Over the years I’ve become a real good spectator. But what appealed to me about racing from day one is the same stuff that appeals to me now. It’s the whole visceral approach to racing. It’s the image of the cars, both on the pace lap as they come around the grandstand, as well as flat out racing. And it was also that voice from above, the announcer, the guy who was telling me what was happening on the track, but probably equally as importantly, what was happening off the track, the fellow who was weaving this whole storyline for the balance of the day or the evening, whatever the case may be.
We have with us tonight… Joe Morata, the voice of Syracuse for 44 years at Super Dirt Week. Roy Sova, with over 50 years at Oswego Speedway. Gary Montgomery, who for several years was one of the voices, on the Motor Racing Network. Mike Paz, who announced nine different NASCAR tracks over the years. Frank Del Vecchio, our racer turned announce, and last but certainly not least, Greg Rickes, the voice of Lime Rock.
We don’t have six good announcers up here… We have six great announcers up here!
Credits
This episode is part of our HISTORY OF MOTORSPORTS SERIES and is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Brake Fix’s History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argettsinger family. Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. I wanted to give you a heads up before we head into this episode that we did have some technical issues with the audio.
We’ve done our best to make corrections so that it’s easier to listen to, but unfortunately, you know, there’s always challenges with internet connection, the different systems that people are using, the audio quality itself. Please, by all means, sit back and enjoy this episode. The content in is amazing, but our apologies for the quality right up front.
My name is Tom Wiedeman and I’m the new executive director at the Motor Racing Research Center, still under warranty. I’m incredibly impressed and incredibly excited about today’s conversation. To see these six gentlemen [00:01:00] all together here to talk about their careers in racing is pretty amazing. And so it’s my honor to introduce our speakers today.
We’ve got Joe Morata, we’ve got Roy Silva, Gary Montgomery, Greg Ricks, Mike Paz, and Frank DelVecchio. What a team. And now, Kip.
We advertise this as the men behind the mics. You’re going to have the six real good men behind the mics and the novice behind the mics. My dad took me to Watkins Glen when I was a kid. That was my first race and I was hooked right from the start. If you would ask me when I got home, what I wanted to be when I grew up, it would be a race car driver, flat out.
No questions asked. As I got older, it became easily apparent that that was a career path I would not be taking. I had no real mechanical aptitude. Eyesight isn’t the greatest and most importantly, I had no money. What I decided to do instead. Because [00:02:00] it was imminently cheaper, was to become a real good spectator.
And over the years I’ve become a real good spectator. But what appealed to me about racing from day one is the same stuff that appeals to me now. It’s the whole visceral approach to racing. It’s the image of the cars, both on the pace lap as they come around the grandstand, as well as flat out racing.
It’s the sound of a race engine at full song. It’s the smell of the racing fuel. Give me five hours in the grandstands at Oswego smelling methanol fumes. I am a very, very happy kid. If I get back home at two in the morning and my ears are still ringing and I can still smell methanol, it has been a very good night.
And it was also that Voice from above the announcer, the guy who was telling me what was happening on the track, but probably equally as importantly, what was happening off the track, the fellow who was weaving this whole storyline for the balance of the day or the evening, whatever the case may be. We don’t have six [00:03:00] good announcers up here.
We have six great announcers up here. Joe Morata, the voice of Syracuse for 44 years at Super Dirt Week. Roy Silva, beginning his 52nd year. Think about that. Oswego is beginning their, what Roy, 66th year? 66 years Oswego has run. for 52. And I will tell you honestly, Roy sounds the same today as he did 45 years ago.
Why does that make me feel old? Anyway, Roy sounds the same today as he did 45 years ago when I went to that track for the first time. Gary Montgomery, who for a number of years was the voice, or one of the voices, on the Motor Racing Network. And you do not get on the Motor Racing Network without being excellent at your craft.
Mike Paz, someone named him the Voice of God, who announced at nine different NASCAR tracks over the years. Apparently Mike can’t hold a job, so he’s announced it. Frank DelVecchio, who is [00:04:00] actually more our racer turned announcer. He’s going to speak about that. But Frank DelVecchio, and last but certainly not least, Greg Ricks, the voice of Lime Rock.
I have never been to Lime Rock, but, Trust me, sitting here as I do, we get people in here all the time who, it’s always a toss up between WGI or Lime Rock as to what their favorite track is. Greg’s not simply the voice of Lime Rock because he’s announced a number of other tracks as well. When we first set this up, I emailed each of these gentlemen half a dozen different questions.
So I thought we’d kind of start out by doing my questions. So we’ll get that out of the way. We’ll open it up for stories. I know that’s why you came here is to hear stories from all these guys, and then we’ll throw it open to you folks. So to begin the day, let’s um, start with my first question. That was, how did you initially get into the sport?
How many years have you been doing it? Was there any mentor or gentleman that you tried to model your announcing style after? And what keeps you in the sport? So why don’t we start [00:05:00] with Mike? We’ll just go down the road. It came from public address announcing for football and basketball at my hometown high school.
I was PA announcer for those two, had started in 70 and 71. And from an announcing standpoint for racing, I would go to the Crawford County fairgrounds, which is in Meadville, Pennsylvania, my hometown. Joey Chitwood was there. How many people got into racing or automobile stuff? Because they didn’t show. He was there.
I’ve made it every year. They had a star car race and I was in PA. Well, like I said, they brought me up to this crazy fairgrounds. Well, I called the crow’s nest inside this huge grandstand. Not as big as Syracuse, obviously, but. They put me out there for my first race. And from there it was DJ of music. I didn’t get a chance to get back into racing until about 14, 15 years later.
Okay. And how many years have you been race announcing? Did you try to adapt anybody’s style or have any kind of mentor when you first got in and what keeps you involved today? I don’t think there was any one person. They tried to mimic, there [00:06:00] were several obviously, but here’s the deal. I’m a car guy and have been, so I was three years old.
So with car love usually comes racing. It has to follow. It was a natural put two things together. Okay. Excellent. Right. I started in racing when I was seven. My uncle owned a race car and ran at the Oswego Speedway back in the old A and B modified days. I went every week with him. I don’t think over the course of the time I started to go there, I probably haven’t missed 12 races in my entire life.
First race I announced there was in 1964. I was working at one of the local radio stations, WOSC. They decided they were going to do a live coverage of the International Classic that year. Well, Roy knows racing, so we’ll have Roy do the race. I had never done a sports event at all. I did the race from the inside of turn number one, standing on top of a cube van.
200 laps of turning around. I was substantially ill by the time it was over. [00:07:00] The next year, Harry Caruso, who owned the track, decided he was going to Institute and infield announcer. And again, I was still working at WOAC and I had kind of a guardian angel there by the name of Wally Tucker. And Harry went to Wally and said, We want to have an infield announcer, we want you to do it.
And Wally said, I don’t know much about racing, how about having Roy do it, cause he knows racing. And so I became the infield announcer at the Oswego Speedway along with Wally. Harry decided to hire both of us. We wore these stupid little blue blazers and a narrow little tie and white shirts and blue slacks.
The next year, Jack Burgess was going to go on vacation. He had an announcer upstairs with him, his second banana by the name of Pauly Legault, Leo Legault. They went to Wally and said, Jack’s going to be on vacation. We want you to come upstairs and be the co announcer with Pauly. And Wally said, I don’t know much about racing, have Roy do it.
So I went upstairs, and that night I was doing the co announcing. We alternate races. There were three heat races at the time, two semi [00:08:00] finals, the consolation event, and a feature. Just one classic car. So, at the end of the heat races, Harry came in and said, Poli, you’re gonna do the consolation, I’m always gonna do the feature.
And the next year, Polly became an usher, and I moved upstairs, and Wally Tucker left the infield. In the 52 years, this is my 52nd year announcing there. The year I started to announce there, I moved out of Oswego. I moved to Ithaca, then I moved to Millport, uh, down into the Binghamton area, the Hudson Valley.
Spent 10 years in North Carolina. Seven years on Cape Cod, finally moved back to the Oswego area in 2007. In my 51 total years announcing there, I’ve missed two races. One due to a family situation and one due to a business situation. The person that obviously had the most effect on me was Jack Burgess.
Jack was the announcer there. The thing about Jack was he didn’t try to He let you learn from him. He was, he was wide open to giving you suggestions, whether you patterned [00:09:00] yourself after him or just learned from him. He was very, very good, very, very talented at helping other people become announcers. So that’s the guy that, if I emulated anybody, would be Jack.
He was a sensational announcer. And what keeps you there? Hot dogs. Hot dogs. She had a lot of hot dogs. Hot dogs. Hot dogs. That’s it. There have been several times over the course of the time I’ve been there that I have given serious consideration to not being there anymore, and the two worst cases were the deaths of Gary Witter, which was the most violent.
Long lasting crash I’ve ever seen in my life and the death of Jimmy Champine. In the case of Gary Witter I had to continue announcing the race even though we knew at the time he had perished in the crash. In the case of Jimmy we knew he had been taken to the hospital when I found out overnight after the races were over that he had passed.
In both of those cases if I had not had to go back and finish the next day I probably would have quit, then I had the off season and was able to regroup and stayed with [00:10:00] it. I say that because I love it. I’m a great race fan, whether I’m announcing the race or like tomorrow I’m going to Utica Long for the 2020s.
I’m just a good race fan. To me, to get paid to go and watch a race, you don’t get any better than that. Shh, don’t give our secret away. That’s right. I will say one thing. I have never announced a race without getting paid. With two exceptions. And that’s when the promoter sniffed me,
Mr. Murata. I got started in 1949. My dad took me to the wasn’t called the Moody mile back then. It was called New York state fair mile and went to the triple A championship races. And wow, I didn’t know anything existed beyond baseball, football, hockey, whatever. And I saw these champ cars out on the speedway and I said, this is unbelievable.
But then I heard this voice. And this guy’s name was Chrissy Konivacki. And I says, wow, this guy is really great. I didn’t know what he was talking about. But [00:11:00] boy, I gotta tell ya, I just swallowed up everything on that day. And I guess I wanted to become a race driver at the end of that day. But that Chrissy Konivacki voice continued for many, many years.
Many years later, I was a sophomore in high school. I had a high school teacher by the name of Mrs. LaCasse. And Mrs. LaCasse said to me, she says, you know, you’ve got a good voice. You are going to be in the Optimist Oratorical Contest. And I says, no I’m not. And she says, oh yes you are. She said, you’re going to be in the auditorium at 7am tomorrow morning for your first rehearsal.
So, I didn’t say nothing. I come home. My mother says to me, So, you’re going to be in the oratorical contest. No, I’m not. And she said, Yes, you are. Now, that was the year I was scheduled. I was going to turn 16 a couple months later, and I was going to get my driver’s permit. And there wasn’t anything more than I wanted than getting that driver’s permit.
I had to move those wheels. My mother said, if you’re [00:12:00] not in that auditorium tomorrow, you don’t get your driver’s permit. Well, the next morning at 7 a. m. I’m in there and everybody is lined up. There were folks going to talk about the future of a nursing career, future of space, future of a doctor’s degrees, and all this stuff.
And I had to pick a topic. So I picked a topic called Organized Hot Rod Clubs. And everybody looked at me and laughed at me. I said, okay, I’m going to fix you. So I appeared on a stage very, very similar to this. And I won it and I won the regional contest and I finished out on fourth or fifth in the state contest.
But I liked the sound of my voice and I love talking about hot rods . So anyways, I still had that dream that I was gonna become a race car driver. And I did build a race car, but I was terrible. I think I would go down a lap every three laps when I ran at Weeds Sport, and maybe a lap every two laps when I ran at Fulton, which was then asphalt.
So one Sunday night I went to Weeds, sport Speedway. [00:13:00] And as they were starting to run the qualifying heats, it started to rain. And they brought out all the equipment. So I went over and I brought a Gator Racing News and I read it. And I was also going to put it on my head for a protector. And I had hair back then, by the way.
I open up the column and I see under Dave Wright’s column. Wanted. Announcer. Fulton Speedway. Call 592 7005. Bub Benway. Wow, I can do that. Well, my car needed a new motor, and I says, you know, maybe this is the time I’ll just sit out for the next part of the year and save up my money, because I wanted to get paid too, right?
So I call up Bob Benway, and I said to him, Bob, I says, I saw your ad in the Gator News, and he says, have you ever announced before? Sure, he swear, oh I’d never been in the service and I was never in Alaska, but I told him, yeah when I was in the Air Force, I was stationed in Alaska and I announced that a track up there.
So he says, come on up. So I went up there on a Monday [00:14:00] night, turned on the PA system, gave me something to read, he walked back inside, he says, how much do you want? I says, what do you pay? Now, if you knew Bob Benway, he says, I didn’t ask you that. I said, well, I don’t know what you, he says, how about if I pay you 25 bucks a night to announce, wow, I get in for free too?
Maybe a hot dog. And he says, and I’ll pay you 10 a night to do the story. Do the story. He says, yeah, write it all up and then my wife will type it up and it’ll be in the Gator in the area in the National Speed Sport News the next week. I said, well, okay, I’ll do that. So the following Saturday night I show up and I still remember who won the first race.
Dutch Hold won the modifieds. Jimmy Colvell won the late model race and who did I pattern myself after a guy by the name of Jack Burgess. I remember the way he used to do lineups and the way he called the race and everything. So I called the race and at the end of the night, Buck Benway came in and he handed me that free hot dog.
And he said, you did a good job, kid. And [00:15:00] handed me the 25 bucks, that was the most important. So from there I went on and I finished a year out there and continued to announce there for the next 7 8 years. I announced at Spencer Speedway. And then I ran into a guy by the name of Glenn Donnelly. That started our marriage on the dirt circuit.
In between that time, I started announcing at Rolling Wheels Raceway. I was the first announcer ever at Rolling Wheels. That got me started between Chrissy Konamacki, Jack Burgess, and my good friend Roy Sova. That got me going into the world of announcing. So 25 bucks and a free hot dog. 25 bucks, a free hot dog, and yeah, that was it.
It was a cheap date. Yes, that was a cheap date. Well, I bought your breakfast this morning, so quiet. Laughter
I came in absolutely backwards to the rest of these guys. I did my first driver’s school in 1968. My first race is in 1969. I’ve been running formula cars [00:16:00] about 1980. The track announcer at Briar Motorsport Park, which is now New Hampshire International, didn’t show up. So they tagged me to About half of the races, I was politically incorrect enough so that it was ended by announcing career for the next 15 or 20 years or so.
In the 90s I started running the Firehawk series along with the Escort series, some Formula cars, some GT. Guys that are here today ended up being my mentors. Al Robinson, Mike Paz, Jim Mueller, who’s not here. What I learned from Jim is, you can’t say that on the mic. That’s mostly what I learned from Jim. A couple of guys from Canada, Tom Natchew and his sidekick Jim Martin.
And I’d go up to the booth and I would do a little color commentary, get out of the race car and kind of fill in with what was going on. That grew until about the late nineties. In fact, you weren’t there that weekend. I don’t think it was the Lime Rock. It was the Trans Am [00:17:00] race that Lou Gelati won. I was there.
Okay. Well, you just didn’t notice me. I was the guy holding the microphone for you. No, no. Tom Natchew was actually announcing that race because he was, I guess, the series announcer at the time. Come on up in the booth and, you know, we’ll tell everybody you don’t have a ride this weekend. I remember that in Lime Rock it always rains, and it doesn’t rain for very long.
Rain started as soon as the race started. The guy that I had raced with a lot of years, Paul Hacker, is up on the hill, and he’s got a headset, and he’s talking to Lou Gelati, and I know that. I’m saying to the crowd and to naturalize it all right now is telling Lou to come in and change two tires. Even though they got rain tires, that’s because you can only change two at a time and he’s going to come in.
He’s going to change the two dry tires. It’s going to go out a couple more laps. He’s going to come in and change the other two tires. Now he’s got four dry tires on. It’s a wet track. And he’s going to win the race by three quarters of a lap. The rest is history. The rest is history. The track dried [00:18:00] out.
He won the race by three quarters of a lap. And Natchel goes, well, you’ve got to be in the booth. So, from that, it just kind of expanded. We ended up doing a lot of races all over the country, not only driving the race cars, but whatever I could, I’d actually try and do both. A lot of times I’d jump out of the car and go up into the booth with Al Robinson.
A lot of nights we did the Daytona 24 hour together. Al the Prince of Darkness would handle the whole night shift. I’d go up there and hang around with him and do a little bit of announcing and the phone would ring right out and said, Gee, everybody’s asleep. So can you come down and drive? I’ll be right back.
I’ll and a half. So I’d go dow car and come on back. I k when I said frank was our that is really true. Frank
500 races and in 114 different cars. While Mike can’t hold a job at any one NASCAR track, Frank [00:19:00] wads up about a bunch of cars or something. Anyway, he can’t hold a steady ride. But that’s a pretty illustrious career. Easy to see how you have the insight into doing color commentary. Mr. Limerock, Greg. I’m not convinced yet that I am not a failed racing driver.
I still harbor illusions. My talent will be discovered, but like everybody else, I wanted to be a race driver. I came from a family that had no interest in automobiles. My mechanical ability now is marginal and was even worse when I was younger. In high school, though, I discovered the Sports Car Club of America.
Drove my first autocross in 1967. in a four door, six cylinder Chevelle with an automatic transmission. Not exactly the height of performance cars, but it got me involved. And shortly thereafter, I had my first article published. Thought I was on my way to a great career in automotive journalism. That was in the high school newspaper.
The local Sports Car Club of America region had a newsletter. I started writing for them. A fellow by the name of John [00:20:00] Peckham was a noted automotive artist. He also produced a car. The program for the races at Lime Rock Park, he picked up a few of my articles, and so I, I was going down this road of the written word.
Jim Haynes was the track promoter at that time, and he said, you know, you ought to try announcing, you know, you’ve got a good handle on what’s going on. And there was a gentleman by the name of Art Peck, who was Lime Rock’s regular announcer, and Art was from CBS. He was a serious professional commentator.
But he let me try out. Then eventually Art decided that he wanted to pursue some other opportunities, and I was the last guy left standing. So at 22 years old, I became the announcer at Weimark Park. I’ve been there ever since. They keep inviting me back, and I’m honored to be able to do that, as I’m honored to be here with this distinguished group today.
What keeps me coming back is the people. At one time it was the cars and the technology, but now it’s really the opportunity I have to interact with people that keeps me coming back. Gary. Uh, what got me started was my love of auto [00:21:00] racing. I remember the first race I went to, it was 51 or 52, Wellsville, New York.
That year I would have been 10 or 12 years old, whatever else. And Lorne Dillon won the race. And they tore his car down and all that stuff. But so I remember the first race. But that started a lot of fear. And I really never had any visions of driving. That wasn’t my thing. And I didn’t have any visions of anything.
I was just a race fan. The first time I actually announced was in 1959 at Bradford Speedway. Now called the old Radford Speedway. It was actually brand new then. It was his last race of the season, and the regular announcer, whoever he or she, he would have been a he, was neglected to tell the promoter that he had gone back to college, wouldn’t be around that weekend.
There they were with a race program planned and no announcer. And I don’t know how it was that I had the nerve to go up and tell the guy what I would announce, but I did. I don’t remember much about that event either, but So that was 1959. Then I went off to college and so forth and really got started in 1971 at Spencer Speedway.
And that’s an interesting story. Jimmy [00:22:00] Bollinson was the promoter and he had hired a fellow by the name of Dale Hartnett who was a disc jockey with the country radio station in Rochester. Who was out to make money and had a great voice and all the rest of it, but he didn’t have any passion for the sport.
I don’t think he’d ever been to a race before. But he was announcing and muddling his way through the season. Late in the season, I said to Bollinson, that guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he needs help. didn’t know me, but did agree that that guy needed help. So I helped him out for a few weeks.
And then he had the nerve to get married and take the weekend off. And that was late in the season. And a race I will never forget, of course, is that that was the night that the car, Gary Cornelius, went into the pit grandstand. At the end, four people were killed. It could have been 40 people or it could have been a lot more than that.
We didn’t know. My wife and kids were there. My brother was there. And everybody was expecting a grandstand except my brother, who was in the pits. And again, you didn’t have any idea how bad this situation was, but you could tell it was pretty bad. So I was most concerned about my brother and the whole situation.
My brother was alright, as it turned out. That started a career at [00:23:00] Special Speedway, which really got me going in this whole deal. Because I went back for the next, I don’t know how many years, continuously. And that just really led to a lot of things. I’ll touch on the MRN situation. How I got involved with those folks would have been late 70s, early 80s.
And Dave Despain was on their team, and he was to announce in turn four for the 500 and the support races leading up to the 500. And I was working for Glenn Downey at Volusia. And John McMullen was the director of MRN at that time. And John and I had crossed paths a couple of times, most recently the fall before that at Super Dirt Week, where he was trying to get in, and Gert would let him in.
She didn’t know who he was. And I did know who he was, and I knew who Gert was. Anyway, we got that all put together somehow or other, and John remembered that. And John knew that I was working for Donnelly over just across the way. So they called, and when I announced it, they told him. And that started that career, which lasted for a number of years as well.
So it came at it a number of ways. I don’t do much of that anymore. Last year, I think I [00:24:00] announced just two races. I substituted at Canandaigua, and I substituted at Black Rock one night. But I love this love of sport, and that keeps me going back. And the point about the people is really important, and that’s kind of what it has evolved to all of us, I think.
And I think the greatest demonstration of the people thing was Super Dirt Week last October. For When everybody knew it was the last one. And I called it the Family Reunion of Dirt Racing or something like that. Because everybody that had been there over the 44 years before that Seemed to all gather back for the last one.
And just seeing all those folks again, it makes it all. And it’s the people thing, whether it be announcing the race or being at the races. That keeps me coming back. That’s my announcing story, I guess. I don’t think you can improve on that, Gary. My wife is still hoping I’ll outgrow it. I don’t think so, honey.
Sorry. I think you can see through all these gentlemen the passion and the love of the sport that just is obviously evident in all of them. The next question I had is kind of a, more a [00:25:00] nuts and bolts question. Is there any difference in how you approach announcing, uh, A feature race as opposed to a qualifying race or for the road racing gentlemen, the feature class, the IMSA guys, whoever that might be, as opposed to maybe some of the support classes in that same regard, is there a common denominator that you try to use so that you appeal to perhaps that person that’s sitting in the stands for the very first time, in addition to the guy that sits there every week?
So Mike, do you want to lead off with that one? You can pass to Roy. As a race fan. And when I do my announcing, I always think about you guys in the grandstand. And whenever I feel like I’m too big for my britches, I would come down and your grandstand to just listen to how they would react to stuff and try to announce to those folks.
I never really tried to instruct them like a teacher. I always tried to be the guy in the stands. And what would we talk about? What do we want for the announcer to talk about? [00:26:00] But in regards to feature versus qualifying races, in my head, there’s a guy out there with a car and he’s trying to race. He thinks he’s the best race driver there ever was.
Something myself, I can’t say anything bad about him because he’s working hard on the race car and driving hard. I’m up in a race announcer’s boot. So why should I say anything bad? There’s no way that I could ever do that. I can’t change the way I announce just because it’s a qualifying race. Do I get excited for a feature?
Absolutely, and who wouldn’t try to approach racing the same way each time. It’s a race a race a race So I tried to talk with the folks in the grandstands, imagining in my head what they might want to be curious about, what they may ask about, what they want the announcer to talk about. And that’s the way I’ve always approached it.
There’s no difference in my mind for qualifying versus features. I try not to approach any of the others any differently. To me, it’s all the same. The guys are out there breaking their gut in order to race. And again, they think that the best guy out there, whoever you want to talk about, drag racing, [00:27:00] John Forrest, Formula One, so many stars in there.
NASCAR, so many stars in there. Every one of them want to be there. And so do I want to watch them. I want to know. The race that they’re in, I want to see and hear things that everybody would like to hear in the grandstand. You folks are part of that deal, and if you’re here, you love racing just like we do.
I try not to put myself above. I try to keep myself right where you are. I try to be a fan as well. That’s the way I approach my racing, announcing. When I go to a racetrack, and I know Joe and I are very similar in this, and we learned it from Jack primarily, go to the racetrack. I don’t care if it’s the first time announcing at that track, or Starting my 52nd year at the Oswego Speedway.
The first thing I do is I go to the pit area and I talk to drivers. I get all their hometown information, their sponsor information, personal information. If it’s a birthday or something like that, you want to impart. I think it’s very important to give that information to the fan, to make the fan relate more to the driver and not just look at a car and a color and a [00:28:00] number.
You want to know more about the driver. Also, very, very important in terms of announcing a race, you want And I was just reading an article by Bones Boschier about this very subject. You can announce a race all night long, but if you don’t tell the people how this driver gets from this race to the feature race, you haven’t done your job.
If the fan comes in for the first time and leaves the racetrack and doesn’t know how this guy got to start in that position in the feature event, you’ve not done your job as an announcer. And those things are very, very important. Other than that, what Mike said is absolutely right. Every race should be treated the same.
Every driver should be treated the same. Joe and I alternate announcing an Oswego. He does a small block race, then I do a small block race, and he does an LR, then I do a super race, and he does a back and forth, we go. And then we, uh, we do the feature events. But because we do that, we have to stay impassioned about both divisions, the small block super modifies and the super modifies.
You have to be excited about what’s going on in the heat race to make sure the people understand what’s going on in the feature race. So I, I [00:29:00] agree with Mike 100%. Ditto. We’re done. Okay. That’s the shortest answer I’ve ever heard. You know, I think it’s very important not only to race teams and the drivers to get their names correct and the towns are from and the program and the sponsors and all that, but I think, you know, you owe an awful lot to the fan in the grandstand.
One of the things I absolutely hate is when a traveling circuit comes in I’d like to treat them just as important as our main class. And a lot of times in the traveling circuit, you do not get the right names. Just like Roy, I walk through the pit area, I try to get all the information. And you always, a guy or a car will come in late.
And you can’t get the name of that driver and where he’s from. Well, I have adopted a family named the Belonga family. And many nights there’s Billy Belonga, Bobby Belonga, Sammy Belonga, Junior [00:30:00] Belonga, and Joey Belonga, all running in the same race. I wanted to fill that name with that car. And then I get people coming to me, That ain’t Sammy Belonga.
Oh, is that Joey? No. That is so and so. Okay, now I got his name. Sometimes you just can’t get those names, because you’re up in the tower, I mean, the race has started, and you just Many times we’ll radio over into the pit area, who’s in car number 17, and get some information for them, but I think it’s very important.
For the fan in the grandstand to know who’s in that car, where that car is from, and where that driver is from. And I also like to plug as many sponsors as possible. These are the folks who put money up for tires and gas and so on. I’ve learned a lot of this from Roy. He is just absolutely fantastic.
Plugging the sponsors and keeping the thing rolling. As far as keeping the fans informed, the same as Roy, I like to let them know how they get from race A to race B or the concierge or whatever. How [00:31:00] the different situations happen on the speedway. We’re very fortunate now because we get the replays up in the tower.
Many years ago, a situation had happened out on the speedway and sometimes you had a guess at it. But today we’re very fortunate to look at the replays and talk about how a situation was created on the racetrack. A car got wide, a car came in a little bit too tight, a car tried to work underneath. And you pass that along to the fans.
And you know what’s really neat is at the end of a race many times when you’re walking out into the parking lot and so on, And hey, you’re Joe, aren’t you? Yeah, geez. You know, I disagreed with that call that they made out there, but after you said it, uh, you described how it was and everything. I agree.
That’s it. You gotta give them a show, and you gotta let them all know where they’re from. Just a quick story. We’re all race fans here. We love racing. And you have to project that when you’re announcing. I remember one specific race. New Jersey [00:32:00] Motorsport Park. Ferrari Challenge race. There’s nine cars in the race.
The track is 2. 2 miles long, cars are separated. I’ve got cars passing in the back where we can’t see, and I’ve got them running up and setting up for passes. At the end of the race, I walked down out of the tower, and somebody came up to me and said, Whoa, that was an exciting race. And I go, I did my job.
Yeah. Yep. Let’s have more nine car fields. I think things are a little bit different in road racing. With the support classes, if anything, you have to work harder at those, because you don’t know the people, you’re trying to build up the event. In a lot of cases, help drivers come along with their careers.
So the stars in the big race may be better known. You put a lot of effort into that, but you also put a lot of effort into the support classes. I think what’s changing the most And it’s all about bandwidth now. When I started, I had a scorer by the name of Craig Robertson who could sit through a six hour firehawk [00:33:00] race and write down the positions of the cars for six hours.
I don’t know how he did it. Now it’s all computerized. We have access to it. The fans have access to it. So that’s changing. In fact, now you can go to a road race, bring your iPad with you, watch the TV highlights as they’re broadcast. So it’s really changing the character and One of the things I think an announcer needs to do, names and numbers are always important.
Mike Joy spent some time at Round Rock as the track manager, and I learned a lot from him, from his announcing background as well. He said, names and numbers. You’ve always got to connect names and numbers. Now with the numbers on some of the cars, it’s so hard to see. You watch a Formula One race. I don’t know what car is what.
I can’t tell from the paint scheme. You’re trying to see what helmet is on the driver to tell who’s in what car. You guys started to say it’s all about bandwidth. People now bring their iPads to the race. They’re watching the scoring system. They’re watching the TV highlights. The announcer, I’m trying to do, I’m trying to anticipate when are pit stops going to come up?
Who’s gaining ground on who? Whose car might be starting to go off? And I think [00:34:00] that’s changed the character of what I do a little bit. The other thing is with vintage racing now, which is very popular on the road racing side. It’s really much more about the cars, the history of the cars. The technical nature of them, you know, the technical background when they were built, who’s driven them over the years, much more of a point of emphasis than the drivers.
A lot of it’s already been stated relative to support classes versus highlight classes. My view is they all paid the same amount of money to race. They have the same desire to win. Compete as the top guys. And so you try to treat everybody equally. And that’s kind of been the theme that’s been stated here so far.
Talking about who’s made this race possible, these cars possible. Another story, I’ll pick up on the point that was made earlier. I’ll never forget this night at Spencer Speedway, the Spencer brothers ran the place and they were interesting folks. Some of you knew them. I think they’ve all died now, but I never viewed them as really race fans.
They were in this to make a buck. And they had built the track with out of mortgage and they worked real jobs, their husband and wife team and so forth. It was a big deal with them, but they were kind of [00:35:00] phasing out a little bit. And Dell and Evelyn’s son, Gary became the manager or whatever his title was later on.
And he had me doing the stupidest stuff. He was trying to change the image of the track and racing. And they had, uh, Evel Knievel was a big deal then. Well, they didn’t have Evel Knievel, obviously, but they had somebody on a bicycle. Laughing Jumping from one place to the other, and I’m supposed to get excited about that.
And I say, I’m a race fan, I’m not into this for anything, this other stuff. Anyway, so, I like put up with that. I ended my career at Spencer Speedway on a particular night. When I was announcing Richie Evans was sponsored by B. R. DeWitter and Gary came to me and said you don’t talk about that at all, you talk about the track sponsors and he had sponsors for the night and so forth.
With that I announced that this would be my last night at Spencer’s B Way and it was. The initial question was any difference between sport classes and major classes and absolutely none and it’s great racing. I know you just finished Gary, but I’m going to start with you and actually you and Roy have already touched on this, but I’m curious how difficult it is for you.
To be the announcer when a [00:36:00] death occurs again, you’ve already touched on it to a degree. Roy has touched on it. I was at Oswego the night Jimmy was killed. We didn’t know anything about it in the stands. In fact, they pulled the car around the front straightaway. It didn’t even look like it had been hit.
Wasn’t until the next day that I learned that I’m just curious how you deal with that and how you keep the program going. That sounds ridiculous, but I’ve been really lucky in that regard with the Spencer Speedways incident that we talked about, it was obvious that that program was done that night. I mean, it was a tragedy and it was the feature event and it was late and so forth.
And so it was no question we were not going to continue, which we didn’t. So I had to have to keep that going at all. Only other time that I announced a race where there was a fatality, where I was the announcer was at rolling wheels, a crash bar came into the grandstand and killed him. Right down below where we were announcing from, but most people didn’t realize that.
Of course, Donnie didn’t want us talking about that. We didn’t. And so that race program went on like nothing had happened. But for a certain number of people, they knew something had happened, but we didn’t talk about it. The other [00:37:00] events where I’ve been involved where fatalities have occurred, One was here at Watkins Glen when McDuffie got killed and that happened at my feet.
I was announcing in that whatever turn that is at the end of the, they’ve not got the loop or she came down there, whatever, but again, it was the MRN deal. And I didn’t have to keep the whole thing going. And it was a long delay. I was at Homestead when John Demachek got killed in a truck race. But again, MRN, so they.
Continue to think I didn’t have to do much with it. I think those are the only events that I’ve been to as an announcer where there were fatalities and for that I’m really lucky because I’ve gone to a lot of races and a lot of dangerous things have happened, but that’s about it So I was lucky in that it’s not very many of them number one and number two that I didn’t have to keep the program Going like we’re already talking about situations in Oswego I recently had to deal with the aftermath of a fatal accident at Lime Rock.
There are a couple of things that I wanted to keep in mind during that time, and keep in mind in general with dealing with these kinds of situations. First of all, I don’t speculate. The only information I work off of, is information that’s provided to me by the people in race [00:38:00] control because they’re the ones who know the situation, and they’re the ones who, along with the track owner or track promoter who make the decision how they want it to be handled.
This is also true in any incident. I wouldn’t speculate unless you see it with your own eyes. Driver gets out of the car, and you know they’re not hurt. In road racing, we’re taking information from various corner stations. It’s going through one group of people, and there’s a lot of noise and a lot of confusion as an incident unfolds.
But to get back to this particular incident at Lime Rock, we knew it was a very serious accident. The program was stopped. This was in the middle of the day. We run during the day, so we’re not dealing with an evening event. In the state of Connecticut, the Connecticut State Police investigate all racetrack injuries.
So the events stopped. Connecticut State Police came in and just like any other accident, there are police cars out on the track. They’re doing all of the measurements, all of the photographs that they do. So it’ll Long time when the event was not running and we didn’t know if it was going to continue. I was fortunate that I had a [00:39:00] partner working with me that day by the name of Tom Hill.
And Tom does some color commentary while I will do play by play. So we started talking about the car show that was coming up and some other things that were going on at the track. Some cars that Tom had seen in the paddock. And then the word came that we were going to continue the event. Now we still didn’t know the outcome of that.
We went on with the event and then subsequently we found out that those injuries proved to be fatal to the driver. It was probably the saddest day I’ve spent a lime rock. This was a weekend event. This happened on Saturday, so then we had to come back and do the whole program on Monday and I wasn’t sure.
How we were going to approach the whole topic. Fortunately, we have a great relationship with the church that’s across the road from us, Trinity Episcopal, the Reverend Heidi Truex always does our invocation and she’s wonderful. And in this particular instance, you just found the right words, I think, to put us all at ease and let us go on.
That really was a moving experience for me. I think I’ve been fortunate. I don’t believe anybody’s had a fatality that some [00:40:00] serious injuries. Well, announcing we mostly don’t talk about it because you don’t know all the details. We just kind of gloss over that. I just want to add a little bit. What Frank said that now with HIPAA, you have to be very careful about what you say, unless there’s something official that comes out.
I would never speculate on anything that’s happened. Let me just go back to one other incident that happened last year, which will, I hope, illustrate why you don’t speculate. I was at Watkins Glen for a Formula 1600 series event. I’m not listening to the corner stations, I’m listening to our series race director.
And I hit a report, a car hit the guardrail, the driver was out of the car. And then the next thing I hear is, we need the ambulance. Well, what had happened was, the front of the car had started to collapse. The driver jumped out of the car, didn’t realize he had a broken ankle. And when he landed on the ground, you can imagine what happened.
Well, he passed out, half on the grass, half on the racetrack. So even when you see a driver get out of the car, you’re not sure exactly what’s happened. So that’s why you You’d never want to speculate. You really [00:41:00] can’t go with anything except the official word that you get from the people who have the inside information.
And therefore they’re the ones who are setting the tone and the subsequent events. I was at the track when Jimmy was killed. I’ve been at the track, fortunately, just one other time when someone was killed. And I never understood when people who don’t understand racing or don’t like racing would tell me that, Oh, people just go to the races to see people get hurt.
And it’s like, no, I have been to races when people are hurt and there is nobody that goes there for that. It is like you pump the balloon up and somebody puts a pin in it and it all goes away. So I never, for a second, ever bought into that, but it has happened. Joe, do you have any thoughts? I’ll tell you one thing I’ll never forget.
I was working Canada English Speedway with Gary Montgomery, and at the conclusion of the race, I would do the write up, and Gary would go down and into the office or wherever, and would call in results to the local newspapers and so on. This year was 1982. Gary came back up into the tower and [00:42:00] he said, Joe and I turned around and looked, and he was as white as a ghost.
I said, what’s up? He said, I called the Democrat the Chronicle to give him our results. And he, they informed me that Jim Cine died at a swig tonight. It was like the date of Earth stood still. It was just unbelievable. Later that night, I got in the car and drove out with my family and drove up through the pits.
Merv Treichler was sitting on his trailer. I said, Merv, you here? He nodded yes. It’s something you just don’t want to go through. It’s like losing the closest member of your family. I have been announcing at maybe three or four different tracks that a tragedy has taken place. Dennis Taney, a candidate with Speedway.
First time I ever announced at New York State Fairgrounds under Ira Vail. For Car went into the audience, into the crowd between turns three and four and killed the person. It was at Syracuse the night Kevin Fleming was killed. We knew it was a bad accident up in the tower. I was announcing with Doug [00:43:00] Elkins.
Glenn came over to our side of the tower and he said we just had word that we probably have one fatality and one seriously injured. Just kind of looked at Glenn and Glenn was a type of leader that just took control and he said, here’s what we’re going to do the 4th of July show, we’re going to lower the lights, we’re going to do the fireworks and the personnel is going to go in the back straight away, clean up the situation, but we don’t say anything.
We did exactly that and we continued with the program. Now, I never said it, Doug Elkins never said it, but boy, the word got through the grandstand in a pit area like wildfire. It was just unbelievable. One of the other things I remember, we did put a dirt asphalt race on at the Nazareth 1 mile speedway.
And that’s when Roger Penske owned the facility. Prior to the race, we had to be at a race meet at about 7 o’clock in the morning. And all the corner workers were there, and this was in conjunction with an IndyCar race. All the corner workers were there, safety people, flaggers, everybody that worked on the track.
And I gotta tell you, I [00:44:00] never saw a leader in my life like Roger Penske. We all sat there and he says, where are the announcers? And I put my hand up, Tim Pitts put his hand up, and the IndyCar announcer put his hand up. He said, why don’t you three guys sit in over there? And then he went over everything, strategically, in their positions of what they’re doing in case of an emergency and everything.
Finally, the room cleared out. It was Roger Penske, his right hand man, Glenn Donnelly was in the room, and the three announcers. He said, gentlemen, I want to just go over one situation. In the event of a fatality or a tragic accident on the speedway, number one, here’s what’s going to happen. He says, the injured person will be taken in an ambulance to the infield hospital.
The helicopter will be standing by. In the event that helicopter takes off and goes to the hospital, we don’t talk about it. And I’m going to tell you, he said this like a military general. The show will go on. We will [00:45:00] never say if the party is deceased, they’ll read about it in the paper the next day. Do you have it?
He pointed at each one of us. Yes, sir. Meeting is done. Thank you. And boy, I gotta tell you, that rang a bell to me like you wouldn’t believe, but these things happen and it’s part of the sport. And like the other gentleman said, no one goes to the racetrack to see anyone killed. Those things have happened.
It’s part of the game. But you deal with it as best as you can as it happens. Oswego had a reputation for a long time of being a violent track. The steel walls, inside and outside. During the 64 years so far of the track, I was just trying to figure it out in my head. Not counting drivers who died of heart attacks.
There have been at least 8 fatalities at the Oswego Speedway. One happened before I started to announce there. I was on mic for all seven of the other ones. It’s never easy. Roy, I think a good thing to bring up too is, we have had at Oswego, a couple people on the [00:46:00] speedway that have had heart attacks.
Three. Three. And I’m gonna tell ya, I’ve gone to many, many speedways around the country. The emergency crew at the Oswego Speedway is second to none. And Roy, I think you can take over how they have saved lives. We’ve had three incidents in the last five years of people suffering what would have been a fatal heart attack had it happened at any other racetrack.
One of them was in Victory Lane. One of them was in the grandstand. And one of them was in the pit area, a driver. In all three cases, it took at least a half an hour or more to stabilize the person, bring them back to life. In two of the cases, the person died several times and was brought back. Now there are two interesting things about this that have happened.
One I don’t understand, one I do understand. The track safety crew is fantastic. They’re not going to make a move until they know the patient is stabilized and ready to move. Now what happens with that, however, is You get people in the grandstand who don’t know what’s going on, and they will actually boo the safety crew.
It’s happened on several occasions, but the track [00:47:00] safety crew at Oswego is absolutely phenomenal. It’s the best in any weekly run track in the country, and I don’t think you can find another racetrack in the country that has saved one heart attack victim, let alone three. I have only been involved with three fatalities, but only one of them was on a microphone capacity.
Dale Earnhardt Sr., down at Daytona in 2001. I was in victory lane. I was supposed to interview him because he was the owner of Michael Waltrip’s team who won the race. We’re in down in victory lane and we’re standing and waiting for Dale to show up because we figured because he’s the car owner, he’ll be there.
And he never did. I was standing next to one of the guys who was security. He was listening to his radio on an earphone and he said, It doesn’t look good for Dale. He had a bad wreck in Turn 3. And we kind of already knew that, and he said that the ambulance was taking him to the hospital. It doesn’t look good.
And that’s one, obviously, I’ll never forget. The other two incidents, again, were not while I was on the mic, thankfully. I actually witnessed the death when I was a spectator on the back section of the [00:48:00] boot at Watkins Glen. It was a Formula One driver. His name was Helmut Koenig. I believe I’m pronouncing that right.
Came down the boot section out of turn six and into turn seven, and the car never turned. And Watkins Glen at that time had three catch fences that were made out of chicken wire. And those catch fences were supposed to slow the car down. And in that case, he didn’t, you know a formula car’s got a pointy nose on the front of it.
So as he went, made his way through the three catch fences, the fence never held the car. I don’t want to get graphic here, but the Armco guardrail was bolted in place. You can just imagine when the car hit it. It’s a formula car. It’s head is above the driver’s cockpit and it hit so hard that the guardrail bolts on the top did not break.
The ones on the bottom, however, did and it swung open like a gate. Now you can imagine what happened at that point. So it was one of the things that I saw, and I don’t want to see anything like that again. J. D. McDuffie is the other one. Again, I didn’t see it. I was down in the S’s as a [00:49:00] spectator. I’m thinking to myself, hey, the race has been stopped.
Nobody’s telling us why. State police cars are on the racetrack. That never happens. Ambulances and, uh, track safety crew obviously made their way over there. And I knew things were bad at that point. Like I said, you never see a state police car on a racetrack. But here again, I’m sure all of these guys have already mentioned it.
We are told not to speculate, not to guess, wait for a future word, and usually that means the track owner or whoever is promoting the race, tells us, And sometimes how to say it. And in regards to Adele Senior, Well, I’ve never seen any organization snap into action faster than NASCAR. They took over the situation from the very beginning.
And I remember being at Victory Lane and walking over to the press center because Mike Helton was going to give the official word. He walked into the press center. We already knew what happened. Announcement that he made. I know you remember it. If you were watching TV, he said, we’ve lost Dale and the [00:50:00] whole room hushed, you could feel the temperature drop.
That’s what it felt like. It was like cold again at a time. I don’t want to ever see or experience again, but NASCAR jumping into action, took control. And the next day I was told not to even wear a Daytona shirt because they were afraid that media would come up and try to get a statement from us. And we really didn’t know what happened.
I hope you have a better question for the next couple of minutes. This track has the best hot dogs. I’m going to have to lighten things up here a bit. It happens in racing, and these gentlemen are such professionals and have been involved in the sport for so long. I just thought that was something that we should touch on.
We won’t dwell on it. Now what I’d like to know from everybody is how has the sport changed either for the better or the worse? Frank, obviously you can comment on this from a driver’s perspective because you’ve been driving for 40 plus years. Now everybody else here will comment on it chiefly from the announcing profession.
So I’m curious as to how you feel the sport has changed [00:51:00] positively or negatively over the years. Let’s actually start with Joe. Well, you know, earlier today, I brought some picture frames of old race cars that ran around the Empire State, Northeast, whether they were a dirt car or asphalt car. I also had a collection of them that I passed around.
And those were the days that a guy could virtually pull a car out of a junkyard, out of a backyard, strip the car down, put a roll cage in it, do some modifications to the engine, put a good set of brakes in it, and go out racing. Today, that just doesn’t happen. Whether it be dirt or asphalt, it has really changed an awful, awful lot.
They’re cookie cutter cars today. Here again, whether they were dirt modified and asphalt modified, super modified, there is some changing around in there and you can look at a car and say, this is a Hawk chassis or home built chassis or whatever. I like it the old way I’ve been doing it for 51 years now.
So I guess that’s the old fashioned way. It was funny showing those pictures today. Mike [00:52:00] Monet is here. Mike could say, um, well, that car was originally the Don Diffendorf car, and then it became a Jimmy Covell car. Then it became the Boach Harris car and so on down the line. I don’t know if you can do it today.
The cars that are on the street are totally different than what they used to be. Everything is front wheel drive or all wheel drive. You just can’t pull a car out of the weeds and put a roll cage in it anymore. But I sure liked it the old way because those were cars were cars and men were men and racing was racing.
Racing quality is just as good. I mean, maybe the lap times are much, much better today. Maybe in any given track, whether it be a Speedway or, uh, Ransomville Speedway, a Lancaster Speedway, an Oswego Speedway. Lap times are way, way down. And we’re always looking to try to set a record and makes a good story.
And even on the national circuit, whether it be in the NASCAR circuit or whatever, it’s pretty much all cookie cutter, but it’s racing. We’re going to live with it. They brought a race car to the Oswego Speedway [00:53:00] last year that used to race in the early 1960s. The guy was out of Kentucky and his first name was Wayne and I cannot remember his last name.
Wayne McGuire. The seat is a wooden seat. It’s a plank that goes across the car. Yeah. Safety has changed a lot. Uh, Swigler’s been, as I mentioned, a violent track, but since the end of the, uh, 1990s, when A. J. Michaels was killed, and they started with the foam walls at Swigler, the foam barriers, and they went, uh, Swigler made mandatory seats, the Butler style seat at that point.
You know, they use the Hans device and everything like that. We’ve had some horrible crashes, but no bad injuries because of all the safety processes that have gone on. But when you look back at what it was back then, you know, the roll cage came up like this on a lot of these cars, easy to fly out of the car.
And even before then there were no roll cages. The safety aspect of the sport has changed tremendously and all for the better, in my opinion. The racing, as was already mentioned, technology wise, every day it seems like it’s changing. And now with the advent [00:54:00] of social media, there’s all kinds of speculation about what this car is and what that car isn’t.
And I agree with the Coca Cola mentality. There doesn’t seem to be much reward anymore for people to go into their garage in the backyard or whatever, and build a car that can take out everybody. Lap everybody. Can you think about that now? Somebody lapped somebody out in the They’d be accused of cheating, not because they had hard work.
Just bugs the heck out of me. That’s the case. Look, I like looking at a computer and a score chart just like anybody. But the idea that somebody can work hard and actually perform better than anybody else. The whole cookie cutter concept I am just, I don’t like. The whole concept is pretty similar to the way we live in this world now.
Nobody is better than anybody else. Everything should be on the same plane. And there’s no rewards for doing your homework. The future we’ve already seen in racing, if you watch the premium channels on cable, they’ve already done Formula E, which is electric racing. To me it [00:55:00] sounds like turbo slack cars, that’s what it sounds like to me.
That don’t even sound like race cars. There’s no such thing as a pit stop even. What they do is they bring the cars into the pits, they jump into another one that’s fully charged. They take it back out to the racetrack. There’s no working on the same car trying to get it better through the race. If you think racing’s changed now, you wait until we get into all electric.
And it’s probably bad for me to say that because we just have the Green Grand Prix down here. That’s a big bugaboo, man. I just have a hard time. I agree with you on the electric concept. I said an hour ago, what attracted me to racing? One of the things is the sound, the sound. I don’t care if it’s a super Doswego, a V12 Ferrari, something in between.
It’s the sound. And I agree with you, Mike, there is no sound. Now, Glendonley’s developing some electric sprint cars, I guess, to run at his new motorsports track up in Syracuse, and maybe that’ll be cool. But again, if you take the sound away from me, you’ve taken away a very large portion of what turns [00:56:00] me on anyway.
We’re all learning in the tower now to go, Vroom, vroom, vroom! That’s how it’s done. Best sound I ever heard was when I put Watkins Glen during the six hours in the K& M series where the two classes were allowed to race together because they didn’t have a full field of K& M cars. Porsches, six cylinders, Ferrari, V12s, big block Chevys, small block Chevys, all resonating off the trees coming into the boot section.
It was like a symphony, I’ll never forget it. One of the best things I’ve ever heard. And of course, that’s why vintage racing is so good today. It’s also a lot less expensive. Old guys with old cars, and even some young guys with old cars. And you can do it, maybe not a Can Am car or a GTP car, but you can do it on a budget.
You’ve got an old Alfa Romeo or a 1981 Formula Ford. Simple to operate, simple to work on, not very expensive. My motor lasted 10 years, we just took it apart. That’s cheap racing. Here’s the difference today, is four [00:57:00] years ago, this shirt. I walked into a Ferrari banquet, and I had my Watkins Glen shirt on, and this guy goes, Nice shirt.
And he sits down next to me, and I start telling him stories about racing. And he owns a Ferrari, he’s just sold his company, and talking about the total 24 hour, And he goes, Well, let’s do it. I said, Well, I’m a regular working guy, I can’t do that. He says, Sold my company, I got a lot of money, let’s do it.
For the one race, the 50th anniversary of the Rolex 24 hour, In a used car. Porsche GT3 Cup car. I spent a half a million dollars of his money. We had some good times. And the car, at the end of the race, went into his garage. That’s the difference. My Formula Ford is worth about 12, 000. My first race car was 450.
I bought it out of a barn in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a 1958 Elva sports racing car. I bought it in 1968. I sold that car for a ton of money. The end of the year, 600 bucks. [00:58:00] The last guy had a price tag on it of 95, 000, but that’s another story. Oh, great. I agree with Roy. I think that what’s improved most is the safety of the cars, and that’s nothing but good.
The downside, which I think Frank touched on a little bit, was technology now has gotten so advanced that it’s not approachable anymore. This is, I think, in all forms of racing. I open the hood of my car now, and they don’t even want you touching me. You know, there’s a big piece of plastic there. And that’s different from when I was growing up.
We could change the crutch on a Volkswagen Bug in 30 minutes. Lift the back of the car up, drop the engine out, change the crutch, put it back in, and we weren’t intimidated by that. The complexity with all the electronics now, you know, I can’t see electricity, you know, there’s these sensors and these wires and they must be doing something, but I don’t know exactly what it is.
And I think that that and the fact that there are so many more things for young people to be involved with now, skateboards, bicycling, X games, kinds of things that the automobile does not have the same place in society that it [00:59:00] had when I was growing up. Racing is going to change and the young people who are involved Look at it a little bit differently.
I’ll tell you what my pet peeve in racing is, and that is all of the artificial rules that have been created. The lucky dog, the push to pass. It used to be very simple as an announcer to explain to people what was going on. The cars are out there, they’re racing one another. Now it’s, well, you know, the tires are degrading and they’re going to have to stop to change the tires.
They’ve introduced a level of complexity that, to me, just isn’t I guess for the show it’s needed, but to me it’s upset what used to be the essence of the sport. I’m not sure I’m going to transition from skateboards back to where we’re at. We’ve touched on all of it here. Cookie cutter business, I agree with it.
They’re terrible. Nothing prettier to me today than seeing a real one or imagining or looking at Joe’s photos of a 37 Ford Coupe. Not modified much, but just enough to make it a race car. Those were beautiful cars, and not just the Fords and Chevrolet. Safety, again, has been touched on, and Roy even touched on it specifically.[01:00:00]
And we had this question in advance that was going to talk about safety. I didn’t see the guy with the board seat, but if you look at a car that raced at Waterloo back in the 50s or 60s or whatever and you see them, it might have been a bucket seat that came out of an old airplane or something or other, but there was about as much support to it as this chair that I’m sitting in right now.
And these new low joy seats and the various manufacturers have just made it so much safer. And that’s what’s wonderful. So the technology in the safety aspects of it all are great technology that’s costing so much money for everybody for everything. Some of it’s safety, some of it for performance is too bad.
I liked it the old way, put new seats in old cars and I’d be happy. I think my point about the skateboards was these are things that young people can afford. Where now it’s harder to get people like us who didn’t have a connection to the sport. I mean there are lots of second and third generation racers that benefit from their family affiliation.
To find someone coming into the sport now with no background is much harder because. The cost of entry is so much higher. My fear is that racing will evolve into Formula E and drifting. [01:01:00] It’s almost there. Let me put in a good word for cars that don’t make much noise. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to drive a car that was built for what was known as the Volkswagen GTI series.
These were diesel powered cars. They made no noise from the outside. When you’re inside the car driving them, they It was just like any other racing car. You had the line from the transmission and they put on good races. They were real racing cars and they were fast. That’s one of the changes us graybeards and the like may have to adapt to.
But there will be different kinds of racing that will attract different people. I can’t say the electric cars do much for me, but quiet racing cars in some venues are going to be one of the things that helps to keep the sport going. Okay.
I think the problem is that for all of us up here is we come from a different age and there’s a new age. All right. Here’s my last question. And this is what I think is going to let us segue into stories, stories, and more stories. We’ll start with Mike and then work down favorite tracks, favorite series.
drivers, best [01:02:00] interview, worst interview, whatever one of those you want to take and just roll from there. Wow, obviously the track up here on the hill where I got my start with Al Robinson in 1995 is my favorite. Daytona, obviously I made it to there, that’s the pinnacle. As far as other tracks are concerned, Virginia International Raceway, another road racing course I was lucky to be asked to do.
That’s one of my favorites. Richmond on the NASCAR circuit, the three quarter mile short track and Nazareth, they both put on great modified races, no better track in my mind for modified than the three quarter mile over at Richmond. And I’m talking about today’s configuration. There’s a lot of guys. I remember it way before and they liked that as well.
Mid Ohio, I was able to go there. Great place. And I haven’t mentioned that I’ve done drag racing. The big track that I liked going to was out at Denver, Colorado, the Van Deme Speedway. And the reason for that is ’cause it’s up in the mountains that HRA wanted us to be at the track at eight o’clock in the morning, be ready to go.
So I get up [01:03:00] there. Speedway at eight o’clock and the owner of the track comes up to me and goes, who the heck are you? And I said, I’m one of the guys that’s supposed to be announcing with the NHRA today. He says, well, the races don’t start until one o’clock. I said, I was told to be here at eight. So what the heck should I do now?
He says, see those mountains go up and take a ride. And I went all the way around the mountains, came down through Evergreen, Colorado. Came back to the track, it took me about a three hour trip, in order to see those mountains. I mean, racing has taken me places that I probably would have never gone before.
Different places around the country that I would never have seen unless I went to announce racing. For that, I’m very grateful. You say one of the tracks I hate, you want me to say that? That’s a tough one. As much as I respect all you guys that work at Camp Dagobah. There was a night that I went there. I know it was only one night, but it seemed like you guys were racing on the craters of the moon.
I mean, the cars were bouncing up and down all over the place. I couldn’t understand how the drivers were even controlling the cars. [01:04:00] Like I said, I respect you guys a lot, but I didn’t have any fun at that racetrack. Another racetrack that I can’t stand is Pocono. I don’t like that track. The Triangle. I sat in the grandstand, so I didn’t announce that.
Thank God. The cars go way out to the north 40 and then they come back. That’s right. I do not like that track at all. I never will. You can pay me a dollar and I’ll start still want to go. How about the best interview or worst interview? I’m going to come back to Dale Earnhardt Sr. Two weeks before he died, I was asked to do a press conference for the Chevy Corvette racing team.
I don’t know if you remember, he raced with his son for the 24 hours in the Corvette team. He came back into the press conference and the guy from Chevrolet asked me to handle it. And he says, well, here’s what’s going to happen. Just like you had questions to ask us, he says, you’re going to have 20 minutes to conduct a question and answer session.
He says, I’m going to be in the back of the room going like this when it’s 20 minutes is over. So I started asking Dale some questions, [01:05:00] interview went 20 minutes, like the guy said. I said, we’re going to end the question and answer session right now, Dale Sr. is right here. And he says, wait a minute, we’re ending, where am I going?
I said, I was told you had to be on a plane here. They only gave me 20 minutes to go, so I’m not going anywhere. And if you know Dale, he was quite cantankerous. And he also tried to be a jokester. He played pranks on everybody. That’s probably my best interview that I had. My worst was when, and I’ll never forget this one.
Down on Homestead by Abbey. I was coming toward Matt Kenseth. And he was part of the Roush team at that point. And he saw me coming. And I saw him with his elbow and I could read his lips. He says, watch this. So I came up to interview him. He gave me one word answers to every question I asked. Drove me nuts.
I couldn’t get anything out of him more than one word. That was probably my worst interview. Right? I’ve announced at probably close to 50 tracks in any number of different divisions. And I can honestly [01:06:00] say my absolute Favorite race is the one I’m at right now. The race I’m announcing right now, and yeah, I’ve had some bad races and some bad tracks I’ve been at.
It’s the one I’m doing right now. The one I’m watching right now. That’s my favorite. I really don’t have any that I can say. I don’t like that track because everyone I’ve been to, there’s something about I like and really enjoy. In terms of interviews, I’ll give you the worst one first because it was when USAC split and IRL took over and ran, uh, USAC ran a race at Pocono.
They had a tough time putting together a starting field, 33 cars. So you had some very current Indy type cars all the way down to the old champ cars where the drivers actually had to get out of the car. for refueling because they didn’t have the quick fill. The race, when it ended, A. J. Foyt had won. There were no two cars in the same lap.
Second place was four laps down. Third place was 10 laps down. Tenth place was 40 laps down. And I had to interview A. J. [01:07:00] Foyt at the end of the race. I was doing that. Pocono had set up its own radio network for that race. It started to rain. They bring an ambulance out on the track. They bring AJ over to the ambulance, we get in the ambulance, they give me the microphone, I start to interview AJ, microphone won’t work.
AJ says, F this and out he went. In terms of good interviews, Jimmy Champagne on the local level was probably the best, the easiest person to interview. You could ask him anything. He would elaborate on anything. He was a very, very helpful person. I had a chance to interview an awful lot of the NASCAR drivers as well.
And in that group, I would say Richard Petty, and I’ll tell you a very funny story very quickly about Petty down at Pocono. I was brand new doing my television show in Binghamton, and it was my first NASCAR race. We go to the race down in Pocono, and I’m getting drivers, and I come up to Petty’s Garage, and Richard is right there, and I said, Richard, do you have time for an interview?
He said, not now, come back later. Well, I thought I’d been blown off. No big deal, it’s happened before. [01:08:00] I go down, I got Daryl Waldrip, I got Bobby Allison, I’m coming back, I’m going back by Petty’s Garage, and he says, hey, hey, didn’t you want to interview me? I said, yeah, but there was a drunk lady in the back of the garage.
I didn’t want her in the picture.
Joe. Well, I gotta say, just like why my favorite race track is the one I’m at that night. I enjoy announcing every race at every race track that I’ve worked at. I too have probably been close to 50 different tracks around the country. I’ve got a couple of stories on the worst interviews I have done. Um, One of them, I was working at Lebanon Valley Speedway for Lebanon 200.
And Tommy Corrales won the race. And this was before the unique wireless mics that we have of today. We had to use a two way radio and a microphone and bring it over to the tower. I was working with an older gentleman, but he was kind of the voice of the Lebanon Valley Speedway. [01:09:00] Uncle Art, that was it, Uncle Art.
He was up in the tower, so I had to go over and interview Tommy Corrales. I got there and I started with the interview and I’m holding the two way radio. And I felt something hit my hand, and I kind of looked down to see what it was, and I don’t remember anything after that. Because some gentleman from the tower threw a rock and hit me in the head.
Knocked me out absolutely cold. Everything came out okay. The brain shook a little bit looser after that. Funny part of the story is a couple weeks later was Super Dirt Week at Syracuse and I saw Tommy and I said, hey Tommy, how you doing? He said, good, how you doing? I said, pretty good. He said, you know, you’re the first guy that ever went down and I never threw a punch.
One of the other terrible interviews that happened, Gary, I think you were working with me, a candidate with Speedway with Will Cagle. If you knew Will Cagle at all, he was kind of a controversy guy. He could be hot, he could be cold, he could be nice, he could be bad. One night a candidate with [01:10:00] Speedway, a young guy took him out going into turn number three, who was in the qualifying heat.
They regrouped and everything. They knew what Cagle was going to do and they pointed to him. This was before one way radios into the cockpit of the cars. Cagle lines up in the tail and he comes up through there and he dumped Mark Livingston going into three on the very next lap. So he got the black flag.
And he had to run the consolation and obviously he won the conci, but he had to start back in the consolation starting spot. I’m going to tell you, if anybody ever used nitrous oxide that night, he was using it because he came from 20th spot up to first and probably five laps, maybe seven. And he got up there to the number one spot and he just put a lap on everybody.
He was just unbelievable. I went down to interview him and I came down with the trophy and I put the trophy on his right rear tire. And I said, so where will Hobbit tonight go? And he grabbed the microphone from me and he says, Number one, I don’t like the promoter. Number two, I don’t like the [01:11:00] flagger.
Number three, I don’t like you. And I don’t like any of you race fans. There, I did my interview. Because the rules were you had to do an interview or you didn’t get paid. He threw the mic back at me. He got in the car, fired it up, spun his wheels, and the trophy went up into the air. Next day at Weed Sports Feedway, I’m walking down through the pit area, and I says, I’m going to avoid him.
And he goes, Hey, Jose. And I turn around and I look and I says, Yeah? And he says, what did Glenn say? I said, well, Glenn says, Glenn said you’re a, start with an A. He goes, what did everybody else say? I said, they all agreed with him. That was Cagle. He was pretty controversial. As far as the best interviews, back when I started announcing, You really didn’t do too many interviews.
You know, here again, you didn’t have a wireless mic. And it was very tough to do a lot of interviews. Alan Johnson, I’m sure you’re going to agree with me, was one of the terrible ones. You had to hold him by the shirt because he had a [01:12:00] tendency of walking away from you all the time. As time went on, he got much better.
Danny Johnson was always a good interview. They were just all good. They answered the questions you gave them. They were happy they won the race. Sometimes a little disturbing to interview the second place or the third place because they didn’t win. I’ve really had a good time at it and that’s my stories.
I used to do interviews at the Bog Tent. These are corporate interviews. They bring the drivers in and these people paid a lot of money to sit right at the apex of turn 11 here at Watkins Glen coming on the front straightaway. Good guys to interview. Jeff Gordon. Laura said, always a great interview, especially when Conor Edwards would be sneaking up behind him and jumping him.
And the two of us start wrestling and fighting for the mic. That was good. The big surprise to me was Mark Martin walks in with his own interviewer. He makes a statement, doesn’t sign any autographs like everybody else, and walks out. And I thought that was probably the worst of anybody that I [01:13:00] had ever interviewed.
The best guy, I think, was Kyle Busch. And this was when Kyle was getting the rap for being just a jerk. I did an interview with Kyle. Again, because of my racing background, I was asking him a question about what he was doing between the two different cars, the sprint car, whatever it was, nationwide car at the time.
The difference between the two of them, between turn one and turn two, and how he approached turn two, Watkins Glen, and what RPM he was, and was he shifting, was he braking? You know, that’s not a, gee, M& Ms, or you know, what’s your girlfriend’s name, kind of a question. He spent At least five minutes talking about the difference between the two cars all the way around the track, the RPMs, the gears, the entrance to the turns as braking points.
And I thought that that was really a cool interview. It was something that you don’t normally hear. And I still remember that is probably the best interview that I ever had with a driver. I don’t know if everybody else knows this, but Frank is also a real estate broker in Connecticut. Have you ever sold any house to [01:14:00] anybody who’s like, really cool?
Thank God the motorheads in my area seek me out, because if they didn’t, I couldn’t have done all the racing that I did. And as I like, tell people, I said, you know, if I was really good at it, I’d be retired. But yeah, the racing has brought me my niche and clients. You know, some people it’s a PTA or bingo games or their local church or something, but I’ve taken care of the motor heads for years.
I sold the international motorsport association, their building in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and they were there for years. And when they moved down south, I sold the building for them along with the 18, 000 honeybees that had built a nest in the chimney of the building. So it’s great. Like you’ve already heard, the best series or the best race is the next one I’m going to.
But I want to go back for the one that was the most fun. The race series that was the most fun goes all the way back to when I first started. It was called the Car and Driver Showroom Stock Sedan Challenge. The best [01:15:00] thing about it was there was free Schaefer beer. From there, it was like an automotive Woodstock.
The editors of Car and Driver Magazine came up with this idea that they would race against anybody who wanted to race against them in the cheapest cars of the era. So we had Ford Pintos, Chevrolet Vegas, Dodge Colts . These cars were slow . They leaned and they lurched, and the tires just screamed and protest.
But what a time it was. It was just amazing. I mean, there was this real antagonism between the writers and the readers that you couldn’t recreate. So that was the most fun that I remember. Going back, they ran it from 72 until 1976. Best interview? Ah, there are lots of them. I’ve had the opportunity to run the gamut from road racing people like Sam Posey and David Hobbs.
Some of the best interviews were with the guys from the old NASCAR North Series. Dave Dion, Mike Stefanik, that would come and do [01:16:00] one road race a year, or, if it wasn’t the only road race, it was the last race of the year, and the championship was going to be decided. They just came down and had a lot of fun and were great people to talk to.
Worst interview I can easily remember. Nobody ever heard it. 22 years old. One of the first races I ever announced at Thompson, Connecticut. New racer was there. His name was P. L. Newman. I followed him around all weekend trying to get an interview. I didn’t even know what I was going to do with an interview.
I had a reel to reel tape recorder with me. Finally, at the end of the weekend, he said, okay, we’ll do the interview. We did 40 minutes. I went back home and listened to it and it was 35 minutes of me and 5 minutes of Paul Newman. Tape went in the trash. It did help me though, subsequently, in my dealings with him because I realized he wanted his space.
You had to wear a peanut costume. Yeah, as long as Paul Newman wanted to come to the races and be a racer, he didn’t want to be a celebrity. Fortunately, I learned that early and I had a very good relationship with him throughout his career. Best interview, [01:17:00] I’m not certain. There have been a lot of good ones.
Worst interviewers, Cagle’s name was on, for that particular night that you referred to, Jim. He was never a friendly, nice guy. Arrogant. Whether he won or not. The other guy, most of you all know this name, but Walt Mitchell. Walt Mitchell, Drove variety of cars, but won a lot of races in a late mile division.
And I was working for Donnelly and Walt won about every Saturday night. I guess we ran those cars, but you couldn’t get Mitchell to say more than three words, no matter what the question was. So that was tough. The best interview was with Tim Fuller the night he won at my favorite racetrack, which is Canada Equal Speedway, which we know Mike doesn’t particularly enjoy, but, uh, sorry he didn’t like it.
I was only there that one time where I didn’t like it. Well, the track was smooth this night and Fuller won. And it was his first, and I believe, won once last year, but I don’t know what year this was, but it goes back a ways. He was driving for Bob Faust in the M1 car. Some of you folks remember that. But anyway, he won, and he was on his way to Victory Circle, and halfway down the back straightaway, he decided to get to Victory Circle quickest way, which would be straight across the infield.
He did not know that there was a [01:18:00] ditch there, which is about 10 feet deep. And he eventually got there, but not with his car. And we built a bridge after that. And that bridge is still there. Another interview, which is worth sharing with you folks is one of the last interviews that I did with Motor Racing Network.
It was the last time I worked for the Motor Racing Network and it was here at Watkins Glen. I was assigned a pre race interview with Tony Stewart and Tony had just done something bad the week before, or whatever it was, and he was not always, but often a problem. And so I was coached by what you could talk to him about, what you couldn’t talk to him about.
And most of all, you couldn’t talk to him about the controversy that he caused the week before. That was okay with me. And I went to his trailer as we were getting ready for the pre race deal. And he was of course in the trailer. I made arrangements with his PR guy that we would do this interview. And everything was set up, but he came out of the trailer.
It wouldn’t talk to me. It wouldn’t talk to anybody. And of course, my, whoever was running, David Hyde I guess was running MRN then was very disappointed with me. It was all my fault. Well, I had done my homework and I’d been the best gentleman I could be, but he just wouldn’t talk to me. So that was another highlight.
Another [01:19:00] interview highlight was Dale Jr. Worked a lot of truck races, but I guess this was probably a bush race. Dale was Jr. because he was who he was. They always wanted to talk to him and he was running well enough to deserve an interview before or after the races. But he was such a nervous young kid, couldn’t do an interview very well.
And just to watch him mature over the years as he’s now a pretty smooth guy. Mark Martin, you brought that. Mark was a tough guy as well. He stiffed me in a way at Pocono. I asked him a question and he answered it and I asked him another question and he pushed me away. David Hyatt wasn’t very happy with me, but in the next race I talked to Mark, why did you do that?
You got your one question, you got your one answer, and that’s all you were going to get. That was it. So I’ve never been a Mark Vinson. That pretty much answers all my questions, but now it’s time for you folks. Mike, tell them the story about when you were working for NASCAR that you got to do the event for Daytona USA.
Oh man. Daytona USA was a spot where fans could come in and ask questions just [01:20:00] like we’re about ready to do now. Back in the day, the Pepsi Theater was there. They had just put in a new screen for the video section. And my job that day was supposed to sit up with five NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series drivers who were brand new in the series at the time.
They have director’s chairs for us. And the five guys were there before I was. They introduced me to come up to do the interviews. And the freaking director’s chair collapsed. I fell backwards. The first thing I was asked, I wasn’t asked, Are you okay? Did you break our 10, 000 screen? They finally came over and said, Are you okay?
I said, yeah, don’t worry about your screen. I didn’t land on it. That drove me nuts. Is that what you’re talking about? No, I’m talking about your trip to California. They had an attraction down at Daytona USA. They called it Daytona Dream Lapse. It was kind of like a roller coaster that would go through the racetrack and you would have a visual sitting in the roller coaster of how it might’ve been in a stock car.
[01:21:00] At that particular point, and my job is to be like a PA announcer and let everybody know what’s going on. I did the voiceover out in California, of all places. They couldn’t put it anywhere in between California and Waukensland or Daytona, what the heck. So they bring me out to uh, California, now I gotta become a member of SAG.
Organization where most actresses and actors have to join that. So I have to pay dues to be SAG in another commercial sense. So I didn’t have to use that union card at all. Drove me nuts. One of the stories, one of the greatest moments I’ve ever seen in my career, took place two years ago in downtown Watkins Glen.
There was a race driver you may have heard of, his name is Rusty Wallace. And he had just received his star on the Walk of Fame. Wallace is a pretty busy guy, he did his autographs, he did his interviews, and he was on his way back to his car, and out of the corner of his eye, He caught a familiar face and he went over and spent the next 10 minutes [01:22:00] talking to his friend Al Robinson and the story that I want to hear Al tell is the one he told to Rusty that day.
Will you do that for us Al?
It was indeed. I was driving through Muncie, Indiana one night in the 1980s, and I found myself behind a rather beat up looking Winnebago, and the Winnebago had Missouri plates on it, and it was festooned with Busty Wallace and Kenny Wallace stickers. The Winnebago stopped at a gas station just about the time it became necessary for me to also replenish the tank on my rental car.
Asked the woman as she stepped out of Winnebago how she and her husband got to be such big Wallace fans. She said, we didn’t have much choice because Rusty and Kenny are our sons. That’s how I met Judy Wallace and also Russ Wallace. And I still don’t know what Rusty’s real first name is. You know, there was a controversy a number of years ago as Is Rusty Wallace’s name on his birth [01:23:00] certificate William Russell or is it Russell William Wallace?
On the subject of the best interview, I think routinely the best interview that I remember was Neil Bonnet. All you had to do was walk up and say hello to Neil Bonnet and he would give you as much time as he had before his next sponsor appearance. He was a genuinely pleasant person to talk to and a real gentleman.
As well as being a great race driver. Frank, I already warned you about this question. It has to do with Al Robinson. You and Al had a tradition at midnight hour at Daytona. Can you give us a little background on where that tradition started? Whose idea was it? Why did you pick that song? Well, I don’t know so much about the song, and Al’s going to have to help me with this.
Actually, a bunch of us used to do Daytona all night long. As they kind of narrowed down their staff, and I became politically not welcome up in the booth anymore. Unless I’d [01:24:00] sneak up there at night. Al would take over the midnight section. He was the prince of darkness somewhere around midnight. I’d go up in the booth for at least a couple of years there and we would do the howling at the moon.
Absolutely correct. Frank, our technical expert, David Bell created a, uh, In the Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett, who I’m sure many of you remember very well. It was a staple of the Stroke of Midnight to, uh, play In the Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett. At least David Bell’s outtake version of it. One of the guys I worked for in the PR department down at Daytona was named Mark Lewis.
Mark Lewis, actually. He liked to, uh, refer to himself as being the most influential African American executive in motorsports. Right. And he would help Al throughout the night. Right. Mark was a great guy to have around. He usually stuck in until about 3 a. m. or so, at which point fatigue began to play a role.
Let me tell you another story about Frank. Before [01:25:00] a race, the drivers are in the pre grid area. They’re all strapped in their cars. They’re trying to concentrate on the task ahead. And there was a young woman by the name of Stephanie Van Wye, who was just starting her racing career. She was a very accomplished equestrian.
Stephanie was trying to focus. And Frank asked me for the microphone. Proceeded to sing Happy Birthday to Stephanie. Oh, of course. That story has never died. And I’m the one who gets blamed. Frank did the singing, I get blamed because I handed him the microphone. We’ve played enough jokes on people over the years that At one point, in fact, it was the last race of the national season out of Bridghampton.
For those of you that remember Bridghampton, I think I had run off the road and come back on in a formula car, so I didn’t win the race, but Chip Ganassi won the race. Chip pulls into the pits and is looking for accolades and there’s nobody there. I had pulled in someone behind him. Chip’s entire crew, along with lots of other people, filled my car up with whipped cream.
They had a couple of dozen cans of [01:26:00] Reddi Whip and paid me back. Looking at the audience and trying to figure out what might be repeatable, what’s the stupidest thing you guys have ever done where you put your foot in your mouth? It was in a basketball game. I was announcing in Montrose, Pennsylvania. The shooter was coming across the top of the key.
And I started saying, he shoots from the top of the key. Well, he scored. So I was going to change it to, he hits from the top of the key. And I said, he shits from the top of the key!
When that happens, you don’t stop. You just keep on going. Keep on going. How many know the music group? Glenn Donnelly was very famous for having musical groups come in to the County Fair. There was a big stage built in the center of Weedsport Speedway, then called County Fair Speedway. It was on a Sunday night during the races.
The next day, Molly Hatchet was going to appear at the County Fairgrounds. So, I go down to interview the [01:27:00] winner, and Glenn says, Take the group! Take the Molly Hatchet group down with ya! They had been up in the tower, tipping a few. So I says, okay, come on guys, Now, look, I grew up in the 60s, Beatles, Beach Boys, those type of groups.
So I come down, I can’t remember who the winner was, And I says, hey, alongside of me, We got the group that’s gonna be playing here tomorrow night, The Molly Hatcher Group. By the way, guys, where is Molly? Where is she? laughing I gotta tell you this, when I got up in the tower, Glenn says, Boy, if you didn’t sound like a jerk.
I said, where weren’t you? Where was she? Stupidest thing I’ve ever said. That was out of California Speedway. It’s called out of Club Speedway now. And I introduced Jimmy Johnson and I’m out in the Southwest for the first time. So he’s from El Cajon, what did I say? El Cajon, don’t forget that’ll never happen again.
I was announcing at Daytona for MRN, but I had the distinct privilege in 1999 for being the guy in the tower. If you’re [01:28:00] working for MRN in your tower at Daytona or any of these tracks, all you do is fill in between during the commercial periods when the radio network is doing their thing. This was earlier in the week and it was the IROC series.
I’m announcing all these famous name drivers that we all recognize driving these Pontiac Trans Am cars. And I’m not sure who it was that came over the radio. And it was either Roger Penske himself who owned the series or Hilton or somebody from the track. Tell that announcer, those are not Pontiac Grand Ams.
Those are IROC Grand Ams and they had lost their Pontiac sponsorship. So the cars were the same from the year before. They were obviously Pontiacs. Anybody with half a brain would have known that. But they were no longer Pontiacs as far as Roger Pinsky was concerned. I’m not going to tell you the most embarrassing things I’ve said.
I don’t want to remember them. Come on, I got a good story. I’m at Daytona and it’s the middle of the night. Al, you might have been there. This is very late at night. I think Tom Natchew was there with us. It’s like three o’clock in the morning. We’re looking for something to talk about. A few years earlier, I’d written a poem about what it’s like to run a [01:29:00] 24 hour race and have your motorhome with you.
It goes like this, and I won’t read the whole thing, but it shows that somebody’s listening even at three o’clock in the morning. I found the cheese the other day. Looked a lot like curds and whey. Someone had shoved it under the seat along with the peach and two slices of meat. It was all kind of fuzzy.
And what was that smell? Here in the Delvecchio Bad Smell Motel. Just about that time the phone rings next to us. We pick it up and there’s a voice on the other end and it’s There is no poetry at Daytona. So, we never got through the hotel. Well, that kind of reminds me of a story when I was down at Virginia International Raceway.
The new Mini Cooper that’s out is made by BMW, I don’t know if you know that. So I call it the BMW Mini Cooper. One of the guys from BMW said, it’s not a BMW. It’s just a Mini Cooper. Don’t tell anybody BMW. So I kind of got scolded that day. Now I can tell you that’s not a BMW Mini [01:30:00] Cooper. Wayne County Speedway is in the middle of North Carolina.
Well, it started out as a dirt track. It became a paved track. And it was one of those areas where fighting in the pits was mandatory.
During a race, car coming out of turn number two hit the outside wall, bill rolled down the back straight. Ambulance crew standing by the ambulance, they run down the back straight, get down to turn three where the car says, Damn, forgot the ambulance. Back they go for the ambulance. Same track, guy gets black flag, he won’t come off the track.
Cars keep going around, under the yellow, he won’t come off the track. They bring out the red flag. He won’t come off the track. I’m on the outside wall. They bring a tow truck out. The guy wasn’t going very fast. He was a street stock. He was just kind of motoring around. He comes down like this and the tow truck, tantamount against the wall.
By the way, I want to mention Keith Zares here. We’ve mentioned other announcers. Keith is the announcer at Adirondack and Evans Mills and also does infield announcing at Oswego. Same track, late model race. The owner of the [01:31:00] car gets upset because his driver has just been penalized for spinning somebody out.
He runs out into the pit area, which is outside the parking lot, rather, which is outside the track. Brings his car down onto the track. He’s going this way. The field is going that way. Goes around several times. They call the police. 911 is called. Here comes the police. The blue lights are flying in here.
The guy goes off the track. Now you’ve got three cop cars and this guy racing around the parking lot. Finally out into the road, and they finally stopped him. This track, by the way, is located in Nahunter, North Carolina, the pig capital of North Carolina. Perfect. Not the cops. North Carolina is the second largest hog producer in the United States.
What was the most exciting last lap that you have ever called? 1983 International Classic. Oh yeah. At the Oswego Speedway. At EV. 200 lap race and it was as boring as they get until the last seven laps. Doug Hebron was leading, Bentley Warren was running second, Warren Coney was third, [01:32:00] Eddie Bellinger was fourth.
Seven laps to go I start to say Hebron is running out of fuel. Doug Caruso, one of the brothers of the owners of the track, chose Mesa’s. Really, it’s a boring race. You’re not going to make it exciting now. Well, he was running out of fuel. Coming into the white flag, the running order was Hebron, Bentley Warren, Warren Conium, Eddie Bellinger.
Coming out of turn number two, Hebron bogged down, Warren was behind him, Conium went by, Bellinger went by. At the end of the lap, it was the exact opposite order that they started the lap. Bellinger won, Warren Conium second. Best last lap was at Little Valley Speedway. Promoted there for one year. I brought in the BRP Modified Tour, which was pretty unique to Little Valley.
It’s primarily a late model track. Kevin Mullen, a driver from Ohio. Weston, PA. And Ronnie Smoker, who is from nearby Eden, New York, or Boston, New York, which is just up the road from Little Valley. They ran a number of laps side by side, and that just doesn’t happen any place [01:33:00] much anymore. And Smoker’s car was smoky for the last five laps.
And we were never sure who was going to win. I mean, you just didn’t know they did not make contact. It was a great race and Smoker did end up winning. We learned later that the smoke was not a big problem at all, but that was primarily because Smoker had a fan base there. Nobody knew Bowling. They put on a great race.
And of course, the last lap was Formula 1600 series that I announced for, you never know who’s going to win the race until the last lap. And what, again, if you’re an Overtrack fan, you need to realize that road racing is a little different. The cars disappear and all kinds of things happen out back and a different group of cars appears coming out of the last turn.
It can be just about impossible to figure out, you know, what’s going to happen. But one of the races that made a biggest impression on me for a great finish was a Bush North race. In 2001 and going into the last lap, Andy Santer was leading Butch Lightsinger, who was a well known road racer at the time, going into the second to last turn.
Andy’s car got off course and [01:34:00] got upside down. And all of a sudden, here’s Butch Lightsinger with the win. Well, the NASCAR pits were inflamed to say the least because the supposition was, since nobody had seen what went on on the back part of the track, that Lightsinger had gotten into Andy and put him upside down.
So he towed Andy’s car in, and by now, you know, there’s lots of murmuring going on, and Andy came over and said, Screwed up bad, didn’t I? He never touched me. I looked in my mirrors instead of watching the track, drove right off the road. Wildest last laps I ever announced was at the Moody Mile at Syracuse.
And there was about two and a half laps to go. Danny Johnson was leading, driving the Freightliner car number six, and as he goes down into the tricky number three corner. I said, wow, a little puff of smoke coming out of Danny Johnson’s car. Now, over the years, I’ve been known to maybe fabricate a little bit here and there.
Embellish, embellish, embellish. I think that’s the word. And there were a couple of people standing behind me up at the [01:35:00] tower. One of them being Pastor Wells and his wife. He goes, yeah, sure. Tell him it’s smoking, Joe. I go, it is. It really is smoking. And he comes out of turn four and down the front straightaway to get the white flag.
And as he goes into turn number one, he really puts out a puff of smoke and he stands on it coming out of turn number two and down the back straightaway. And this time when he goes down to the turn number three, it is a big puff of smoke. And when he comes out of turn number four for the checkered flag comes across the line, he puked the engine right there on the start finish line.
I turned around and I said, there, I told you what I lied to you. Most exciting race I ever called on a last lap was Wanda Did Not Exist at VRR, Virginia National Raceway. The track is almost four miles around. I didn’t have a time and computer. I didn’t have a TV. But I called the best damn race I ever called.
There was all kinds of lead changes. There was all kinds of things going on. Guys rubbing [01:36:00] each other. It’s the best race I’ve ever called that never happened. Frank, that sounds like something you told me once, uh, in the SBRA Tower. If things get a little monotonous, you call a race battle that doesn’t exist?
Yeah, of course. That’s exactly what Mike said. Embellish it a little bit, you know. And sometimes you have to look far down the field. Sometimes we’ve got a 40 car field, you know, the front’s kind of stretched out a little bit. Look down and see what the 18th place car is doing because that 18th place car, that guy or gal is driving their hearts out against the 19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd place car.
And that’s where the battle is. And that’s your job is to make it exciting. and get somebody to focus on what’s really happening out there. That’s just as cool as the front, if it’s closed. But if the front’s stretched out, you know, you might as well be talking to your hairbrush instead of a microphone.
1971 72, a guy came up to me by the name of Jack Brandt. [01:37:00] He was kind of a co promoter for Ira Vale back in the Ira Vale promotion days. And Jack said to me, Joey says, And I said, no. And he says, what do you know about a motorcycle? And I looked over at one and I says, it’s got two wheels. He says, good, you’re the announcer.
He was promoting during the state fair, an AMA sanctioned motorcycle race on the Moody mile. I says, gee, Jack, I really don’t know nothing about motorcycles. That’s okay. You’ll do good. So I get all the credentials and everything. And that was announcing from the old tower in the infield and with the old grandstand at the fairgrounds.
We had all the top riders there. I remember, uh, Kenny Roberts was there. And one of the things I learned real quick, I was told, they’re not drivers, they’re riders. I said, okay. They went out and they did some warm ups and everything, and the grandstand was absolutely packed. I’m really embarrassed because I don’t know much.
I walked through the pits, I got all the information I could get and everything, but I just didn’t [01:38:00] feel I was doing a good job. And when they went out for one of their qualifying heats, Coming off of turn two, I thought I saw a rider slip to the inside and fall. And when I said that, I said, Wait, we got one, two riders down.
I looked at the grandstand and I seen everybody stand up and look in point. Well, then I realized I could see turn two in the back straightaway, but they couldn’t from that old grandstand the way the elevation in the old grandstand was. So I said, ah, my secret. Man, I’ll tell you, I had four or five riders down at a time coming out of turn number two and I made it really exciting.
And Kenny Roberts won the race, by the way. Did they charge you a dollar every time you said driver? I didn’t race. I did. It cost me about 25 bucks. No, I didn’t get fined. I got a hot dog. You may have caught it at the beginning of this thing. My name is Roy Soto, and that’s important for this story. Down in Binghamton, Jack Crawford, who was a sprint car driver, and I promoted the first World of Outlaw [01:39:00] race in New York State.
We signed the first contract. Glenn Donnelly got in ahead of us. They were the race at Rolling Wheels the night before, but it got rained out. So we had the first race down at Five Mile Point Speedway. It was on television in Binghamton at the time. About two weeks before that, Art Bonker, who was the promoter at Five Mile Point, where the race was going to be held, we were leasing the track from him, Gordie Cunningham, said to me, Why don’t you come to the track?
You don’t have a race at Oswego on this Saturday night. He said, come to the track, announce a few races, and promote the World of Outlaws race. Wow, that’s a great idea. I’ll do that. The track announcer at Five Mile Point was Dusty Doyle. Dusty got into the amber liquid a little early almost every race night.
So Dusty comes out and he says, Ladies and gentlemen, We’ve got a young man here in the Binghamton area, you may know him from television. He’s gonna be promoting a World of Outlaws sprint car race. Here at Five Mile Point Speedway, and he wants to get his feet a little bit wet in race [01:40:00] announcing. Ladies and gentlemen, Leroy Sneva.
And Dusty Doyle always made the comment when he counted cars, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, plus one more. He would never say that word. One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever heard made of an announcer was made by a fan named Dick O’Brien, who Larry knows very well. He spent a lot of time at the Oswego Speedway, and he once said that Roy Silver could make a two car concierge exciting, and that’s about the highest praise any announcer can get.
My question for you, Larry, did you ever have a reporter forget to plug in the microphone? No. Yes, Jim Richmond. Me, I was the idiot. That’s right, yeah. I’ve had many instances like that though. The tricky turn three. The number three turn. Well look, there’s also, you can take a flyer out of there and end up in the raffidily patch.
[01:41:00] I’ve had a lot of guys in the raffidily. You guys are great. Who was the most colorful driver you guys ever out? I’d say Will Kagel. Yeah. Will certainly, you know, will used to do some things that, particularly in a caution. He was accused of doing a lot of different things. It was because he did ’em. Yeah.
One of the things he would go through and I would play it up an awful lot. He’d pull his harness straps a little bit. Look at him. He’s trying to psych up the driver on the outside. He is pulling his sleeves up. But at one time he said to me, I don’t like when you call attention to pullin the sleeve up.
Because if you remember, mirrors were outlawed. And Will was known to have a bracelet on that may have had a reflector on it. So he could see around the track. I hope you guys have had as much fun as I have, because this has just been a bop. Let’s please thank all these guys up here.
So, on behalf of the Center, Gary, [01:42:00] Greg, Frank, Joe, Leroy, and Mike. Name became so popular in Binghamton. I was a baller at the time, and somebody made me a pair of heel plates that said Leroy Sneva on them. Are you related to Tom Sneva? Really? Cool. Leroy Van Dyke? Anyway, thank all of you for coming. Thanks to all of you for coming, and thanks very much.
Mr. Robinson has a question. Oh, Mr. Robinson. Yes. I’d like to mention the person who’s not here who made me an announcer for the first time. The link deal can’t fail. And of course, it’s my first opportunity to announce the major events, courtesy of Gary Montgomery and the 1983 Race of Champions in Okinawa.
I want to take a moment to thank each one of these gentlemen for taking time out of their busy schedule. It’s just been a thrill working with all these gentlemen and I respect them immensely. They have left me with memories that will last forever and totally enhanced my [01:43:00] experiences going to the races over the years.
Thanks guys. Thanks everybody. This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motorsports, spanning continents, eras, and race series. The center’s collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.
The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the Center, visit www. racingarchives.
org. This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers. organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of [01:44:00] motorized wheeled land transportation through the modern age and into the future.
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