IntheGrooveApril

In the Groove-April 2005

April 6th - The Beal High School Race Car
April 13th - Racing the Crates
April 20th - A Season of Changes
April 27th - Safety First

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April 6th 2005 - The Beal High School Race Car

What did you learn in school? English, math, sciences, geography… boring stuff like that? There are 18 kids in the Transportation Technology Course at H.B. Beal Secondary School who aren’t finding classes quite so dull. Between 10 and 11:10 am each day, they are putting together a race car for the Design component of their program.

This is not a toy race car or a half scale version, but a real late model stock car that will compete in the Nascar Dodge Late Model division at Delaware Speedway before the end of the school year. And the students are enthusiastic. “It will be exciting to see the car racing and say that we worked on it” JJ Orendorff tells me. He and Joel Knapps, both grade 12 students, are busy on the morning of my visit, installing a new fuel cell in the car to meet the requirements of rule changes this season.

Doug Stewart, the teacher responsible for this innovative learning experience works along with the kids; his 27 years of racing knowledge guiding the repairing, rebuilding, and reassembly process. The car which the kids work on now, was originally owned and raced by Doug, who still competes in the same division. “I never get rid of anything” Doug explains “My wife hates it. But I had enough extra stuff around my race car shop to put together a complete car”.

This is the second year that Doug has been involved in this program. The car ran five races last season, piloted by street stock driver Jamie Ramsay, who will likely take on the driving duties again this season. The class watched the video of one of the races from the 2004 season. “He was pretty close to winning before he got wrecked” Orendorff tells me.

When Joel and JJ get the fuel cell in place, Doug comes by to check it out. A half dozen students cluster around the rear of the car. “Is it sitting on the bracing, exactly where you want it?” Doug asks before disappearing to retrieve a welder to tack the cell in place.

The bay doors are open this day; cool spring air dilutes the smell of solvents and fibreglass. Around the front end of the car, Matt Evans works with a sander, smoothing out the repairs to the fibreglass body needed as a result of the contact with the speedway wall which ended the great run the kids watched in the video.

In a classroom connected to the shop, Patrick Perry, Matt Kurra and Jessie Warren are working on an engine for the car. The class spent the entire first semester rebuilding practise engines, but this one is for real. “It is still a small block chev like the ones they were working on” Doug explains. “We just have to be a little more careful with this one”. The students are raising and lowering pairs of pistons, puzzling over the fact that they don’t quite sit flat in the block.

Other projects the students are undertaking in addition to the general overhaul of the car, are repairs to the suspension and interior sheet metal also damaged in the wreck, repainting both the chassis and the body and repairing a small engine dyno which they will use to check out engine performance. Along the way, they are learning shop and automotive skills.

The finishing touch will be decals, car number and perhaps the Beal logo, which will be provided by the school’s graphics department. The car has no formal sponsorship as Doug cannot promise how often it will run, but if you would like to support this program, help with such expenses as tires and fuel is always appreciated. Then you, like the students who worked on the car, can come to the race track to cheer the car on and be a part of a really worthwhile project.

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Racing the Crates

Cole Pearn and Pete Vanderwyst are two very familiar names in the Canadian stock car world. Both began their stock car racing careers at Delaware Speedway, and then went on to race in the Cascar Super Series. Both drivers chose to take time off from racing last season and both are returning to action in the Nascar Dodge Late Model Series at Delaware Speedway later this month.

Cole and Pete will be a two car team; one which showcases the new car and crate engine combination that will transform late model racing in this division beginning this season. Over the winter, Delaware officials in conjunction with racers and local car builder Mike McColl revamped the rules for the late model division allowing such components as rack and pinion steering, quick change rear ends, crate engines and more sleek aerodynamic body styles. The changes were made to make racing in this division more affordable and also to create common ground with other late model divisions throughout Ontario and the States.

It was a Thursday evening when I caught up with Cole at the race shop. Twenty two years old and a top student in the co-op engineering program at Waterloo University, Cole is as interested in putting together his race car as he is in driving it. Consequently, he has spent as much time as possible at the race shop in recent weeks getting the car ready for the upcoming season.

Although Cole grew up racing go-karts, he was surrounded by late models and superlates raced by his father Ron, which looked very similar to the car he is working on now. The new twist with the current late model is the “crate” engine. Built by General Motors rather than by a shop dedicated to building racing engines, this 355 cubic inch V8 engine with aluminium vortec heads and aluminium high rise intake manifold produces 410 horse power. It has a 4 barrel carburetor and 5 ½ inch multidisc clutch.

After 9 years of go-karts, Cole first raced at Delaware in the Cascar Sportsman division when he was sixteen. A three year sponsorship deal with Kubota Canada, signed at the end of his second season, gave him one more year in the Delaware Cascar division, where he won the championship before moving on to the Cascar Super Series in 2002.

By the time his sponsorship agreement with Kubota was up at the end of 2003, Cole was finding it hard to juggle his school/co-op program with the time intense schedule of the Cascar Super Series. He decided to take a year off; to find out what a normal life – one not tied to a racing schedule – might be like. But by mid-summer, he was missing racing and acquired a go-kart once again. Along with several friends, he raced in events around the province for the remainder of the summer. “When you have a race car you always spend so much time thinking about racing, and when you quit, nothing else fills that void” he explains. When the opportunity to race at Delaware in 2005 came along, Cole was ready to take it.

Last Saturday was the first practise day of the new season and Cole and Pete got their first opportunity to check out the speed and handling of their new rides. “I haven’t been this excited about racing in a long time “Pete tells me. “This car is a blast to drive. It feels so stable; a pure race car.”

Pete, who is in his late 30’s, began racing in the street stock division at Delaware in 1993. When he moved to a Cascar late model in 1995, he won the Rookie of the Year award. In 1996, he joined the Cascar Super Series tour where he raced full time until 2002. Now he is returning to late model racing at Delaware with new enthusiasm. “It is great to have the opportunity to be a part of this program ‘cause I believe that, with the crate engines and the more economical cars, this is the future of racing”.

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A Season of Changes

Kevin Bulmer doesn’t hesitate when he is asked what is new at Delaware Speedway for the 2005 season. “Everything” he tells me and then begins to list off the things that are different from last year. “New general manager, new race director, Saturday season opener, increased payouts in all divisions, new rules for late models, new tires in all divisions, new points system for enduros….the list continues covering almost every facet of the speedway’s Friday night and Enduro programs.

It would be an understatement to say that Kevin has been busy since he took over the General Manager’s position at Delaware just after the end of the last racing season. He had a vision of creating an organization that promoted a kinder, gentler way of doing business; one that valued and welcomed the input of all stakeholders from racers to fans to sponsors. In a business historically marked by adversarial relationships between track promoters and racers, this is an approach that has seldom been seen.

Street Stock driver Dave Lawrence acknowledges that there has been a lot of change this year. “The track has been way more open to listening to racers and working to make things better for everyone” Dave tells me “Perhaps it is too much all at once, because nobody really likes change, but there are so many positive changes that I think overall it is a good thing”. This way of thinking is reflected by numerous drivers and team members many of whom use the word “teamwork” to describe the way in which changes came about during the off season.

Kevin wanted big changes to happen. And he certainly got that. What surprised him, he says, was the trickle down effect. When one change was made, many other things had to be adjusted. “If we change the price of hotdogs” he explains “the cash registers need to be adjusted, the price boards in the concession areas need to be changed, any ad copy or scripts for the announcers has to reflect the new price and so on”.

Which is why he is now reciting to me an inventory of things that still need to be completed … from a list that wanders for three 8x10 pages across the bulletin board in his office.

It takes a staff of 80+ to make each Friday night event run smoothly. This includes parking attendants to race and tech officials. Many of those who work at the track will be new employees and may only last a season or two but there are also many, particularly among the officials, scorers and fire/safety crew, who come out year after year because they love the work; several have been with the track for more than 20 years.

The speedway is a busy place on the bright sunny Thursday morning I choose to meet with Kevin and Amy Dugas, the Director of Operations for the speedway. In the air is the hum of a front end loader at work in the pit area; removing the piles of now dirty, partly melted snow that was trucked in several months ago for the Snow Cross. An electrician is on site to repair a damaged wire which has made the scoreboard useless.

In front of the office I meet up with Arlen Scherba and Dave Meldrum, two of the four track owners. They are overseeing roadway repairs and the rebuilding of the wall along the racetrack’s front straightaway. We watch as a dump truck lays down a layer of gravel and ground up asphalt along the roadway through the parking area.

A huge transport truck emblazoned with the COKE logo is manuvering into the shipping bay at the rear of the main concession building. “It takes 147 cases of pop and water to fill up the coolers and pop machines here.” Amy tells me. “I have more ordered for next week because opening weekend is a two day event”. With the Cintas Late Models, Powerade modifieds and Challenger trucks set to go on Saturday afternoon, the pop machines and coolers will need restocking before the first Endurance Race on Sunday.

Amy has been through this chaos before and she is confident that everything will fall into place. “But right now” she tells me “I keep thinking of more things that have to be done. I have lists everywhere.”

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Safety First

Last Friday, with weather reports predicting several days of bad weather, Kevin Bulmer, General Manager of Delaware Speedway made the call to move opening day back a week to April 30th . “It was pretty cut and dry really” Kevin said shortly after the announcement went out. “The radar clearly showed that it was a question of ‘how much?’ rather than ‘if’ there would be precipitation.”

It turned out to be one occasion when the weather reporters weren’t wrong. Saturday, the day the first races were supposed to run, was a wash of grey skies, chilly rain and, yes, wet snow. It was definitely not what anybody had hoped for after the previous two Saturdays of practise in summer-like weather.

Racers and fans who had been eagerly awaiting the chance to get back to competition in the sport they love were disappointed. “I lasted all week waiting, and now I have to wait another week” Cole Pearn, the 22 year old late model driver told me when I caught up with him Friday while he was making final adjustments to his race car. “But there is nothing you can do about the weather. That is just part of racing”.

Unlike Indy cars or Formula One cars, stock cars do not race in the rain. Their slick, no-tread tires hydroplane on the wet track surface and their lexan windshields are made of a material too soft to accommodate the back and forth motion of windshield wipers without damage. This combination of no traction and bad visibility can cause chaos on the racetrack if racing is allowed to continue once rain begins to fall.

And what would racing be without spectators? Only the most loyal come out to races in the cold and when it rains too… well, I’ve been there and it’s not pleasant.

Friday afternoon I also encountered Sean Dupuis and his crew, working on the final set-up of their car at McColl Racing with staffer Jake Thiessen. Sean is another veteran driver returning to late model competition this season after several years off.

The car is perched on four scale pads in a space cleared between the not-yet-completed cars which still take up most of the floor space here. Parts of the set-up need to be done with the driver in the car, so Sean is slouched in the driver’s seat; his cell phone positioned on the dash in case anyone at work needs to reach him. “It’s boring in a race car when you are scaling it” he tells me. “Keep your foot on the brake” someone instructs him. Sean laughs. “I don’t like the brake; I like the gas pedal better.”

Sean is excited about his return to Delaware competition. “I have always liked racing on the track here” he explains. “And the fans are great; there are always lots of fans.” Sean and his crew made the trip from Windsor before the race postponement was announced. Now they will get the car race ready here and in the morning take it to have new decals applied before returning home.

Race tracks make every attempt to run events as scheduled even if there are rain delays. Postponements cause extra expense and wasted time for teams and fans that travel distances to attend events and cancelling a race is a time consuming undertaking; one which Kevin Bulmer describes as “a nightmare really”. Friday, after the announcement went up on the track website and out to radio stations, calls had to be made to drivers, officials, track staff, sponsors, media and suppliers to let them know. It’s was a huge job. “But there wasn’t really an option here” Kevin tells me “If it was just snow” he jokes, “we could have put snowploughs on the fronts of the Nascar Dodge Trucks…but I don’t think the drivers would have gone for that.”

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