races, out of the dust and the noise, and let them get a good look at what they helped create over the last seven decades.

MORE FROM MALTA

Getting back to victory lane last weekend didn’t come without some hard work for the Ronca team. The week before, Don Ronca had gotten involved in an incident with Jeremy Pitts in the fourth turn, with Ronca hitting the fourth turn wall.

“We had to replace the entire front clip,” said Don after his win last Friday. “My father, who works on the car all year long, he was in there every day two weeks ago, grinding away on the front end. It was a lot of hard work, we had to take the motor out and everything, but we had the car ready to race last Friday, before we rained out.”

And Rich Ronca is still a big part of his brother’s team. “He does the suspension and the shocks for me,” said Don.

Don admitted that he started to get nervous in the closing laps last Friday. “I didn’t want to start counting them down,” he said. “I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. I’ve lost these things on the last lap before.

“This is a big deal for the whole team,” he said. “We really needed this.”

Speaking of Pitts, he didn’t have a car in the pits last Friday, after blowing his motor in the feature on May 31. But he still played a big part in a victory.

“My crew chief Jeremy Pitts told me the car would roll through the middle,” said Chad Gregory after his second career Limited Sportsman victory. “I was just biding my time, and I knew I had to be smooth on the bottom. When I moved to the middle, it stuck.”

Gregory, the man behind the Next Generation Roofing Team, had to wait over a year before getting his second career win.

“I thought it would be a lot easier this year,” he admitted. “It’s super hard to win here.”

It isn’t often that Kim Duell is towed into the pits during hot laps, but there he was, on the hook, without a right front wheel, the victim of a broken hub, last Friday.

“We damaged the left front in that incident two weeks ago, but we didn’t really think anything on the right got hurt,” he said. “I even looked at it tonight, but I didn’t pull the hub off. I just looked at it. Lesson learned.”

AROUND THE TRACKS

Two-time Albany-Saratoga Speedway champion Marc Johnson recorded the biggest win of his career last Sunday, winning the top prize of $10,000 at the Slate Valley 50 at Devil’s Bowl. If I’m not mistaken, his biggest previous payday was the $6,000 he won in the Stampede at ‘Toga Short Track Super Series race at Malta in 2018.

Congratulations to Tim Hartman Jr. for breaking the record for consecutive sportsman wins at Lebanon Valley Speedway. Hartman Jr.’s win last Saturday was his seventh straight in 2024, and ninth overall.

Stewart Friesen swept the twin features at Fonda last Saturday, pushing his career win total to 401.

Airborne Park ran its first Saturday night show of the season last week, with Joey Scarborough getting the sportsman win. Running on Saturday proved to be a popular idea, as 33 cars started the feature.