This is a photo of me taken around 1958 or '59 when I was starter at White Lake speedway, Sullivan County, NY. After a two year driving career with unspectacular results and high cost, finally figured out a way to enjoy the sport without the expense of owning the car. Heck! I even got paid! Note: in the background, the 1946 Ford pickup flat towing the race car.
Cool, man...Reminds me of where I first started going to races as a kid in the mid 70's with my dad - The Danbury Fair Racearena...What a place that was...Some genius bought it and tore it down to build a mall
http://bump-drafts.com/2009/03/12/986/
So climb aboard for a little trip back into racing history as get to racing’s roots- as Danbury Racearena is but one of many fine local short tracks that have dotted the American landscape. The following post by former NASCAR Nationwide Series mechanic Patrick Reynolds has him catching up with one of his byhood racing heroes- Denis Pierce.
Enjoy!
“The first racetrack I ever visited was Connecticut’s Danbury Racearena. The one third mile asphalt oval hosted modified stock car races on Saturday nights. Not anyone could just show up and race. These meets were organized and officiated by the S.N.Y.R.A.
The Southern New York Racing Association originally sanctioned races in New York, but during the 1950s the club settled into weekly competition at the Danbury Fairgrounds just over the state line. My first visit was in June of 1976. I was seven years old and one night changed what I did with the rest of my life.
The parade of brightly colored modified Gremlin, Vega, and Pinto bodied stockers slowly moved from the bright white pit gate in turn four onto the speedway to begin a warm-up session. The view of early evening summer sunlight reflecting off the paint jobs, the roar of unmuffled small block V eights and the smell of the concession stand’s fried dough are still with me. I fell in love with auto racing that night and never fell out.
I enjoyed six seasons as a weekly race fan before the closing of the fairgrounds and speedway in 1981 to construct the Danbury Fair Mall.
With the track being run by the S.N.Y.R.A. every driver and pit crew member was local. Most people in the stands knew someone in the pit area. Drivers and mechanics became community heroes.
On my recent trip to Daytona Speedweeks I made a few visits to the New Smyrna Speedway for their nightly competition. I had the privilege of speaking with Denis Pierce a three time Racearena feature event winner. Pierce, now 55, races in the weeklong event and calls it his only entry for an entire season. He and his wife Geralyn reside in East Hartford, CT roughly an hour from the former Fairgrounds site, and makes the long tow to vie with local Florida drivers in an I.M.C.A. style modified stock car.
Leaning against the front stretch pit wall in New Smyrna’s infield we lamented the now closed Fairgrounds and present shopping mall location. We also spoke of racing’s past and present.
“It was definitely special.” Pierce begins referring to the Danbury track. “As kids we grew up around the Fairgrounds, we went there on school passes, we looked forward to it, and the Danbury Fair was everything.
“Then as I realized my father (Ev Pierce, fifth place on the all time Danbury modified win list) raced there… to miss a race week when I was eight, nine, ten years old would make me cry. I had such an ambition to be part of being there and watch that.
“It was like a kid waiting to turn sixteen to get his license; well I had to wait to turn twenty one to start racing there.” Club rules at the time required drivers to be twenty one years old. “I actually believed I started a few months early” he admitted with a laugh “but I was turning of age later that year.”
“It was a legendary track.” Pierce continued. “On bad nights we would get 7,000 people and up to 10,000 on a good night.” Personally I remember P.A. announcer Paul Baker asking the crowd to “get to know their neighbors a little bit better” and move in tighter as more fans filled the grandstands to capacity.
“Literally at one time my father made more money racing than he did at his job. And I won some feature events there that paid more than my week’s pay too. In the 1970s it wasn’t uncommon to win a $1500 purse.” The S.N.Y.R.A. policy was to race for a purse of forty percent of the front gate. He recalled a 1979 runner up finish in the season ending Racearena 100 lap event that paid over $2500, an impressive payout for the time period. “It was a fabulous place. It will never be replaced. I miss it tremendously.”
I recalled my own memory of how withholding the Danbury races from me on Saturday was an excellent way to improve my behavior in the third grade. Pierce stated “I took it as a punishment when we would drive over there, almost get to the gate and they would cancel on a rainy night. All week I couldn’t get my mind off it. You just waited for Saturday night.”
He added “It was a fast track and our cars were some of the best in the northeast. They were homebuilt cars; they were from the heart of racers. Cars that were built in guy’s own garages. We as racers built our own cars, we built our own motors and everything was crafted by ourselves. Everything was from our own hands and our own minds. Nobody bought the car for me, nobody built the car for me, and the reward was so much greater. Now you can go buy professionally built cars and engines and that just isn’t what I am accustomed to.”
The speedway was a “tough, competitive place. Our features were twenty five lappers and that was a hard charge to come through the field.” Danbury used heats and consolation races to qualify the drivers for the feature race. All were lined up from a point handicapping procedure that made the top competitors come from the back. “It was a hard track to work your way up through, and not enough time in a twenty five lap race to win it. It was a great achievement to win at that track.
“It was a big part of our family life with my father running there as many years as he did. I really hated to see it go, it was just a shame.”
When asked what he thought of modern grassroots racing he responded “I think the key thing is keep the perspective that it is a family event. People are eliminated by the dollar. I compare it to going to a movie and people having to pay high dollar and nobody is sitting in the theatre. I have sat at a movie with my boys and nobody else is there. What is wrong with this?
“If you come to the racetrack and instead of charging twenty to get in make it twelve dollars. If you have 6,000 people where you only have 2,500 now you are far ahead. Money drives things and sometimes the driven people lose track of what supports things.
“So many sports like baseball have made it so high dollar to get in people can’t afford to go there with their families. The thing is to keep it a family oriented sport and allow people to come and fill those stands. I come from a family of nine children and if you wanted to take the whole family to the racetrack for thirty dollars a head, it wasn’t going to happen.” Pierce has two grown sons, Joshua and Mario, and paid attention to family oriented activities.
“A packed stadium outweighs anything else. It means more than only 1500 people at thirty dollars a head because those people are experiencing something that they are going to tell others about. Parents talk, children talk, and that is not a bad age to get kids interested in racing. And next time if they can bring their friends, a packed stadium is always the best.”
“I haven’t gotten it (racing) out of my system yet” he said with another laugh. He and partner Glenn Edwards “…come here to Florida. It’s (New Smyrna Speedway) a nice facility. It’s tough to come here once a year and join in and be competitive right off the get-go but our heart’s in it, we have fun with it, and it’s a great time too. We would like to run on a weekly basis but our budget doesn’t allow it. So we pool ourselves for this one event. I would like to stay engaged in racing for more than this one event down here but it is all about finances.”
He remarked about his I.M.C.A. style modified that “…there is a great opportunity for these cars on Connecticut tracks if they (speedway operators) would just open their minds. It is a chance to get the home (racecar) builders back into the system. There are a lot of them out there and they could have many more people in the stands involved in the races. There are a lot of these cars out there too.”
In my eyes the Racearena competitors were heroes and men I admired. The fairgrounds closed when I was just twelve so I never had a chance to participate beyond being a fan. But when racing conversations come up in the southwest corner of Connecticut, the communities have as much pride in their heroes like Chick Stockwell and Kenny Webb, as Rome, New York can have in Richie Evans and Jerry Cook.
There is a website,
www.danbury-racearena.com that serves as a great scrapbook and is dedicated to keeping the memory of this racetrack alive. Among the names current NASCAR fans and new visitors will recognize are Randy LaJoie the two time Nationwide Series champion who got his start there in the sportsman division. His father Don was the all time leading modified event winner.
Former Sprint Cup Series competitor Jerry Nadeau’s father is found in the record books as well, also a modified division driver.
The Danbury Fair Racearena was a colorful bullring full of atmosphere and life. The huge crowds were passionate for their favorite driver and every Saturday night race was a happening. Pierce summed up “Those were great times. The memories are irreplaceable.”
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{ 4 comments }
1 janine March 12, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Patrick, another good one. It was worth the wait. I went to my first race at the Danbury Racearena when I was 3 and never missed a night either. Thanks for the fond memories.
2 kaptainsteve July 16, 2009 at 4:56 am
Nothing, I mean NOTHING will ever compare to the Danbury Fair Racearena, not any local tracks or even Nascar. Denis was a great driver at the Racearena. He, and his dad, Big Ev, had a really nice smooth groove and were clean racers. Denis is right about how to pack the stands, yet these newer promoters just don’t get it, and they never will, it’s too late for them.
3 jack ely November 18, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Ive been to over 100 diffrent tracks all types and sizes
i have yet seen any track come close to the old danbury
racearena great competitors,fans,first class venue.
its to bad we lost that place i hope the people behind the
greed got there dues. they really sucked.
4 dave wilson March 13, 2011 at 6:12 am
i started going to the races when i was 4 or 5 it was back in 63 or 64 . iv raced at some tracks in midgets over my days . but as far as a person in the stands and in a race car danbury was the best race track ever . it was a well groomed track fom the stands to the pits to the track and infield danbury was spotless. i rember the block wall on the infield it was hit every saterday night and it look like new the next week. the drivers were good to there fans .and the fans were loyal. paul baker was a big asset to the racearena he new every driver an what thay had for dinner for the week. all the drivers from dick dyke to chick stockwell were great drivers. . i thank them all for for great times and wonderfull childhood memories . hay ely i know what you are saying it is so so true.
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