Old-School Racing

   Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m old-school about most everything. My friend Steve McCrary says I’m stuck in the 1980s when it comes to what prices should be.

 My tastes in vehicles goes from the 1980s back to about 1915. My favorite TV shows and movies are all black and white, most from the 1940s and 50s.

 I’m especially old-school about racing. Lots of the modern changes don’t sit well with me, before and after the checkered flag.

 In my early days of writing about NASCAR races, the winning driver and crew chief or car owner would make their way to the press box overlooking the track for their post-race interviews. There was something magical about the winners sitting there, overlooking the track they’d just conquered, talking about the battle just won.

 The answers to our questions were far more reflective than the modern-day pre-COVID format.

 In recent years, reporters, even those at the track, mostly watch the race on TV from the infield media center. One of the main goals of the modern-day post-race interviews seems to be getting things over with as quickly as possible.

 I also think burnouts are a silly waste of time and equipment. While doing some interviews at Hendrick Motorsports years ago, I was disappointed to learn that winning crew members almost always requested a photo of their driver’s burnout. Go figure.

 All that being said, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the old-school focus of the Pollard family since they’ve returned to running Senoia Raceway, where even the track’s web address includes 1969, the year of the track’s founding.

 Last Saturday night, the Pollards brought back the time-honored practice of the winning driver taking a lap around the track carrying the checkered flag.

 I know from my perch outside Turn Two that the fans in that area offered hearty congratulations to race winners as they slowly circled by just yards away from us.

 The cheers weren’t just reserved for the Late Model classes. The fans seemed to appreciate a fine performance no matter what class of cars.

 Curtis Turner, who made a daring dash from third to first in the final laps of the Hobby race, got a nice applause, as did Mini Stock winner Dan Bennett, who obviously doesn’t have a crew member signaling him to slow down once he builds a big lead.

 I asked Oliver Gentry, who now has victories on Senoia's three surfaces (gumbo, asphalt and red clay), what it was like to carry the checkered flag for a slow ride after his hard-won victory in the Limited Late Model class.

 “It was very special to me,” he said in a phone conversation on Monday. “I could hear fans whistling, and I could see them giving me a thumbs up.

 “And it gave me a minute to reflect on all the hard work that had been done on the car all week long. It gives me chills now [two days later] just to talk about it.”

Maybe the reason Oliver and I have been friends so long is that we think alike about a lot of issues.

 He said that what the Pollard family is doing with Senoia would work at other places besides race tracks.

 “It’s a wonderful thing what the Pollards are trying to do by bringing racing back to what it used to be,” he said. “Our country would benefit from getting back to its roots too.”