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January 21, 1998 Jane Smith Saying Goodbye
This article is written with much love and sadness for all the past and
present runabout drivers at Orlando SpeedWorld and New Smyrna Speedway. After next Friday, January 29th, there will be no runabouts at Orlando SpeedWorld. And at the conclusion of SpeedWeeks at New Smyrna Speedway, the class will also end there. All drivers must go up in class or stop racing and a new class called "Strictly V-8 Stock" will appear.
I cannot tell you what year the runabouts started at these tracks but I can
remember the first races I saw with them. At that time, I was impressed by
two young men racing each other, Timmie Morton and Ian Hoffman. Quite a
few times I remember seeing Timmie on the roof of his car, upside down but
fine. Ian became a winner in runabouts and moved up to Sportsman class.
The runabouts was the novice class designed to let the inexperienced driver
try racing cheaply. But as we all know, no class in racing is cheap. When a
driver started to win alot and showed he was no longer novice, then he had to
move up. Some did and others just had to stop racing since they could not
afford to spend the money it takes to build a bomber, sportsman, etc.
The only problem with this class was that you were running stock cars and if
that stock car came with a 305 and another with a 403, then the 403 would
almost always win. To make this class a fair class for all, the best solution would have been to say that you could only run a certain size engine and that was it. But since that was not the case, many compliants of cheating were made and finally the decision came to dissolve the class.
Hopefully the new Strictly V-8 Stock class will be as exciting to watch as the
runabouts were and hopefully all the new drivers will be just as dedicated to
racing as these runabout drivers are. With great sadness, we will say goodbye
to some forever since they cannot afford to race other cars. And others, you
will see again when they have finished their new cars.
Runabouts, you did good, I will not forget any of you. Thank you for being
such a dedicated group of drivers and friends. -Jane ********************************************************* January 14, 1999
Input Needed for 1999 Happy l999 racing fans. I hope your holidays were good and that l999 will be a GREAT year for all of you. I know for my family and myself, it will be a
challenging year for us. We will be moving up to bomber division for my
husband and making a car for my daughter to drive. Working on two new cars, will definitely keep us busy.
Because we are beginning a new year, I would like to ask you all a question if I might. Is there any special driver or race that you would like covered? Is
there any certain driver that you would like to read an article about? I am
going to try and cover as many races as I can from Lakeland which includes
Hooter's All Pro and now a new Slim-Jim AllPro race. I know alot of these
drivers are not our Florida Stock Car Drivers but they are racing in our state
and that makes them Florida drivers for a day. If I could, I would let you meet all of them but that is not possible so is there any you really want to see on our web-site.
Also, if you know of a driver that has a special story on how he/she began
racing, I would be happy to see it. All our guys deserve to be known no
matter whether they are Late Model drivers or 4 cylinder bomber. And I would love to hear about family racers - the ones that hand down the car from generation to generation.
With SpeedWeeks almost here, I am going to do my best to cover every night of them for you and hopefully have the results up the next day. This will be a challenge especially with my six year old wanting to go with me but not being able to because of school. But I will do my best for you. And when you can, please let me know what you would like to see most this year. Your opinion does count with me.
-Jane
************************************************************* January 1999
1999 -START YOUR ENGINES
Florida stock car fans have a very good year to look forward to in l999.
Whether it be dirt or asphalt round track racing that you like the most, you
can find it all in our fair state. Although Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola
does not know yet whether they will run this year or not, we have tracks close to most all areas of Florida. We even have a NASCAR race added to the schedule in Homestead, Florida. Now you will have the Daytona 500, the Pepsi 400 and the Homestead race to get your fill of NASCAR.
And you can see Swamp Buggy races now too at two tracks, how lucky can we get! We have Busch races, Craftsman Truck races, Slim-Jim All Pro races, Goody's Dash Races, Hooters AllPro races, ASA, and of course all our Florida series races.
We have a new Florida Late Model series - Florida Sunbelt Late Models that
will run this year. If you like racing, you can definitely get your fill and
see every type there is.
And we have the Florida Nationals and the Gator Nationals coming soon in drag racing. And who can forget our "Night of Fire" at the Orlando Drag Strip. And yes, you can like both kinds of racing - round track or straight l/4 or l/8 mile racing. And don't forget the Mud Bog races, we have them also all around our state.
l999 will be one heck of a year for stock car, drag, swamp buggy, mud bogs,
and dirt trackers. I hope to sample a little of all of them and hopefully I
will run into some of our karnac fans. So fans, drivers, friends - START YOUR ENGINES - IT IS TIME TO GO RACING. -Jane Smith |
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