Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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Used to see coupes like this back in the 1960s at Eastside Speedway, Waynesboro, Va.

Moved back North in 1966, went to  2 paved races, lost interest

44 years later, started going to sprint car races.... little hillbilly Clinton County Raceway,  (Lock Haven?)Pa..... Gravel was there... I was shocked that a guy from Watertown , Ct  raced sprint cars....

Those are similar to what we always called modifieds around here. Knoxville claled them super modifieds, but there wasn't much super about them. The Knoxville guys like Earl Wagner, Johnny Babb and others would came up a few years to the Clay Conty Fair to run in September. The Fair had one of the biggest modified events in the midwest. One hundred car fields were not uncommon. The Fair also ran the IMCA sprint cars, but the modifieds were the sell out event. Anyway, the Knoxville guys actually struggled against the Jackson, Sioux Falls and Fairmont  regulars. From the time I was six or seven those races at the CCF were my highlight every year. Three modified days.....the Junior and Senior Tri-State Chamionships is what it was billed as. But drivers came from five states and even beyond. Not sure when exactly, but I discovered the daily paper's archives had been put on micro film and was available at the public library for viewing. The films went well back in to the twenties. So I thought about doing a free lance article on the Fair and the modified days. As I gathererd information on those races and the Fair, I discovered something pretty interesting about the period of the sixties. The modifieds were actually turning as fast of laps or even faster than the IMCA sprints were. There were no time trials for the modifieds, but by breaking down the heat races run by both groups, the lap times emerged. If a race had any sort of flag, yellow or red, the race was considered not timed....N/T. I thought that was pretty amazing, really, that a bunch of midwest hobby racers were building cars and running as fast as the sprints. Gradually as the sixties came to an end the modifieds transformed in to sprint cars. At first, thay had cut down tin bodies of cars from the thirties, but underneath they were sprints. So that's how I got hooked on the sprints.....starting back in the fifties. Still hooked to this day.

Yea, where I went they had "hobby" , "Sportsmen" & "modifieds". Hobbies were stock jalopies, sportsmen were flathead    V-8s & Sixes, modifieds were "run whatcha brung". Plus points leader started in the BACK of the feature... believe it or not, Smokey Stover won 22 out of 24 races in 1962 starting from the back! It was great.... wild crowd, either pro or anti Smokey. I was in my early teens & not aware of it, but now I suspect there was plenty of moonshine consumed...

There's  great self published book about Shenandoah Valley dirt track racing (I'll look it up) & author says Smokey went up to Williams Grove & won. But I searched their website, asked around at EMMR museum & no proof could be found....

"Tales from the Track" by Steve Strosnider

I think I got it on Amazon, but its not available anymore. You might find a copy somewhere if you look hard enough....

Looks like a good book to read to add to my racing collection. I found it on ebay here. Less than $30.

Good for you! Its especially cool for someone who saw all the racers he mentions

I had forgotten about some of them, but he brought back memories

Same author has a book about bands that played in the Shenandoah Valley back in the day.... but i was too young to rock out back then