Publicity is in hand from Iowa’s famed Knoxville Raceway touting its 16th annual Hall of Fame Induction weekend and Masters Classic sprint-car races May 29-31. Over this long weekend are events for 305, 360 and 410 cubic-inch engine sprint cars. What caught Ye Ed’s eye is the 360 sprint car contest open only to drivers age 50 and over! Seeking a car for this unique event is Johnny Parsons, Jr., whose dad won the 1950 Indy 500.  

When will the American LeMans Series wake up to the fact that its TV coverage does nothing for the hard-core race fan? Saturday’s 12 Hours of Sebring ALMS race was a classic example. Four classes of cars went at it on the famed Florida circuit, but the event was treated — TV wise — as four separate races! Only on occasion was the viewer apprised of which car and driver was the overall leader. Instead, class positions were shown, over and over, with no relevance as to which class leader was also the overall leader. Only infrequently did the streaming video reveal overall race placing. One did — but not nearly often enough. Why not repeat overall standings including LMP 1, LMP 2, GT 1 or GT 2 identification with each driver-car combination? Aside from this standard annual complaint, congratulations to Roger Penske and Porsche for yet another LMP 2 triumph over its bigger LMP 1 brethren in this country’s most important sports car race.

No IndyGo this year, at least for now. The Park & Ride bus service known as IndyGo which has long provided thousands of fans attending the three major races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway each year from downtown locations at Monument Circle, RCA Dome, Indianapolis Zoo and from 43rd & Dabny north of the track, will not be offered this year. New federal guidelines on how public transportation can support local events left IndyGo with too little time to meet the federal compliance regulations. The $3 round-trip service began at 7 a.m. race day and continued until three hours after races ended. But efforts are currently afoot to revive what is known as “the shuttle,” which annually transports some 15,000 fans to the track, and in so doing sharply reduced vehicular traffic.
 
Down in Sarasota, Fla., Joe Hoppen Motorsports, Inc. is busy touting a list of new superchargers for Audi Q7 cars. Also available is a range of performance gear for the Audi S5 4.2-liter 354-horsepower Quattro and Q7 4.2-liter-350 horse Quattro.  

Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue wiggled his way into the cockpit of the Richard Petty Driving Experience No. 43 Dodge on Atlanta Motor Speedway Day to take a few laps in the car on the famed track. It was all part of the pre-race ballyhoo for the recent Kobalt Tools 500 weekend at the track. Rumblings from the AMS front office indicate a date swap with ISC’s Auto Club Speedway in California is under consideration.

With Daytona Int’l Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway being the only speedways requiring carburetor restrictor plates to inhibit speed, Atlanta Motor Speedway is NASCAR’s fastest track. Now a furor over tire problems drivers experienced in the March 9 Kobalt race at AMS might well see NASCAR add that track to its restrictor-plate roster.

The prize money for the three weekend races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, climaxed by the March 9 Kobalt 500, totaled $6,673,848 for the 1,000 miles of weekend racing by  NASCAR’s Craftsman trucks, Nationwide cars and Sprint cuppers! In the Atlanta pits team owner Rick Hendrick was still fuming over the week’s previous race at Las Vegas, insisting NASCAR should not return there until the wall into which Jeff Gordon crashed is improved. The force of Gordon’s late-race crash was so fierce the transmission of the No. 24 Chevy was torn from under the hood. “If teams are asked to spend $8 million each for a car that is a little safer, then we need to fix the damn walls at the track,” Hendrick was quoted. Changes are expected.

Countering all-too-frequent reports of short-track closings throughout the U.S. is the good news of a new track, Death Valley Raceway in Armargosa Valley, Nev., just north of the recently closed Pahrump Valley Speedway. Land prices were given as the reason PVS shuttered. So accolades are going to long-time IMCA modified driver Jason Pike, who with wife Tanya and family purchased a 20-acre land parcel just north of Pahrump that became Death Valley Speedway. Opening day Feb. 9th saw some 60-odd race cars show up at the third-mile clay oval. Opening-day winner was Ronnie Williams of Las Vegas, who outpaced a 23-car field of IMCA modifieds. Until lights are installed in late April twice monthly daytime racing is planned for DVS. The Dwarf Car Nationals April 18-19 is expected to attract entrants from throughout the country. Weather being what it is in southern Nevada, the track will close after its July 26th meet and reopen on Sept. 6. 

“Congestion Pricing.” That’s the fee people have been paying every day since 2003 to drive their cars into downtown London — with a similar charge being weighed by New York City for entry below 60th St. The charge made the news recently when the daily London tab jumped to $49 for cars labeled “gas guzzlers.” This is four times the daily fee London currently charges drivers of less-thirsty cars.

Does he know something? Dean Kessel, the director of Sprint’s NASCAR marketing, recently quit to become director of the Victory Junction Gang, the camp created in North Carolina by the Petty family for special-needs children. Sprint’s Director of Sports Marketing Steve Gaffney will assume Kessel’s duties in overseeing the NASCAR sponsorship.

The new deal officials of the Milwaukee Mile crafted with the Wisconsin State Fair Park is said to enhance the future of auto racing at the famed raceway. Lower fees were negotiated and an agreement to lease — rather then buy — an adjacent 6.35-acre parcel for a proposed real estate development was effected.

Carroll Shelby is playing tough with those running his licensed Shelby American Automobile Club for not playing by his rules. The retired 85-year-old California racing driver recently yanked the license of the 33-year-old Boston-based club, involved with Shelby for nine years, after it failed to turn over all financial records of deals involving Shelby cars. The difficulty has been in and out of the courts with suits and countersuits filed.

FROM THE NSSN STAFF

Former Indy-car driver Lyn St. James recently held her 14th annual Women in the Winner’s Circle Foundation Driver Development Program at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Indianapolis. Twenty-three female racers between the ages of 12 and 26 participated in the second phase of the program. The first phase was held in Phoenix in November. The participants, including stock-car racing, road racing, open-wheel racing and go karts, received special instruction. All are invited to phase three of the program in June, focusing on the on-track elements of racing.

Kurt Busch was the top finishing Dodge driver in the 2007 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series standings. What was his reward? Well, his latest reward was a new Dodge Viper, and not just any Viper. Busch was presented the keys to the 25,000th Dodge Viper to roll off the line at Chrysler’s Conner Avenue Assembly Plant. Chrysler Chairman Bob Nardelli was on hand to personally fork over the keys to the 2004 NASCAR titlist.

Two hundred miles per hour at Darlington Raceway? NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers Jeff Gordon, Ryan Newman and Greg Biffle took part in the first Goodyear tire test on the newly repaved Darlington Raceway. To the surprise of everyone, including hard-working Darlington Raceway President Chris Browning, the cars were hitting 200 miles per hour at the end of the backstretch on the 1.366-mile superspeedway. “We had some of the telemetry numbers from the teams and I couldn’t believe it when they told me they were hitting 200 mph at the end of the backstretch,” Browning said. The NASCAR boys get down to business for real at The Track Too Tough To Tame May 10. Call 1-866-459-RACE.

Petty Enterprises has donated a pair of retired No. 43 NASCAR stock cars to the Virginia Institute for Performance Engineering and Research, which is operated by the Virginia Tech Foundation and affiliated with the Institute for Advance Learning and Research located at Virginia Int’l Raceway. Both cars were made obsolete by NASCAR’s move to  the Car of Tomorrow this season.