Southern All Stars

  By any measure, last weekend’s Roscoe Smith Classic at Senoia Raceway was a rousing success.

 Fans turned out in droves, with vehicles parked all the way to the entrance to the track. The grandstands were jammed, and hundreds more stood two or three deep behind the trackside fence. If it wasn’t the biggest crowd ever at the track it was close.

 The racing was good in all divisions, and the Southern All Stars feature was a highly competitive race.

 Michael Page, Austin Horton and Ashton Winger led the field of 27 to the green flag and dominated at the front for the remainder of the 44-lap race. Winger made a bold move to the front at first, but fell back. Page appeared to be in command as the laps wound down, but he spun in Turn One in traffic, handing the lead to Winger, who sped away to victory.

 Winger has a strong racing pedigree. His dad, Gary Winger, is a nationally known racing shock guru. And Winger’s late grandfather on his mother’s side, Sam Cochran, was a long-time Late Model racer at Senoia and other tracks across the South.

 The Southern All Stars, one of the longest-running touring series in American dirt racing, has visited Senoia many times over the years, as did the circuit’s asphalt series when the track was paved.

 The traveling circuit was founded by B.J. Parker, who died a couple of years ago of cancer.

 Parker was highly respected by fans, drivers, promoters and media members. His circuit featured regional stars, and while it didn’t attract the sport’s elite drivers on a weekly basis, he did get them to his races on occasion. He was known to be fair in his dealings with both racers and promoters, somehow finding ways to keep them both happy.

 Clint Smith, Roscoe’s son and Senoia’s current Director of Competition, once was a regular on the SAS circuit. He’s tied for season titles with four, and was considered the circuit’s Ironman for his years of consecutive race starts.

 Like his fellow competitors, he held Parker in high regard.

 “He was a class act all the way,” Smith said. “He was one of the best guys I’ve ever met in my life.”

  Clyde Bolton, the legendary racing writer for the Birmingham News for decades and the author of numerous books, was among many who counted Parker as a close friend.

 “He’s a guy I would have trusted with my life,” Bolton was quoted as saying in an obituary on Parker.

 I had numerous dealings with B.J. myself. Often I turned to him for a voice of reason, even when the story was mostly about the Cup Series.

 Once, in the midst of a scandal about teams getting caught trying to cheat their way past restrictor plates at Talladega and Daytona, some reporters were treating the situation as if laws had been broken.

  I called Parker, hoping for a more reasonable view.

 He began by suggesting we media types were using the wrong terminology.

 “I don’t like to call it ‘cheating,’” he said. “I look at it more as ‘gaining an advantage.’”

 Then he relayed a story about a time when, as promoter of a NASCAR-sanctioned short track, he got word from Daytona that he’d have to start pulling fuel samples from race cars and having them tested.

 Parker said he called a high-level NASCAR executive to discuss the matter. He told the NASCAR man that he didn’t even have the equipment to test fuel.

 Parker, with a chuckle, relayed what he was told to do: “Get one of those green, six-ounce Coca-Cola bottles. Put the gas in it, put a stopper in the top and leave it under your bed overnight.

 “If the gas doesn’t eat through the bottle by morning, call it legal.”

 Our racing world was lucky to have had B.J. Parker as one of its leaders. I gathered from Saturday night that the circuit he founded continues to thrive in his absence.

 If you missed Saturday’s show, don’t fret too much. The Southern All Stars will make three more visits to Senoia this year, the next one coming on June 19.

 Regular racing resumes June 5 after a week off for Memorial Day weekend.