Deth

Fitness and everything else

Dirt Track Racing

One thing that’s nice about Facebook is you can often find groups with your interests. I had one from East Windsor Speedway show up. That’s where we spent many a Friday night watching the races.

Someone I think my dad worked with raced there. John Malcom is the name I seem to want to remember. If I remember right he did pretty decent too.

Eventually my dad wound up going to P&H diesel where that guy’s car was and he worked on cars. The owner was an old guy who knew everything about racing and they owned several cars.. I only remember his first name being Bill and that could even be wrong. It’s been at least 20 years since I’ve even thought of that place. He had more stories about racing.

We ended up going to Bridgeport on Saturdays eventually for the races. That was a bigger and faster track. Both were fun though and very entertaining to watch. There’s lots of action. Not the same person leading most of the race.

The fastest I saw were the sprint cars that were at Bridgeport the one time. The wings allowed them to go even faster as the wings kept them on the ground.

At some point a friend sponsored my dad to get a car and I guess P&H was to a point involved in that. My dad never did good but he got out there on the track. He would think he went fast but he was essentially lapped on the first lap.

It was very cool to see and think about some of the old names that we’d see at both race tracks. It’s not something I’d want to do on a regular basis like then but if Bridgeport was closer I wouldn’t mind going some Saturday. East Windsor is closed and a development now so that would obviously be out.

One of these days I may look up some of the names I remember from the races back in those days. Billy pauch, Kenny Brightbill, Jimmy Horton.

I did some googling and found some videos of old races from both Bridgeport and East Windsor on YouTube. I didn’t realize how much bigger Bridgeport was but my understanding now is that they’ve shortened the track.