Rising Tides

 The racing headlines over the past week or so should have come as pleasant surprises for short-track racing fans.

On the local front, Senoia Raceway announced plans to host a big-money race on Nov. 12-13.

The plans are to pay $10,000 to win on Friday night, a considerable sum, then shell out $52,000 to the winner of Saturday night’s main event. Those numbers, as large as they are, are just for one finishing position, so the total purse likely will far surpass them.

Those are some pretty big numbers, especially for a tightwad like me. I pointed that out to track owner Sonny Pollard in a phone conversation earlier this week, but he seemed comfortable putting that much money on the table.

It made me think of a saying my friend Jeff Landrum used the other night: “You can’t play poker with scared money.”
Sonny Pollard’s money definitely is on the bold side.

On the national news front last week, another saying I picked up from friends years ago came to mind. That is: “A rising tide floats all boats.”
The debut race of the Camping World SRX (Superstar Racing Experience), master-minded by NASCAR Hall of Famers Tony Stewart and Ray Evernham along with former NASCAR exec George Pyne and sports media agent Sandy Montag, ran its debut race at Stafford Motor Speedway, the half-mile paved oval in Stafford Springs, Conn.

The race, carried live on CBS and run in front of a packed grandstand, featured NASCAR stars like Stewart, Greg Biffle and Michael Waltrip along with drivers from other disciplines, including the most recent Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves. But in the end, it was a local New England Modified driver Doug Coby who took the checkered flag.

It was a big win for the entire short-track world to have established stars run a nationally televised event at a Saturday night short track.

It also was a big boost for Stafford and its fans and for Coby, who received the kind of national attention that has eluded him even as he’s won six NASCAR Modified titles.

That came on top of stretch of races elsewhere that saw the sport’s hottest driver, Kyle Larson, race a Late Model in the Dream at Eldora Speedway then fly to Texas where he won NASCAR’s All-Star race and its $1 million prize. It was his third-straight major NASCAR victory.

And he wasn’t done there as he flew to Ohio and on Monday night won an All Star Circuit of Champions sprint car feature at Wayne County Speedway in Orrville and another Wednesday night Waynesville Raceway Park.

I thought the person who writes Rocket Chassis’ Twitter posts did a great job of summing up how the sport’s rising tide [Larson] is lifting all boats.

They wrote: “[Larson] has changed the world of motorsports. He had made late model fans sprint car fans, made sprint car fans late model fans, NASCAR fans dirt fans and dirt fans NASCAR fans. No one has ever united the motorsports community like this. Nothing but respect.”
See y’all at the races.

Note: The Pollard family has donated several pair of Senoia Raceway tickets to be given away at our Inman Antique Truck Show and Kickin’ COVID Crank-Up here at the farm this Saturday (June 19) from 9-4. Come see us, check out the trucks and other exhibits and enter a drawing for the tickets.



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