Trackside with Rick Minter

  Last Saturday night, as I listened to the Senoia Raceway announcers lamenting the loss of Gresham Motorsports Park in Jefferson, I was thankful that the home track wasn’t the one that was closing.   I also thought about the tracks from this area that unfortunately have fallen by the wayside. Race tracks aren’t just real estate for those who love the sport, they’re places in the heart.   They remain with you long after they’ve been bulldozed out of existence.   I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his cohorts have captured that sentiment in their “Lost Speedways” series.   Our part of the world seems to have lost more than its share of race tracks – some that came and went before my time of attending races and others that I knew very well.   One of my favorites was the old West Atlanta Raceway, later known as Seven Flags Speedway. I also enjoyed races at Coweta Raceway, which was still somewhat intact last time I went by there but only hosting go

 I was pleased to see on social media that the folks at Senoia Raceway are reaching out to people in town for the NASCAR races at Atlanta Motor Speedway.  AMS ticket holders can get a discount on admission at Senoia Saturday night, and holders of NASCAR hard cards, the plastic annual licenses carried by those who follow the circuit, are welcome as guests.  I think it’s great that a short track is trying to connect with local “big track” fans. And the promotion brings back some good memories from my days traveling the NASCAR trail.  One of my closest friends on the circuit was and is a fellow writer, Monte Dutton.  We have lots in common. We both wrote extensively about short track racing before moving to NASCAR, where in our time most reporters came from stick and ball sports. And we both grew up around farming, and that too was unique in the media centers.  On many a Saturday night before a Cup race, Monte and I would venture off to a local track – partly because we always s