A view from behind the Microphones (Racing Announcers)

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Brake Fix's History of Motorsportsseries is brought to you in part
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Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
I wanted to give you a heads up before wehead into this episode that we did have

(00:23):
some technical issues with the audio.
We've done our best to make correctionsso that it's easier to listen to, but
unfortunately, you know, there's alwayschallenges with internet connection,
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Please, by all means, sitback and enjoy this episode.
The content in is amazing, but ourapologies for the quality right up front.

(00:45):
My name is Tom Wiedeman and I'm the newexecutive director at the Motor Racing
Research Center, still under warranty.
I'm incredibly impressed and incrediblyexcited about today's conversation.
To see these six gentlemen alltogether here to talk about their
careers in racing is pretty amazing.

(01:05):
And so it's my honor tointroduce our speakers today.
We've got Joe Morata, we've got RoySilva, Gary Montgomery, Greg Ricks,
Mike Paz, and Frank DelVecchio.
What a team.
And now, Kip.
We advertise this asthe men behind the mics.

(01:28):
You're going to have the sixreal good men behind the mics
and the novice behind the mics.
My dad took me to WatkinsGlen when I was a kid.
That was my first race and Iwas hooked right from the start.
If you would ask me when I got home,what I wanted to be when I grew up, it
would be a race car driver, flat out.
No questions asked.
As I got older, it became easilyapparent that that was a career

(01:50):
path I would not be taking.
I had no real mechanical aptitude.
Eyesight isn't the greatest andmost importantly, I had no money.
What I decided to do instead.
Because it was imminently cheaper,was to become a real good spectator.
And over the years I'vebecome a real good spectator.
But what appealed to me aboutracing from day one is the same
stuff that appeals to me now.

(02:11):
It's the whole visceralapproach to racing.
It's the image of the cars, both onthe pace lap as they come around the
grandstand, as well as flat out racing.
It's the sound of a raceengine at full song.
It's the smell of the racing fuel.
Give me five hours in the grandstandsat Oswego smelling methanol fumes.
I am a very, very happy kid.

(02:33):
If I get back home at two in themorning and my ears are still ringing
and I can still smell methanol,it has been a very good night.
And it was also that Voice from abovethe announcer, the guy who was telling
me what was happening on the track,but probably equally as importantly,
what was happening off the track,the fellow who was weaving this whole

(02:53):
storyline for the balance of the day orthe evening, whatever the case may be.
We don't have six good announcers up here.
We have six great announcers up here.
Joe Morata, the voice of Syracusefor 44 years at Super Dirt Week.
Roy Silva, beginning his 52nd year.
Think about that.

(03:14):
Oswego is beginning their,what Roy, 66th year?
66 years Oswego has run.
for 52.
And I will tell you honestly, Roy soundsthe same today as he did 45 years ago.
Why does that make me feel old?
Anyway, Roy sounds the same todayas he did 45 years ago when I went

(03:35):
to that track for the first time.
Gary Montgomery, who for a number ofyears was the voice, or one of the
voices, on the Motor Racing Network.
And you do not get on theMotor Racing Network without
being excellent at your craft.
Mike Paz, someone named him theVoice of God, who announced at nine
different NASCAR tracks over the years.
Apparently Mike can't holda job, so he's announced it.

(03:58):
Frank DelVecchio, who is actuallymore our racer turned announcer.
He's going to speak about that.
But Frank DelVecchio, and lastbut certainly not least, Greg
Ricks, the voice of Lime Rock.
I have never been to Lime Rock, but,Trust me, sitting here as I do, we get
people in here all the time who, it'salways a toss up between WGI or Lime
Rock as to what their favorite track is.

(04:18):
Greg's not simply the voice ofLime Rock because he's announced
a number of other tracks as well.
When we first set this up, Iemailed each of these gentlemen
half a dozen different questions.
So I thought we'd kind of startout by doing my questions.
So we'll get that out of the way.
We'll open it up for stories.
I know that's why you came here is tohear stories from all these guys, and
then we'll throw it open to you folks.

(04:39):
So to begin the day, let's um,start with my first question.
That was, how did youinitially get into the sport?
How many years have you been doing it?
Was there any mentor orgentleman that you tried to model
your announcing style after?
And what keeps you in the sport?
So why don't we start with Mike?

(05:00):
We'll just go down the road.
It came from public addressannouncing for football and
basketball at my hometown high school.
I was PA announcer for thosetwo, had started in 70 and 71.
And from an announcing standpoint forracing, I would go to the Crawford
County fairgrounds, which is inMeadville, Pennsylvania, my hometown.
Joey Chitwood was there.

(05:20):
How many people got intoracing or automobile stuff?
Because they didn't show.
He was there.
I've made it every year.
They had a star car race and I was in PA.
Well, like I said, they broughtme up to this crazy fairgrounds.
Well, I called the crow's nestinside this huge grandstand.
Not as big as Syracuse, obviously, but.
They put me out there for my first race.
And from there it was DJ of music.

(05:42):
I didn't get a chance to get back intoracing until about 14, 15 years later.
Okay.
And how many years haveyou been race announcing?
Did you try to adapt anybody's style orhave any kind of mentor when you first
got in and what keeps you involved today?
I don't think there was any one person.
They tried to mimic, there wereseveral obviously, but here's the deal.
I'm a car guy and have been,so I was three years old.

(06:05):
So with car love usually comes racing.
It has to follow.
It was a natural put two things together.
Okay.
Excellent.
Right.
I started in racing when I was seven.
My uncle owned a race car and ranat the Oswego Speedway back in
the old A and B modified days.
I went every week with him.
I don't think over the course of thetime I started to go there, I probably

(06:28):
haven't missed 12 races in my entire life.
First race I announced there was in 1964.
I was working at one of thelocal radio stations, WOSC.
They decided they were goingto do a live coverage of the
International Classic that year.
Well, Roy knows racing, sowe'll have Roy do the race.
I had never done a sports event at all.
I did the race from the inside of turnnumber one, standing on top of a cube van.

(06:53):
200 laps of turning around.
I was substantially illby the time it was over.
The next year, Harry Caruso, whoowned the track, decided he was going
to Institute and infield announcer.
And again, I was still working at WOACand I had kind of a guardian angel
there by the name of Wally Tucker.

(07:14):
And Harry went to Wally andsaid, We want to have an infield
announcer, we want you to do it.
And Wally said, I don't know muchabout racing, how about having
Roy do it, cause he knows racing.
And so I became the infield announcerat the Oswego Speedway along with Wally.
Harry decided to hire both of us.
We wore these stupid little blueblazers and a narrow little tie
and white shirts and blue slacks.
The next year, Jack Burgesswas going to go on vacation.

(07:36):
He had an announcer upstairs withhim, his second banana by the name
of Pauly Legault, Leo Legault.
They went to Wally and said,Jack's going to be on vacation.
We want you to come upstairs andbe the co announcer with Pauly.
And Wally said, I don't know muchabout racing, have Roy do it.
So I went upstairs, and that nightI was doing the co announcing.
We alternate races.

(07:58):
There were three heat races atthe time, two semi finals, the
consolation event, and a feature.
Just one classic car.
So, at the end of the heat races,Harry came in and said, Poli,
you're gonna do the consolation,I'm always gonna do the feature.
And the next year, Polly becamean usher, and I moved upstairs,
and Wally Tucker left the infield.

(08:18):
In the 52 years, this is my52nd year announcing there.
The year I started to announcethere, I moved out of Oswego.
I moved to Ithaca, then I movedto Millport, uh, down into the
Binghamton area, the Hudson Valley.
Spent 10 years in North Carolina.
Seven years on Cape Cod, finallymoved back to the Oswego area in 2007.
In my 51 total years announcingthere, I've missed two races.

(08:39):
One due to a family situation andone due to a business situation.
The person that obviously had themost effect on me was Jack Burgess.
Jack was the announcer there.
The thing about Jack was he didn'ttry to He let you learn from him.
He was, he was wide open togiving you suggestions, whether
you patterned yourself afterhim or just learned from him.

(09:02):
He was very, very good, very,very talented at helping other
people become announcers.
So that's the guy that, if Iemulated anybody, would be Jack.
He was a sensational announcer.
And what keeps you there?
Hot dogs.
Hot dogs.
She had a lot of hot dogs.
Hot dogs.
Hot dogs.
That's it.
There have been several times over thecourse of the time I've been there that

(09:22):
I have given serious consideration tonot being there anymore, and the two
worst cases were the deaths of GaryWitter, which was the most violent.
Long lasting crash I've ever seen in mylife and the death of Jimmy Champine.
In the case of Gary Witter I hadto continue announcing the race
even though we knew at the timehe had perished in the crash.

(09:45):
In the case of Jimmy we knew hehad been taken to the hospital when
I found out overnight after theraces were over that he had passed.
In both of those cases if I had nothad to go back and finish the next
day I probably would have quit,then I had the off season and was
able to regroup and stayed with it.
I say that because I love it.
I'm a great race fan, whether I'mannouncing the race or like tomorrow
I'm going to Utica Long for the 2020s.

(10:06):
I'm just a good race fan.
To me, to get paid to go and watch arace, you don't get any better than that.
Shh, don't give our secret away.
That's right.
I will say one thing.
I have never announced arace without getting paid.
With two exceptions.
And that's when the promoter sniffed me,

(10:27):
Mr.
Murata.
I got started in 1949.
My dad took me to the wasn'tcalled the Moody mile back then.
It was called New York state fair mile andwent to the triple A championship races.
And wow, I didn't know anythingexisted beyond baseball,
football, hockey, whatever.
And I saw these champ cars out on thespeedway and I said, this is unbelievable.

(10:49):
But then I heard this voice.
And this guy's name was Chrissy Konivacki.
And I says, wow, this guy is really great.
I didn't know what he was talking about.
But boy, I gotta tell ya, I justswallowed up everything on that day.
And I guess I wanted to become arace driver at the end of that day.
But that Chrissy Konivacki voicecontinued for many, many years.

(11:12):
Many years later, I was asophomore in high school.
I had a high schoolteacher by the name of Mrs.
LaCasse.
And Mrs.
LaCasse said to me, she says, youknow, you've got a good voice.
You are going to be in theOptimist Oratorical Contest.
And I says, no I'm not.
And she says, oh yes you are.
She said, you're going to be inthe auditorium at 7am tomorrow

(11:33):
morning for your first rehearsal.
So, I didn't say nothing.
I come home.
My mother says to me, So, you'regoing to be in the oratorical contest.
No, I'm not.
And she said, Yes, you are.
Now, that was the year I was scheduled.
I was going to turn 16 a couplemonths later, and I was going
to get my driver's permit.
And there wasn't anything more than Iwanted than getting that driver's permit.

(11:56):
I had to move those wheels.
My mother said, if you're notin that auditorium tomorrow, you
don't get your driver's permit.
Well, the next morning at 7 a.
m.
I'm in there and everybody is lined up.
There were folks going to talkabout the future of a nursing
career, future of space, future of adoctor's degrees, and all this stuff.

(12:17):
And I had to pick a topic.
So I picked a topic calledOrganized Hot Rod Clubs.
And everybody looked atme and laughed at me.
I said, okay, I'm going to fix you.
So I appeared on a stagevery, very similar to this.
And I won it and I won the regionalcontest and I finished out on fourth
or fifth in the state contest.
But I liked the sound of my voice andI love talking about hot rods . So

(12:42):
anyways, I still had that dream thatI was gonna become a race car driver.
And I did build a racecar, but I was terrible.
I think I would go down a lap everythree laps when I ran at Weeds Sport,
and maybe a lap every two laps when Iran at Fulton, which was then asphalt.
So one Sunday night I wentto Weeds, sport Speedway.
And as they were starting to run thequalifying heats, it started to rain.

(13:05):
And they brought out all the equipment.
So I went over and I brought aGator Racing News and I read it.
And I was also going to putit on my head for a protector.
And I had hair back then, by the way.
I open up the column and I seeunder Dave Wright's column.
Wanted.
Announcer.
Fulton Speedway.
Call 592 7005.
Bub Benway.

(13:26):
Wow, I can do that.
Well, my car needed a new motor, andI says, you know, maybe this is the
time I'll just sit out for the nextpart of the year and save up my money,
because I wanted to get paid too, right?
So I call up Bob Benway, and I saidto him, Bob, I says, I saw your
ad in the Gator News, and he says,have you ever announced before?
Sure, he swear, oh I'd never been inthe service and I was never in Alaska,

(13:50):
but I told him, yeah when I was in theAir Force, I was stationed in Alaska
and I announced that a track up there.
So he says, come on up.
So I went up there on a Monday night,turned on the PA system, gave me
something to read, he walked backinside, he says, how much do you want?
I says, what do you pay?
Now, if you knew Bob Benway,he says, I didn't ask you that.

(14:12):
I said, well, I don't know whatyou, he says, how about if I pay
you 25 bucks a night to announce,wow, I get in for free too?
Maybe a hot dog.
And he says, and I'll pay you10 a night to do the story.
Do the story.
He says, yeah, write it all up andthen my wife will type it up and it'll
be in the Gator in the area in theNational Speed Sport News the next week.

(14:32):
I said, well, okay, I'll do that.
So the following Saturdaynight I show up and I still
remember who won the first race.
Dutch Hold won the modifieds.
Jimmy Colvell won the late model raceand who did I pattern myself after
a guy by the name of Jack Burgess.
I remember the way he usedto do lineups and the way he
called the race and everything.
So I called the race and at the endof the night, Buck Benway came in

(14:55):
and he handed me that free hot dog.
And he said, you did a good job, kid.
And handed me the 25 bucks,that was the most important.
So from there I went on and I finisheda year out there and continued to
announce there for the next 7 8 years.
I announced at Spencer Speedway.
And then I ran into a guy bythe name of Glenn Donnelly.
That started our marriageon the dirt circuit.

(15:17):
In between that time, I startedannouncing at Rolling Wheels Raceway.
I was the first announcerever at Rolling Wheels.
That got me started betweenChrissy Konamacki, Jack Burgess,
and my good friend Roy Sova.
That got me going intothe world of announcing.
So 25 bucks and a free hot dog.
25 bucks, a free hot dog,and yeah, that was it.
It was a cheap date.

(15:38):
Yes, that was a cheap date.
Well, I bought your breakfastthis morning, so quiet.
Laughter
I came in absolutely backwardsto the rest of these guys.
I did my first driver's school in 1968.
My first race is in 1969.
I've been running formula cars about 1980.

(16:01):
The track announcer at Briar MotorsportPark, which is now New Hampshire
International, didn't show up.
So they tagged me to About half ofthe races, I was politically incorrect
enough so that it was ended by announcingcareer for the next 15 or 20 years or so.
In the 90s I started running theFirehawk series along with the Escort

(16:22):
series, some Formula cars, some GT.
Guys that are here todayended up being my mentors.
Al Robinson, Mike Paz, JimMueller, who's not here.
What I learned from Jim is,you can't say that on the mic.
That's mostly what I learned from Jim.
A couple of guys from Canada, TomNatchew and his sidekick Jim Martin.

(16:44):
And I'd go up to the booth and Iwould do a little color commentary,
get out of the race car and kindof fill in with what was going on.
That grew until about the late nineties.
In fact, you weren't there that weekend.
I don't think it was the Lime Rock.
It was the Trans Am racethat Lou Gelati won.
I was there.
Okay.
Well, you just didn't notice me.

(17:05):
I was the guy holdingthe microphone for you.
No, no.
Tom Natchew was actually announcingthat race because he was, I guess,
the series announcer at the time.
Come on up in the booth and, youknow, we'll tell everybody you
don't have a ride this weekend.
I remember that in Lime Rock it alwaysrains, and it doesn't rain for very long.
Rain started as soon as the race started.
The guy that I had raced with a lotof years, Paul Hacker, is up on the

(17:29):
hill, and he's got a headset, and he'stalking to Lou Gelati, and I know that.
I'm saying to the crowd and tonaturalize it all right now is telling
Lou to come in and change two tires.
Even though they got rain tires,that's because you can only change two
at a time and he's going to come in.
He's going to change the two dry tires.
It's going to go out a couple more laps.
He's going to come in andchange the other two tires.

(17:51):
Now he's got four dry tires on.
It's a wet track.
And he's going to win the raceby three quarters of a lap.
The rest is history.
The rest is history.
The track dried out.
He won the race bythree quarters of a lap.
And Natchel goes, well,you've got to be in the booth.
So, from that, it just kind of expanded.
We ended up doing a lot of racesall over the country, not only

(18:12):
driving the race cars, but whatever Icould, I'd actually try and do both.
A lot of times I'd jump out of the carand go up into the booth with Al Robinson.
A lot of nights we did theDaytona 24 hour together.
Al the Prince of Darkness wouldhandle the whole night shift.
I'd go up there and hang around withhim and do a little bit of announcing
and the phone would ring right outand said, Gee, everybody's asleep.

(18:34):
So can you come down and drive?
I'll be right back.
I'll and a half.
So I'd go dow car and come on back.
I k when I said frank wasour that is really true.
Frank
500 races and in 114 different cars.

(18:55):
While Mike can't hold a job at anyone NASCAR track, Frank wads up
about a bunch of cars or something.
Anyway, he can't hold a steady ride.
But that's a pretty illustrious career.
Easy to see how you have theinsight into doing color commentary.
Mr.
Limerock, Greg.
I'm not convinced yet that Iam not a failed racing driver.
I still harbor illusions.

(19:17):
My talent will be discovered,but like everybody else, I
wanted to be a race driver.
I came from a family that hadno interest in automobiles.
My mechanical ability now is marginaland was even worse when I was younger.
In high school, though, I discoveredthe Sports Car Club of America.
Drove my first autocross in 1967.

(19:38):
in a four door, six cylinder Chevellewith an automatic transmission.
Not exactly the height of performancecars, but it got me involved.
And shortly thereafter, I hadmy first article published.
Thought I was on my way to a greatcareer in automotive journalism.
That was in the high school newspaper.
The local Sports Car Club ofAmerica region had a newsletter.
I started writing for them.

(19:59):
A fellow by the name of John Peckhamwas a noted automotive artist.
He also produced a car.
The program for the races at LimeRock Park, he picked up a few of
my articles, and so I, I was goingdown this road of the written word.
Jim Haynes was the track promoter atthat time, and he said, you know, you
ought to try announcing, you know, you'vegot a good handle on what's going on.
And there was a gentleman by thename of Art Peck, who was Lime Rock's

(20:21):
regular announcer, and Art was from CBS.
He was a serious professional commentator.
But he let me try out.
Then eventually Art decided that hewanted to pursue some other opportunities,
and I was the last guy left standing.
So at 22 years old, I becamethe announcer at Weimark Park.
I've been there ever since.
They keep inviting me back, andI'm honored to be able to do that,

(20:44):
as I'm honored to be here withthis distinguished group today.
What keeps me coming back is the people.
At one time it was the cars and thetechnology, but now it's really the
opportunity I have to interact withpeople that keeps me coming back.
Gary.
Uh, what got me startedwas my love of auto racing.
I remember the first race I went to,it was 51 or 52, Wellsville, New York.

(21:05):
That year I would have been 10or 12 years old, whatever else.
And Lorne Dillon won the race.
And they tore his cardown and all that stuff.
But so I remember the first race.
But that started a lot of fear.
And I really never hadany visions of driving.
That wasn't my thing.
And I didn't have any visions of anything.
I was just a race fan.
The first time I actually announcedwas in 1959 at Bradford Speedway.
Now called the old Radford Speedway.

(21:26):
It was actually brand new then.
It was his last race of the season, andthe regular announcer, whoever he or she,
he would have been a he, was neglected totell the promoter that he had gone back to
college, wouldn't be around that weekend.
There they were with a raceprogram planned and no announcer.
And I don't know how it was that Ihad the nerve to go up and tell the
guy what I would announce, but I did.

(21:47):
I don't remember much about thatevent either, but So that was 1959.
Then I went off to college andso forth and really got started
in 1971 at Spencer Speedway.
And that's an interesting story.
Jimmy Bollinson was the promoter and hehad hired a fellow by the name of Dale
Hartnett who was a disc jockey withthe country radio station in Rochester.
Who was out to make money and had a greatvoice and all the rest of it, but he

(22:09):
didn't have any passion for the sport.
I don't think he'd everbeen to a race before.
But he was announcing and muddlinghis way through the season.
Late in the season, I said toBollinson, that guy doesn't know what
he's talking about, he needs help.
didn't know me, but did agreethat that guy needed help.
So I helped him out for a few weeks.
And then he had the nerve to getmarried and take the weekend off.
And that was late in the season.

(22:31):
And a race I will never forget,of course, is that that was the
night that the car, Gary Cornelius,went into the pit grandstand.
At the end, four people were killed.
It could have been 40 people or itcould have been a lot more than that.
We didn't know.
My wife and kids were there.
My brother was there.
And everybody was expecting a grandstandexcept my brother, who was in the pits.
And again, you didn't have any ideahow bad this situation was, but

(22:51):
you could tell it was pretty bad.
So I was most concerned about mybrother and the whole situation.
My brother was alright, as it turned out.
That started a career at SpecialSpeedway, which really got
me going in this whole deal.
Because I went back for the next, Idon't know how many years, continuously.
And that just reallyled to a lot of things.
I'll touch on the MRN situation.
How I got involved with those folkswould have been late 70s, early 80s.

(23:13):
And Dave Despain was on their team,and he was to announce in turn
four for the 500 and the supportraces leading up to the 500.
And I was working forGlenn Downey at Volusia.
And John McMullen was thedirector of MRN at that time.
And John and I had crossed pathsa couple of times, most recently
the fall before that at Super DirtWeek, where he was trying to get
in, and Gert would let him in.

(23:34):
She didn't know who he was.
And I did know who he was,and I knew who Gert was.
Anyway, we got that all puttogether somehow or other,
and John remembered that.
And John knew that I was working forDonnelly over just across the way.
So they called, and when Iannounced it, they told him.
And that started that career, whichlasted for a number of years as well.

(23:55):
So it came at it a number of ways.
I don't do much of that anymore.
Last year, I think Iannounced just two races.
I substituted at Canandaigua, and Isubstituted at Black Rock one night.
But I love this love of sport,and that keeps me going back.
And the point about the people is reallyimportant, and that's kind of what
it has evolved to all of us, I think.
And I think the greatestdemonstration of the people thing
was Super Dirt Week last October.

(24:17):
For When everybody knewit was the last one.
And I called it the Family Reunion ofDirt Racing or something like that.
Because everybody that had been thereover the 44 years before that Seemed
to all gather back for the last one.
And just seeing all thosefolks again, it makes it all.
And it's the people thing, whether it beannouncing the race or being at the races.
That keeps me coming back.

(24:38):
That's my announcing story, I guess.
I don't think you canimprove on that, Gary.
My wife is still hoping I'll outgrow it.
I don't think so, honey.
Sorry.
I think you can see through allthese gentlemen the passion and
the love of the sport that just isobviously evident in all of them.
The next question I had is kind ofa, more a nuts and bolts question.

(25:01):
Is there any difference in how youapproach announcing, uh, A feature race
as opposed to a qualifying race or forthe road racing gentlemen, the feature
class, the IMSA guys, whoever that mightbe, as opposed to maybe some of the
support classes in that same regard, isthere a common denominator that you try

(25:23):
to use so that you appeal to perhapsthat person that's sitting in the stands
for the very first time, in additionto the guy that sits there every week?
So Mike, do you want tolead off with that one?
You can pass to Roy.
As a race fan.
And when I do my announcing, I alwaysthink about you guys in the grandstand.
And whenever I feel like I'm too bigfor my britches, I would come down

(25:46):
and your grandstand to just listento how they would react to stuff
and try to announce to those folks.
I never really tried toinstruct them like a teacher.
I always tried to bethe guy in the stands.
And what would we talk about?
What do we want for theannouncer to talk about?
But in regards to feature versusqualifying races, in my head,
there's a guy out there witha car and he's trying to race.

(26:08):
He thinks he's the bestrace driver there ever was.
Something myself, I can't say anythingbad about him because he's working
hard on the race car and driving hard.
I'm up in a race announcer's boot.
So why should I say anything bad?
There's no way that I could ever do that.
I can't change the way I announcejust because it's a qualifying race.
Do I get excited for a feature?
Absolutely, and who wouldn't try toapproach racing the same way each time.

(26:30):
It's a race a race a race So Itried to talk with the folks in the
grandstands, imagining in my headwhat they might want to be curious
about, what they may ask about, whatthey want the announcer to talk about.
And that's the way I'vealways approached it.
There's no difference in my mindfor qualifying versus features.
I try not to approach any ofthe others any differently.

(26:50):
To me, it's all the same.
The guys are out there breakingtheir gut in order to race.
And again, they think that the bestguy out there, whoever you want to
talk about, drag racing, John Forrest,Formula One, so many stars in there.
NASCAR, so many stars in there.
Every one of them want to be there.
And so do I want to watch them.
I want to know.
The race that they're in, I want tosee and hear things that everybody

(27:14):
would like to hear in the grandstand.
You folks are part of thatdeal, and if you're here, you
love racing just like we do.
I try not to put myself above.
I try to keep myself right where you are.
I try to be a fan as well.
That's the way I approachmy racing, announcing.
When I go to a racetrack, and Iknow Joe and I are very similar in
this, and we learned it from Jackprimarily, go to the racetrack.

(27:36):
I don't care if it's the first timeannouncing at that track, or Starting
my 52nd year at the Oswego Speedway.
The first thing I do is I go tothe pit area and I talk to drivers.
I get all their hometowninformation, their sponsor
information, personal information.
If it's a birthday or somethinglike that, you want to impart.
I think it's very important to give thatinformation to the fan, to make the fan

(27:56):
relate more to the driver and not justlook at a car and a color and a number.
You want to know more about the driver.
Also, very, very important in termsof announcing a race, you want And I
was just reading an article by BonesBoschier about this very subject.
You can announce a race all night long,but if you don't tell the people how
this driver gets from this race to thefeature race, you haven't done your job.

(28:18):
If the fan comes in for the first timeand leaves the racetrack and doesn't
know how this guy got to start in thatposition in the feature event, you've
not done your job as an announcer.
And those things are very, very important.
Other than that, what Mikesaid is absolutely right.
Every race should be treated the same.
Every driver should be treated the same.
Joe and I alternate announcing an Oswego.
He does a small block race, then Ido a small block race, and he does

(28:40):
an LR, then I do a super race, andhe does a back and forth, we go.
And then we, uh, we do the feature events.
But because we do that, we haveto stay impassioned about both
divisions, the small block supermodifies and the super modifies.
You have to be excited about what'sgoing on in the heat race to make
sure the people understand what'sgoing on in the feature race.
So I, I agree with Mike 100%.

(29:01):
Ditto.
We're done.
Okay.
That's the shortestanswer I've ever heard.
You know, I think it's very important notonly to race teams and the drivers to get
their names correct and the towns are fromand the program and the sponsors and all
that, but I think, you know, you owe anawful lot to the fan in the grandstand.

(29:22):
One of the things I absolutely hateis when a traveling circuit comes
in I'd like to treat them justas important as our main class.
And a lot of times in the travelingcircuit, you do not get the right names.
Just like Roy, I walk through the pitarea, I try to get all the information.
And you always, a guy ora car will come in late.

(29:46):
And you can't get the name ofthat driver and where he's from.
Well, I have adopted a familynamed the Belonga family.
And many nights there's BillyBelonga, Bobby Belonga, Sammy
Belonga, Junior Belonga, and JoeyBelonga, all running in the same race.
I wanted to fill that name with that car.

(30:07):
And then I get people coming tome, That ain't Sammy Belonga.
Oh, is that Joey?
No.
That is so and so.
Okay, now I got his name.
Sometimes you just can't get thosenames, because you're up in the tower,
I mean, the race has started, and youjust Many times we'll radio over into
the pit area, who's in car number 17,and get some information for them,

(30:28):
but I think it's very important.
For the fan in the grandstand to knowwho's in that car, where that car is
from, and where that driver is from.
And I also like to plug asmany sponsors as possible.
These are the folks who put moneyup for tires and gas and so on.
I've learned a lot of this from Roy.
He is just absolutely fantastic.
Plugging the sponsors andkeeping the thing rolling.

(30:50):
As far as keeping the fans informed,the same as Roy, I like to let them
know how they get from race A torace B or the concierge or whatever.
How the different situationshappen on the speedway.
We're very fortunate now becausewe get the replays up in the tower.
Many years ago, a situation hadhappened out on the speedway and

(31:12):
sometimes you had a guess at it.
But today we're very fortunate to lookat the replays and talk about how a
situation was created on the racetrack.
A car got wide, a car came in a little bittoo tight, a car tried to work underneath.
And you pass that along to the fans.
And you know what's really neat is atthe end of a race many times when you're
walking out into the parking lot andso on, And hey, you're Joe, aren't you?

(31:33):
Yeah, geez.
You know, I disagreed with thatcall that they made out there,
but after you said it, uh, youdescribed how it was and everything.
I agree.
That's it.
You gotta give them a show, and you gottalet them all know where they're from.
Just a quick story.
We're all race fans here.
We love racing.
And you have to projectthat when you're announcing.

(31:56):
I remember one specific race.
New Jersey Motorsport Park.
Ferrari Challenge race.
There's nine cars in the race.
The track is 2.
2 miles long, cars are separated.
I've got cars passing in the backwhere we can't see, and I've got them
running up and setting up for passes.
At the end of the race, I walked down outof the tower, and somebody came up to me

(32:18):
and said, Whoa, that was an exciting race.
And I go, I did my job.
Yeah.
Yep.
Let's have more nine car fields.
I think things are a littlebit different in road racing.
With the support classes, if anything,you have to work harder at those,
because you don't know the people,you're trying to build up the event.

(32:39):
In a lot of cases, help driverscome along with their careers.
So the stars in the bigrace may be better known.
You put a lot of effort intothat, but you also put a lot of
effort into the support classes.
I think what's changing the mostAnd it's all about bandwidth now.
When I started, I had a scorer by the nameof Craig Robertson who could sit through
a six hour firehawk race and write downthe positions of the cars for six hours.

(33:02):
I don't know how he did it.
Now it's all computerized.
We have access to it.
The fans have access to it.
So that's changing.
In fact, now you can go to a road race,bring your iPad with you, watch the
TV highlights as they're broadcast.
So it's really changing the characterand One of the things I think an
announcer needs to do, names andnumbers are always important.
Mike Joy spent some time at RoundRock as the track manager, and I

(33:25):
learned a lot from him, from hisannouncing background as well.
He said, names and numbers.
You've always got toconnect names and numbers.
Now with the numbers on some ofthe cars, it's so hard to see.
You watch a Formula One race.
I don't know what car is what.
I can't tell from the paint scheme.
You're trying to see what helmet is onthe driver to tell who's in what car.
You guys started to sayit's all about bandwidth.

(33:46):
People now bring their iPads to the race.
They're watching the scoring system.
They're watching the TV highlights.
The announcer, I'm trying to do,I'm trying to anticipate when
are pit stops going to come up?
Who's gaining ground on who?
Whose car might be starting to go off?
And I think that's changed thecharacter of what I do a little bit.
The other thing is with vintageracing now, which is very
popular on the road racing side.

(34:07):
It's really much more about thecars, the history of the cars.
The technical nature of them, youknow, the technical background
when they were built, who's driventhem over the years, much more of a
point of emphasis than the drivers.
A lot of it's already beenstated relative to support
classes versus highlight classes.
My view is they all paid thesame amount of money to race.
They have the same desire to win.

(34:28):
Compete as the top guys.
And so you try to treat everybody equally.
And that's kind of been the themethat's been stated here so far.
Talking about who's made this racepossible, these cars possible.
Another story, I'll pick up onthe point that was made earlier.
I'll never forget this night at SpencerSpeedway, the Spencer brothers ran the
place and they were interesting folks.
Some of you knew them.
I think they've all died now, but Inever viewed them as really race fans.

(34:51):
They were in this to make a buck.
And they had built the track with outof mortgage and they worked real jobs,
their husband and wife team and so forth.
It was a big deal with them, but theywere kind of phasing out a little bit.
And Dell and Evelyn's son,Gary became the manager or
whatever his title was later on.
And he had me doing the stupidest stuff.
He was trying to change theimage of the track and racing.
And they had, uh, EvelKnievel was a big deal then.

(35:13):
Well, they didn't have EvelKnievel, obviously, but they
had somebody on a bicycle.
Laughing Jumping from one placeto the other, and I'm supposed
to get excited about that.
And I say, I'm a race fan, I'm not intothis for anything, this other stuff.
Anyway, so, I like put up with that.
I ended my career at SpencerSpeedway on a particular night.
When I was announcing RichieEvans was sponsored by B.

(35:34):
R.
DeWitter and Gary came to me and saidyou don't talk about that at all, you
talk about the track sponsors and hehad sponsors for the night and so forth.
With that I announced thatthis would be my last night
at Spencer's B Way and it was.
The initial question was any differencebetween sport classes and major classes
and absolutely none and it's great racing.
I know you just finished Gary, but I'mgoing to start with you and actually you
and Roy have already touched on this, butI'm curious how difficult it is for you.

(35:58):
To be the announcer when a deathoccurs again, you've already
touched on it to a degree.
Roy has touched on it.
I was at Oswego thenight Jimmy was killed.
We didn't know anythingabout it in the stands.
In fact, they pulled the cararound the front straightaway.
It didn't even look like it had been hit.
Wasn't until the next day that I learnedthat I'm just curious how you deal with
that and how you keep the program going.

(36:20):
That sounds ridiculous, but I've beenreally lucky in that regard with the
Spencer Speedways incident that wetalked about, it was obvious that
that program was done that night.
I mean, it was a tragedy andit was the feature event and
it was late and so forth.
And so it was no question we were notgoing to continue, which we didn't.
So I had to have tokeep that going at all.
Only other time that I announceda race where there was a fatality,
where I was the announcer was atrolling wheels, a crash bar came

(36:43):
into the grandstand and killed him.
Right down below where we were announcingfrom, but most people didn't realize that.
Of course, Donnie didn'twant us talking about that.
We didn't.
And so that race program wenton like nothing had happened.
But for a certain number of people,they knew something had happened,
but we didn't talk about it.
The other events where I've been involvedwhere fatalities have occurred, One was
here at Watkins Glen when McDuffie gotkilled and that happened at my feet.

(37:06):
I was announcing in that whatever turnthat is at the end of the, they've not
got the loop or she came down there,whatever, but again, it was the MRN deal.
And I didn't have to keepthe whole thing going.
And it was a long delay.
I was at Homestead when JohnDemachek got killed in a truck race.
But again, MRN, so they.
Continue to think I didn'thave to do much with it.
I think those are the only events thatI've been to as an announcer where there

(37:26):
were fatalities and for that I'm reallylucky because I've gone to a lot of
races and a lot of dangerous things havehappened, but that's about it So I was
lucky in that it's not very many of themnumber one and number two that I didn't
have to keep the program Going like we'realready talking about situations in Oswego
I recently had to deal with the aftermathof a fatal accident at Lime Rock.
There are a couple of things that Iwanted to keep in mind during that

(37:49):
time, and keep in mind in general withdealing with these kinds of situations.
First of all, I don't speculate.
The only information I work off of, isinformation that's provided to me by the
people in race control because they'rethe ones who know the situation, and
they're the ones who, along with thetrack owner or track promoter who make the
decision how they want it to be handled.
This is also true in any incident.

(38:10):
I wouldn't speculate unlessyou see it with your own eyes.
Driver gets out of the car,and you know they're not hurt.
In road racing, we're taking informationfrom various corner stations.
It's going through one group of people,and there's a lot of noise and a lot
of confusion as an incident unfolds.
But to get back to this particularincident at Lime Rock, we knew
it was a very serious accident.

(38:30):
The program was stopped.
This was in the middle of the day.
We run during the day, so we'renot dealing with an evening event.
In the state of Connecticut,the Connecticut State Police
investigate all racetrack injuries.
So the events stopped.
Connecticut State Police came in andjust like any other accident, there
are police cars out on the track.
They're doing all of the measurements,all of the photographs that they do.

(38:52):
So it'll Long time when the eventwas not running and we didn't
know if it was going to continue.
I was fortunate that I had apartner working with me that
day by the name of Tom Hill.
And Tom does some color commentarywhile I will do play by play.
So we started talking about the carshow that was coming up and some other
things that were going on at the track.
Some cars that Tom hadseen in the paddock.

(39:13):
And then the word came that wewere going to continue the event.
Now we still didn't knowthe outcome of that.
We went on with the event and thensubsequently we found out that those
injuries proved to be fatal to the driver.
It was probably the saddestday I've spent a lime rock.
This was a weekend event.
This happened on Saturday, so thenwe had to come back and do the whole
program on Monday and I wasn't sure.
How we were going toapproach the whole topic.

(39:35):
Fortunately, we have a great relationshipwith the church that's across the
road from us, Trinity Episcopal,the Reverend Heidi Truex always does
our invocation and she's wonderful.
And in this particular instance, youjust found the right words, I think,
to put us all at ease and let us go on.
That really was a movingexperience for me.
I think I've been fortunate.

(39:56):
I don't believe anybody's had afatality that some serious injuries.
Well, announcing we mostlydon't talk about it because
you don't know all the details.
We just kind of gloss over that.
I just want to add a little bit.
What Frank said that now withHIPAA, you have to be very careful
about what you say, unless there'ssomething official that comes out.
I would never speculate onanything that's happened.

(40:18):
Let me just go back to one other incidentthat happened last year, which will, I
hope, illustrate why you don't speculate.
I was at Watkins Glen for aFormula 1600 series event.
I'm not listening to the corner stations,I'm listening to our series race director.
And I hit a report, a car hit theguardrail, the driver was out of the car.
And then the next thing I hearis, we need the ambulance.

(40:39):
Well, what had happened was, the frontof the car had started to collapse.
The driver jumped out of the car,didn't realize he had a broken ankle.
And when he landed on the ground,you can imagine what happened.
Well, he passed out, half on thegrass, half on the racetrack.
So even when you see a driverget out of the car, you're not
sure exactly what's happened.
So that's why you You'dnever want to speculate.
You really can't go with anything exceptthe official word that you get from the

(41:03):
people who have the inside information.
And therefore they're theones who are setting the tone
and the subsequent events.
I was at the track when Jimmy was killed.
I've been at the track, fortunately, justone other time when someone was killed.
And I never understood when people whodon't understand racing or don't like
racing would tell me that, Oh, people justgo to the races to see people get hurt.
And it's like, no, I have been toraces when people are hurt and there

(41:26):
is nobody that goes there for that.
It is like you pump the balloonup and somebody puts a pin
in it and it all goes away.
So I never, for a second, ever boughtinto that, but it has happened.
Joe, do you have any thoughts?
I'll tell you one thing I'll never forget.
I was working Canada English Speedway withGary Montgomery, and at the conclusion
of the race, I would do the write up, andGary would go down and into the office

(41:51):
or wherever, and would call in resultsto the local newspapers and so on.
This year was 1982.
Gary came back up into the tower andhe said, Joe and I turned around and
looked, and he was as white as a ghost.
I said, what's up?
He said, I called the Democrat theChronicle to give him our results.
And he, they informed me thatJim Cine died at a swig tonight.

(42:13):
It was like the date of Earth stood still.
It was just unbelievable.
Later that night, I got in thecar and drove out with my family
and drove up through the pits.
Merv Treichler was sitting on his trailer.
I said, Merv, you here?
He nodded yes.
It's something you justdon't want to go through.
It's like losing the closestmember of your family.

(42:33):
I have been announcing at maybethree or four different tracks
that a tragedy has taken place.
Dennis Taney, a candidate with Speedway.
First time I ever announced at NewYork State Fairgrounds under Ira Vail.
For Car went into the audience,into the crowd between turns three
and four and killed the person.
It was at Syracuse the nightKevin Fleming was killed.

(42:55):
We knew it was a badaccident up in the tower.
I was announcing with Doug Elkins.
Glenn came over to our side ofthe tower and he said we just had
word that we probably have onefatality and one seriously injured.
Just kind of looked at Glenn and Glenn wasa type of leader that just took control
and he said, here's what we're going todo the 4th of July show, we're going to

(43:15):
lower the lights, we're going to do thefireworks and the personnel is going to
go in the back straight away, clean upthe situation, but we don't say anything.
We did exactly that and wecontinued with the program.
Now, I never said it, Doug Elkins neversaid it, but boy, the word got through the
grandstand in a pit area like wildfire.
It was just unbelievable.
One of the other things I remember,we did put a dirt asphalt race on

(43:38):
at the Nazareth 1 mile speedway.
And that's when RogerPenske owned the facility.
Prior to the race, we had to be at a racemeet at about 7 o'clock in the morning.
And all the corner workerswere there, and this was in
conjunction with an IndyCar race.
All the corner workers werethere, safety people, flaggers,
everybody that worked on the track.

(43:58):
And I gotta tell you, I never saw aleader in my life like Roger Penske.
We all sat there and he says,where are the announcers?
And I put my hand up, Tim Pittsput his hand up, and the IndyCar
announcer put his hand up.
He said, why don't you threeguys sit in over there?
And then he went over everything,strategically, in their positions
of what they're doing in caseof an emergency and everything.

(44:20):
Finally, the room cleared out.
It was Roger Penske, his righthand man, Glenn Donnelly was in
the room, and the three announcers.
He said, gentlemen, I want tojust go over one situation.
In the event of a fatality or a tragicaccident on the speedway, number
one, here's what's going to happen.
He says, the injured person will be takenin an ambulance to the infield hospital.

(44:45):
The helicopter will be standing by.
In the event that helicoptertakes off and goes to the
hospital, we don't talk about it.
And I'm going to tell you, hesaid this like a military general.
The show will go on.
We will never say if the partyis deceased, they'll read about
it in the paper the next day.
Do you have it?

(45:05):
He pointed at each one of us.
Yes, sir.
Meeting is done.
Thank you.
And boy, I gotta tell you, thatrang a bell to me like you wouldn't
believe, but these things happenand it's part of the sport.
And like the other gentlemansaid, no one goes to the
racetrack to see anyone killed.
Those things have happened.
It's part of the game.
But you deal with it as bestas you can as it happens.

(45:27):
Oswego had a reputation for a longtime of being a violent track.
The steel walls, inside and outside.
During the 64 years so far ofthe track, I was just trying
to figure it out in my head.
Not counting drivers whodied of heart attacks.
There have been at least 8fatalities at the Oswego Speedway.
One happened before Istarted to announce there.

(45:50):
I was on mic for allseven of the other ones.
It's never easy.
Roy, I think a good thing to bringup too is, we have had at Oswego,
a couple people on the speedwaythat have had heart attacks.
Three.
Three.
And I'm gonna tell ya, I've gone tomany, many speedways around the country.
The emergency crew at the OswegoSpeedway is second to none.

(46:11):
And Roy, I think you can takeover how they have saved lives.
We've had three incidents in the lastfive years of people suffering what
would have been a fatal heart attackhad it happened at any other racetrack.
One of them was in Victory Lane.
One of them was in the grandstand.
And one of them was inthe pit area, a driver.
In all three cases, it took at leasta half an hour or more to stabilize

(46:32):
the person, bring them back to life.
In two of the cases, the person diedseveral times and was brought back.
Now there are two interesting thingsabout this that have happened.
One I don't understand,one I do understand.
The track safety crew is fantastic.
They're not going to make a moveuntil they know the patient is
stabilized and ready to move.
Now what happens with that, however,is You get people in the grandstand

(46:54):
who don't know what's going on, andthey will actually boo the safety crew.
It's happened on several occasions,but the track safety crew at
Oswego is absolutely phenomenal.
It's the best in any weekly runtrack in the country, and I don't
think you can find another racetrackin the country that has saved one
heart attack victim, let alone three.
I have only been involved withthree fatalities, but only one of

(47:16):
them was on a microphone capacity.
Dale Earnhardt Sr.,down at Daytona in 2001.
I was in victory lane.
I was supposed to interview himbecause he was the owner of Michael
Waltrip's team who won the race.
We're in down in victory lane andwe're standing and waiting for Dale
to show up because we figured becausehe's the car owner, he'll be there.
And he never did.
I was standing next to oneof the guys who was security.

(47:38):
He was listening to his radioon an earphone and he said,
It doesn't look good for Dale.
He had a bad wreck in Turn 3.
And we kind of already knew that,and he said that the ambulance
was taking him to the hospital.
It doesn't look good.
And that's one, obviously,I'll never forget.
The other two incidents, again, werenot while I was on the mic, thankfully.
I actually witnessed the deathwhen I was a spectator on the back

(47:59):
section of the boot at Watkins Glen.
It was a Formula One driver.
His name was Helmut Koenig.
I believe I'm pronouncing that right.
Came down the boot sectionout of turn six and into turn
seven, and the car never turned.
And Watkins Glen at that timehad three catch fences that
were made out of chicken wire.
And those catch fences weresupposed to slow the car down.

(48:20):
And in that case, he didn't,you know a formula car's got a
pointy nose on the front of it.
So as he went, made his waythrough the three catch fences,
the fence never held the car.
I don't want to get graphic here, butthe Armco guardrail was bolted in place.
You can just imagine when the car hit it.
It's a formula car.
It's head is above the driver's cockpitand it hit so hard that the guardrail

(48:43):
bolts on the top did not break.
The ones on the bottom, however,did and it swung open like a gate.
Now you can imagine whathappened at that point.
So it was one of the thingsthat I saw, and I don't want to
see anything like that again.
J.
D.
McDuffie is the other one.
Again, I didn't see it.
I was down in the S's as a spectator.
I'm thinking to myself, hey,the race has been stopped.
Nobody's telling us why.

(49:04):
State police cars are on the racetrack.
That never happens.
Ambulances and, uh, track safety crewobviously made their way over there.
And I knew things were bad at that point.
Like I said, you never see astate police car on a racetrack.
But here again, I'm sure all ofthese guys have already mentioned it.
We are told not to speculate, not toguess, wait for a future word, and

(49:26):
usually that means the track owneror whoever is promoting the race,
tells us, And sometimes how to say it.
And in regards to Adele Senior, Well,I've never seen any organization
snap into action faster than NASCAR.
They took over the situationfrom the very beginning.
And I remember being at VictoryLane and walking over to the press

(49:47):
center because Mike Helton wasgoing to give the official word.
He walked into the press center.
We already knew what happened.
Announcement that he made.
I know you remember it.
If you were watching TV, he said, we'velost Dale and the whole room hushed,
you could feel the temperature drop.
That's what it felt like.
It was like cold again at a time.
I don't want to ever see orexperience again, but NASCAR

(50:09):
jumping into action, took control.
And the next day I was told not toeven wear a Daytona shirt because they
were afraid that media would come upand try to get a statement from us.
And we really didn't know what happened.
I hope you have a better questionfor the next couple of minutes.
This track has the best hot dogs.
I'm going to have to lightenthings up here a bit.

(50:30):
It happens in racing, and these gentlemenare such professionals and have been
involved in the sport for so long.
I just thought that was somethingthat we should touch on.
We won't dwell on it.
Now what I'd like to know fromeverybody is how has the sport changed
either for the better or the worse?
Frank, obviously you can comment onthis from a driver's perspective because

(50:50):
you've been driving for 40 plus years.
Now everybody else here will comment onit chiefly from the announcing profession.
So I'm curious as to how you feelthe sport has changed positively
or negatively over the years.
Let's actually start with Joe.
Well, you know, earlier today,I brought some picture frames of
old race cars that ran around theEmpire State, Northeast, whether

(51:12):
they were a dirt car or asphalt car.
I also had a collection ofthem that I passed around.
And those were the days that a guycould virtually pull a car out of a
junkyard, out of a backyard, strip thecar down, put a roll cage in it, do some
modifications to the engine, put a goodset of brakes in it, and go out racing.
Today, that just doesn't happen.

(51:33):
Whether it be dirt or asphalt, it hasreally changed an awful, awful lot.
They're cookie cutter cars today.
Here again, whether they were dirtmodified and asphalt modified, super
modified, there is some changingaround in there and you can look at
a car and say, this is a Hawk chassisor home built chassis or whatever.
I like it the old way I'vebeen doing it for 51 years now.

(51:55):
So I guess that's the old fashioned way.
It was funny showing those pictures today.
Mike Monet is here.
Mike could say, um, well, that carwas originally the Don Diffendorf car,
and then it became a Jimmy Covell car.
Then it became the Boach Harriscar and so on down the line.
I don't know if you can do it today.
The cars that are on thestreet are totally different

(52:15):
than what they used to be.
Everything is front wheeldrive or all wheel drive.
You just can't pull a car out of theweeds and put a roll cage in it anymore.
But I sure liked it the old waybecause those were cars were cars and
men were men and racing was racing.
Racing quality is just as good.
I mean, maybe the lap timesare much, much better today.
Maybe in any given track, whether it bea Speedway or, uh, Ransomville Speedway,

(52:41):
a Lancaster Speedway, an Oswego Speedway.
Lap times are way, way down.
And we're always looking to try toset a record and makes a good story.
And even on the national circuit,whether it be in the NASCAR circuit
or whatever, it's pretty much allcookie cutter, but it's racing.
We're going to live with it.
They brought a race car to theOswego Speedway last year that
used to race in the early 1960s.

(53:02):
The guy was out of Kentucky andhis first name was Wayne and I
cannot remember his last name.
Wayne McGuire.
The seat is a wooden seat.
It's a plank that goes across the car.
Yeah.
Safety has changed a lot.
Uh, Swigler's been, as I mentioned,a violent track, but since the
end of the, uh, 1990s, when A.
J.
Michaels was killed, and they startedwith the foam walls at Swigler, the

(53:24):
foam barriers, and they went, uh,Swigler made mandatory seats, the
Butler style seat at that point.
You know, they use the Hansdevice and everything like that.
We've had some horrible crashes, butno bad injuries because of all the
safety processes that have gone on.
But when you look back at what it wasback then, you know, the roll cage
came up like this on a lot of thesecars, easy to fly out of the car.

(53:45):
And even before thenthere were no roll cages.
The safety aspect of the sporthas changed tremendously and all
for the better, in my opinion.
The racing, as was alreadymentioned, technology wise, every
day it seems like it's changing.
And now with the advent of social media,there's all kinds of speculation about
what this car is and what that car isn't.

(54:05):
And I agree with the Coca Cola mentality.
There doesn't seem to be much rewardanymore for people to go into their
garage in the backyard or whatever, andbuild a car that can take out everybody.
Lap everybody.
Can you think about that now?
Somebody lapped somebody out inthe They'd be accused of cheating,
not because they had hard work.
Just bugs the heck out of me.

(54:26):
That's the case.
Look, I like looking at a computerand a score chart just like anybody.
But the idea that somebody canwork hard and actually perform
better than anybody else.
The whole cookie cutter conceptI am just, I don't like.
The whole concept is pretty similarto the way we live in this world now.
Nobody is better than anybody else.
Everything should be on the same plane.

(54:48):
And there's no rewardsfor doing your homework.
The future we've already seen inracing, if you watch the premium
channels on cable, they've already doneFormula E, which is electric racing.
To me it sounds like turbo slack cars,that's what it sounds like to me.
That don't even sound like race cars.
There's no such thing as a pit stop even.
What they do is they bring thecars into the pits, they jump into

(55:10):
another one that's fully charged.
They take it back out to the racetrack.
There's no working on the same cartrying to get it better through the race.
If you think racing's changed now, youwait until we get into all electric.
And it's probably bad for me tosay that because we just have
the Green Grand Prix down here.
That's a big bugaboo, man.
I just have a hard time.

(55:31):
I agree with you on the electric concept.
I said an hour ago, whatattracted me to racing?
One of the things is the sound, the sound.
I don't care if it's a super Doswego,a V12 Ferrari, something in between.
It's the sound.
And I agree with you,Mike, there is no sound.
Now, Glendonley's developing someelectric sprint cars, I guess, to run
at his new motorsports track up inSyracuse, and maybe that'll be cool.

(55:55):
But again, if you take the sound awayfrom me, you've taken away a very large
portion of what turns me on anyway.
We're all learning in the towernow to go, Vroom, vroom, vroom!
That's how it's done.
Best sound I ever heard was when I putWatkins Glen during the six hours in the
K& M series where the two classes wereallowed to race together because they

(56:16):
didn't have a full field of K& M cars.
Porsches, six cylinders, Ferrari,V12s, big block Chevys, small block
Chevys, all resonating off thetrees coming into the boot section.
It was like a symphony,I'll never forget it.
One of the best things I've ever heard.
And of course, that's whyvintage racing is so good today.
It's also a lot less expensive.
Old guys with old cars, and evensome young guys with old cars.

(56:39):
And you can do it, maybe nota Can Am car or a GTP car,
but you can do it on a budget.
You've got an old Alfa Romeoor a 1981 Formula Ford.
Simple to operate, simple towork on, not very expensive.
My motor lasted 10 years,we just took it apart.
That's cheap racing.
Here's the difference today,is four years ago, this shirt.

(57:02):
I walked into a Ferrari banquet,and I had my Watkins Glen shirt
on, and this guy goes, Nice shirt.
And he sits down next to me, and Istart telling him stories about racing.
And he owns a Ferrari, he's just soldhis company, and talking about the total
24 hour, And he goes, Well, let's do it.
I said, Well, I'm a regularworking guy, I can't do that.
He says, Sold my company, I gota lot of money, let's do it.

(57:22):
For the one race, the 50th anniversaryof the Rolex 24 hour, In a used car.
Porsche GT3 Cup car.
I spent a half a milliondollars of his money.
We had some good times.
And the car, at the end of therace, went into his garage.
That's the difference.
My Formula Ford is worth about 12, 000.

(57:45):
My first race car was 450.
I bought it out of a barnin Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
It was a 1958 Elva sports racing car.
I bought it in 1968.
I sold that car for a ton of money.
The end of the year, 600 bucks.
The last guy had a price tag on itof 95, 000, but that's another story.

(58:06):
Oh, great.
I agree with Roy.
I think that what's improvedmost is the safety of the cars,
and that's nothing but good.
The downside, which I think Franktouched on a little bit, was
technology now has gotten so advancedthat it's not approachable anymore.
This is, I think, in all forms of racing.
I open the hood of my car now, andthey don't even want you touching me.

(58:26):
You know, there's a bigpiece of plastic there.
And that's different fromwhen I was growing up.
We could change the crutch ona Volkswagen Bug in 30 minutes.
Lift the back of the car up, drop theengine out, change the crutch, put it back
in, and we weren't intimidated by that.
The complexity with all the electronicsnow, you know, I can't see electricity,
you know, there's these sensors and thesewires and they must be doing something,
but I don't know exactly what it is.
And I think that that and the factthat there are so many more things

(58:49):
for young people to be involved withnow, skateboards, bicycling, X games,
kinds of things that the automobiledoes not have the same place in society
that it had when I was growing up.
Racing is going to change and theyoung people who are involved Look
at it a little bit differently.
I'll tell you what my pet peeve inracing is, and that is all of the
artificial rules that have been created.

(59:10):
The lucky dog, the push to pass.
It used to be very simple as an announcerto explain to people what was going on.
The cars are out there,they're racing one another.
Now it's, well, you know, the tiresare degrading and they're going to
have to stop to change the tires.
They've introduced a level of complexitythat, to me, just isn't I guess for the

(59:30):
show it's needed, but to me it's upsetwhat used to be the essence of the sport.
I'm not sure I'm going to transitionfrom skateboards back to where we're at.
We've touched on all of it here.
Cookie cutter business, I agree with it.
They're terrible.
Nothing prettier to me today than seeinga real one or imagining or looking
at Joe's photos of a 37 Ford Coupe.
Not modified much, but justenough to make it a race car.

(59:53):
Those were beautiful cars, andnot just the Fords and Chevrolet.
Safety, again, has been touched on, andRoy even touched on it specifically.
And we had this question in advancethat was going to talk about safety.
I didn't see the guy with the boardseat, but if you look at a car that raced
at Waterloo back in the 50s or 60s orwhatever and you see them, it might have
been a bucket seat that came out of anold airplane or something or other, but
there was about as much support to it asthis chair that I'm sitting in right now.

(01:00:16):
And these new low joy seats andthe various manufacturers have
just made it so much safer.
And that's what's wonderful.
So the technology in the safetyaspects of it all are great
technology that's costing so muchmoney for everybody for everything.
Some of it's safety, some ofit for performance is too bad.
I liked it the old way, put newseats in old cars and I'd be happy.
I think my point about theskateboards was these are things

(01:00:39):
that young people can afford.
Where now it's harder to getpeople like us who didn't have
a connection to the sport.
I mean there are lots of second andthird generation racers that benefit
from their family affiliation.
To find someone coming into the sport nowwith no background is much harder because.
The cost of entry is so much higher.
My fear is that racing will evolveinto Formula E and drifting.

(01:01:00):
It's almost there.
Let me put in a good word forcars that don't make much noise.
A few years ago, I had the opportunityto drive a car that was built for what
was known as the Volkswagen GTI series.
These were diesel powered cars.
They made no noise from the outside.
When you're inside the cardriving them, they It was just
like any other racing car.
You had the line from the transmissionand they put on good races.

(01:01:21):
They were real racingcars and they were fast.
That's one of the changes us graybeardsand the like may have to adapt to.
But there will be different kinds ofracing that will attract different people.
I can't say the electric cars do muchfor me, but quiet racing cars in some
venues are going to be one of the thingsthat helps to keep the sport going.
Okay.

(01:01:44):
I think the problem is that forall of us up here is we come from a
different age and there's a new age.
All right.
Here's my last question.
And this is what I think is goingto let us segue into stories,
stories, and more stories.
We'll start with Mike and then workdown favorite tracks, favorite series.
drivers, best interview, worstinterview, whatever one of those you
want to take and just roll from there.
Wow, obviously the track up here onthe hill where I got my start with

(01:02:07):
Al Robinson in 1995 is my favorite.
Daytona, obviously I made itto there, that's the pinnacle.
As far as other tracks areconcerned, Virginia International
Raceway, another road racing courseI was lucky to be asked to do.
That's one of my favorites.
Richmond on the NASCAR circuit, the threequarter mile short track and Nazareth,
they both put on great modified races, nobetter track in my mind for modified than

(01:02:30):
the three quarter mile over at Richmond.
And I'm talking abouttoday's configuration.
There's a lot of guys.
I remember it way beforeand they liked that as well.
Mid Ohio, I was able to go there.
Great place.
And I haven't mentionedthat I've done drag racing.
The big track that I likedgoing to was out at Denver,
Colorado, the Van Deme Speedway.
And the reason for that is 'causeit's up in the mountains that HRA

(01:02:54):
wanted us to be at the track at eighto'clock in the morning, be ready to go.
So I get up there.
Speedway at eight o'clock and theowner of the track comes up to me
and goes, who the heck are you?
And I said, I'm one of theguys that's supposed to be
announcing with the NHRA today.
He says, well, the racesdon't start until one o'clock.
I said, I was told to be here at eight.

(01:03:15):
So what the heck should I do now?
He says, see those mountainsgo up and take a ride.
And I went all the way aroundthe mountains, came down
through Evergreen, Colorado.
Came back to the track, it tookme about a three hour trip, in
order to see those mountains.
I mean, racing has taken me places thatI probably would have never gone before.
Different places around the countrythat I would never have seen
unless I went to announce racing.

(01:03:36):
For that, I'm very grateful.
You say one of the tracks Ihate, you want me to say that?
That's a tough one.
As much as I respect all youguys that work at Camp Dagobah.
There was a night that I went there.
I know it was only one night,but it seemed like you guys were
racing on the craters of the moon.
I mean, the cars were bouncingup and down all over the place.
I couldn't understand how the driverswere even controlling the cars.

(01:04:00):
Like I said, I respect you guys a lot, butI didn't have any fun at that racetrack.
Another racetrack thatI can't stand is Pocono.
I don't like that track.
The Triangle.
I sat in the grandstand,so I didn't announce that.
Thank God.
The cars go way out to the north40 and then they come back.
That's right.
I do not like that track at all.

(01:04:21):
I never will.
You can pay me a dollar andI'll start still want to go.
How about the best interviewor worst interview?
I'm going to come backto Dale Earnhardt Sr.
Two weeks before he died, I wasasked to do a press conference for
the Chevy Corvette racing team.
I don't know if you remember,he raced with his son for the
24 hours in the Corvette team.
He came back into the pressconference and the guy from

(01:04:43):
Chevrolet asked me to handle it.
And he says, well, here'swhat's going to happen.
Just like you had questions to ask us,he says, you're going to have 20 minutes
to conduct a question and answer session.
He says, I'm going to be in theback of the room going like this
when it's 20 minutes is over.
So I started asking Dale somequestions, interview went 20
minutes, like the guy said.

(01:05:03):
I said, we're going to end the questionand answer session right now, Dale Sr.
is right here.
And he says, wait a minute,we're ending, where am I going?
I said, I was told youhad to be on a plane here.
They only gave me 20 minutes togo, so I'm not going anywhere.
And if you know Dale, hewas quite cantankerous.
And he also tried to be a jokester.
He played pranks on everybody.

(01:05:24):
That's probably my bestinterview that I had.
My worst was when, andI'll never forget this one.
Down on Homestead by Abbey.
I was coming toward Matt Kenseth.
And he was part of theRoush team at that point.
And he saw me coming.
And I saw him with his elbowand I could read his lips.
He says, watch this.
So I came up to interview him.
He gave me one word answersto every question I asked.

(01:05:47):
Drove me nuts.
I couldn't get anything outof him more than one word.
That was probably my worst interview.
Right?
I've announced at probablyclose to 50 tracks in any
number of different divisions.
And I can honestly say my absoluteFavorite race is the one I'm at right now.
The race I'm announcing right now,and yeah, I've had some bad races

(01:06:08):
and some bad tracks I've been at.
It's the one I'm doing right now.
The one I'm watching right now.
That's my favorite.
I really don't have any that I can say.
I don't like that track becauseeveryone I've been to, there's
something about I like and really enjoy.
In terms of interviews, I'll give youthe worst one first because it was
when USAC split and IRL took over andran, uh, USAC ran a race at Pocono.

(01:06:30):
They had a tough time puttingtogether a starting field, 33 cars.
So you had some very current Indytype cars all the way down to the
old champ cars where the driversactually had to get out of the car.
for refueling because theydidn't have the quick fill.
The race, when it ended, A.
J.
Foyt had won.
There were no two cars in the same lap.

(01:06:52):
Second place was four laps down.
Third place was 10 laps down.
Tenth place was 40 laps down.
And I had to interview A.
J.
Foyt at the end of the race.
I was doing that.
Pocono had set up its ownradio network for that race.
It started to rain.
They bring an ambulance out on the track.
They bring AJ over to the ambulance,we get in the ambulance, they
give me the microphone, I start tointerview AJ, microphone won't work.

(01:07:16):
AJ says, F this and out he went.
In terms of good interviews, JimmyChampagne on the local level was probably
the best, the easiest person to interview.
You could ask him anything.
He would elaborate on anything.
He was a very, very helpful person.
I had a chance to interview an awfullot of the NASCAR drivers as well.

(01:07:36):
And in that group, I would sayRichard Petty, and I'll tell you
a very funny story very quicklyabout Petty down at Pocono.
I was brand new doing mytelevision show in Binghamton,
and it was my first NASCAR race.
We go to the race down in Pocono,and I'm getting drivers, and I come
up to Petty's Garage, and Richardis right there, and I said, Richard,
do you have time for an interview?
He said, not now, come back later.

(01:07:57):
Well, I thought I'd been blown off.
No big deal, it's happened before.
I go down, I got Daryl Waldrip, I gotBobby Allison, I'm coming back, I'm going
back by Petty's Garage, and he says, hey,hey, didn't you want to interview me?
I said, yeah, but there was a drunklady in the back of the garage.
I didn't want her in the picture.
Joe.

(01:08:18):
Well, I gotta say, just likewhy my favorite race track
is the one I'm at that night.
I enjoy announcing every race atevery race track that I've worked at.
I too have probably been close to 50different tracks around the country.
I've got a couple of stories onthe worst interviews I have done.
Um, One of them, I was working atLebanon Valley Speedway for Lebanon 200.

(01:08:42):
And Tommy Corrales won the race.
And this was before the uniquewireless mics that we have of today.
We had to use a two way radio and amicrophone and bring it over to the tower.
I was working with an oldergentleman, but he was kind of the
voice of the Lebanon Valley Speedway.
Uncle Art, that was it, Uncle Art.

(01:09:02):
He was up in the tower, so I had togo over and interview Tommy Corrales.
I got there and I startedwith the interview and I'm
holding the two way radio.
And I felt something hit my hand, and Ikind of looked down to see what it was,
and I don't remember anything after that.
Because some gentleman from the towerthrew a rock and hit me in the head.

(01:09:22):
Knocked me out absolutely cold.
Everything came out okay.
The brain shook a littlebit looser after that.
Funny part of the story is a coupleweeks later was Super Dirt Week
at Syracuse and I saw Tommy andI said, hey Tommy, how you doing?
He said, good, how you doing?
I said, pretty good.
He said, you know, you're thefirst guy that ever went down
and I never threw a punch.

(01:09:43):
One of the other terrible interviewsthat happened, Gary, I think you
were working with me, a candidatewith Speedway with Will Cagle.
If you knew Will Cagle at all,he was kind of a controversy guy.
He could be hot, he could be cold,he could be nice, he could be bad.
One night a candidate withSpeedway, a young guy took him
out going into turn number three,who was in the qualifying heat.

(01:10:04):
They regrouped and everything.
They knew what Cagle was goingto do and they pointed to him.
This was before one way radiosinto the cockpit of the cars.
Cagle lines up in the tail andhe comes up through there and
he dumped Mark Livingston goinginto three on the very next lap.
So he got the black flag.
And he had to run the consolationand obviously he won the conci,

(01:10:26):
but he had to start back inthe consolation starting spot.
I'm going to tell you, if anybodyever used nitrous oxide that night,
he was using it because he camefrom 20th spot up to first and
probably five laps, maybe seven.
And he got up there to the number onespot and he just put a lap on everybody.
He was just unbelievable.
I went down to interview him and Icame down with the trophy and I put

(01:10:48):
the trophy on his right rear tire.
And I said, so wherewill Hobbit tonight go?
And he grabbed the microphonefrom me and he says, Number
one, I don't like the promoter.
Number two, I don't like the flagger.
Number three, I don't like you.
And I don't like any of you race fans.
There, I did my interview.
Because the rules were you had to doan interview or you didn't get paid.

(01:11:10):
He threw the mic back at me.
He got in the car, fired itup, spun his wheels, and the
trophy went up into the air.
Next day at Weed Sports Feedway, I'mwalking down through the pit area,
and I says, I'm going to avoid him.
And he goes, Hey, Jose.
And I turn around and Ilook and I says, Yeah?
And he says, what did Glenn say?
I said, well, Glenn says, Glennsaid you're a, start with an A.

(01:11:36):
He goes, what did everybody else say?
I said, they all agreed with him.
That was Cagle.
He was pretty controversial.
As far as the best interviews,back when I started announcing, You
really didn't do too many interviews.
You know, here again, youdidn't have a wireless mic.
And it was very tough todo a lot of interviews.
Alan Johnson, I'm sure you'regoing to agree with me, was
one of the terrible ones.

(01:11:57):
You had to hold him by the shirtbecause he had a tendency of
walking away from you all the time.
As time went on, he got much better.
Danny Johnson was always a good interview.
They were just all good.
They answered the questions you gave them.
They were happy they won the race.
Sometimes a little disturbing tointerview the second place or the
third place because they didn't win.
I've really had a good timeat it and that's my stories.

(01:12:19):
I used to do interviews at the Bog Tent.
These are corporate interviews.
They bring the drivers in and thesepeople paid a lot of money to sit right
at the apex of turn 11 here at WatkinsGlen coming on the front straightaway.
Good guys to interview.
Jeff Gordon.
Laura said, always a great interview,especially when Conor Edwards would be
sneaking up behind him and jumping him.

(01:12:40):
And the two of us start wrestlingand fighting for the mic.
That was good.
The big surprise to me was Mark Martinwalks in with his own interviewer.
He makes a statement, doesn'tsign any autographs like
everybody else, and walks out.
And I thought that was probably the worstof anybody that I had ever interviewed.

(01:13:01):
The best guy, I think, was Kyle Busch.
And this was when Kyle was gettingthe rap for being just a jerk.
I did an interview with Kyle.
Again, because of my racing background,I was asking him a question about what
he was doing between the two differentcars, the sprint car, whatever it
was, nationwide car at the time.
The difference between the two ofthem, between turn one and turn

(01:13:23):
two, and how he approached turn two,Watkins Glen, and what RPM he was,
and was he shifting, was he braking?
You know, that's not a, gee,M& Ms, or you know, what's your
girlfriend's name, kind of a question.
He spent At least five minutes talkingabout the difference between the two
cars all the way around the track,the RPMs, the gears, the entrance
to the turns as braking points.

(01:13:45):
And I thought that that wasreally a cool interview.
It was something thatyou don't normally hear.
And I still remember that isprobably the best interview
that I ever had with a driver.
I don't know if everybody elseknows this, but Frank is also a
real estate broker in Connecticut.
Have you ever sold any house toanybody who's like, really cool?
Thank God the motorheads in my area seekme out, because if they didn't, I couldn't

(01:14:07):
have done all the racing that I did.
And as I like, tell people, Isaid, you know, if I was really
good at it, I'd be retired.
But yeah, the racing hasbrought me my niche and clients.
You know, some people it's a PTA orbingo games or their local church
or something, but I've taken careof the motor heads for years.
I sold the international motorsportassociation, their building

(01:14:29):
in Bridgeport, Connecticut,and they were there for years.
And when they moved down south, I soldthe building for them along with the
18, 000 honeybees that had built anest in the chimney of the building.
So it's great.
Like you've already heard, thebest series or the best race
is the next one I'm going to.
But I want to go back for theone that was the most fun.

(01:14:50):
The race series that was the most fun goesall the way back to when I first started.
It was called the Car and DriverShowroom Stock Sedan Challenge.
The best thing about it wasthere was free Schaefer beer.
From there, it was likean automotive Woodstock.
The editors of Car and DriverMagazine came up with this idea

(01:15:11):
that they would race against anybodywho wanted to race against them
in the cheapest cars of the era.
So we had Ford Pintos, ChevroletVegas, Dodge Colts . These cars were
slow . They leaned and they lurched,and the tires just screamed and protest.

(01:15:31):
But what a time it was.
It was just amazing.
I mean, there was this realantagonism between the writers and the
readers that you couldn't recreate.
So that was the most fun that I remember.
Going back, they ranit from 72 until 1976.
Best interview?
Ah, there are lots of them.
I've had the opportunity to runthe gamut from road racing people
like Sam Posey and David Hobbs.

(01:15:53):
Some of the best interviews were with theguys from the old NASCAR North Series.
Dave Dion, Mike Stefanik, that wouldcome and do one road race a year, or,
if it wasn't the only road race, itwas the last race of the year, and the
championship was going to be decided.
They just came down and had a lot offun and were great people to talk to.
Worst interview I can easily remember.
Nobody ever heard it.

(01:16:13):
22 years old.
One of the first races I everannounced at Thompson, Connecticut.
New racer was there.
His name was P.
L.
Newman.
I followed him around all weekendtrying to get an interview.
I didn't even know what I wasgoing to do with an interview.
I had a reel to reeltape recorder with me.
Finally, at the end of the weekend,he said, okay, we'll do the interview.
We did 40 minutes.

(01:16:35):
I went back home and listenedto it and it was 35 minutes of
me and 5 minutes of Paul Newman.
Tape went in the trash.
It did help me though, subsequently,in my dealings with him because
I realized he wanted his space.
You had to wear a peanut costume.
Yeah, as long as Paul Newman wantedto come to the races and be a racer,
he didn't want to be a celebrity.

(01:16:55):
Fortunately, I learned that earlyand I had a very good relationship
with him throughout his career.
Best interview, I'm not certain.
There have been a lot of good ones.
Worst interviewers, Cagle'sname was on, for that particular
night that you referred to, Jim.
He was never a friendly, nice guy.
Arrogant.
Whether he won or not.
The other guy, most of you allknow this name, but Walt Mitchell.
Walt Mitchell, Drove varietyof cars, but won a lot of

(01:17:16):
races in a late mile division.
And I was working for Donnelly andWalt won about every Saturday night.
I guess we ran those cars, butyou couldn't get Mitchell to
say more than three words, nomatter what the question was.
So that was tough.
The best interview was with Tim Fullerthe night he won at my favorite racetrack,
which is Canada Equal Speedway, whichwe know Mike doesn't particularly
enjoy, but, uh, sorry he didn't like it.
I was only there that onetime where I didn't like it.

(01:17:38):
Well, the track was smooththis night and Fuller won.
And it was his first, and I believe, wononce last year, but I don't know what
year this was, but it goes back a ways.
He was driving for BobFaust in the M1 car.
Some of you folks remember that.
But anyway, he won, and he was on hisway to Victory Circle, and halfway down
the back straightaway, he decided to getto Victory Circle quickest way, which
would be straight across the infield.
He did not know that there was a ditchthere, which is about 10 feet deep.

(01:18:01):
And he eventually gotthere, but not with his car.
And we built a bridge after that.
And that bridge is still there.
Another interview, which is worthsharing with you folks is one
of the last interviews that Idid with Motor Racing Network.
It was the last time I workedfor the Motor Racing Network
and it was here at Watkins Glen.
I was assigned a pre race interviewwith Tony Stewart and Tony had just
done something bad the week before,or whatever it was, and he was

(01:18:24):
not always, but often a problem.
And so I was coached by what youcould talk to him about, what
you couldn't talk to him about.
And most of all, you couldn'ttalk to him about the controversy
that he caused the week before.
That was okay with me.
And I went to his trailer as we weregetting ready for the pre race deal.
And he was of course in the trailer.
I made arrangements with his PR guythat we would do this interview.
And everything was set up, buthe came out of the trailer.

(01:18:45):
It wouldn't talk to me.
It wouldn't talk to anybody.
And of course, my, whoever was running,David Hyde I guess was running MRN
then was very disappointed with me.
It was all my fault.
Well, I had done my homework andI'd been the best gentleman I could
be, but he just wouldn't talk to me.
So that was another highlight.
Another interview highlight was Dale Jr.
Worked a lot of truck races, but Iguess this was probably a bush race.

(01:19:05):
Dale was Jr.
because he was who he was.
They always wanted to talk to him andhe was running well enough to deserve
an interview before or after the races.
But he was such a nervous young kid,couldn't do an interview very well.
And just to watch him mature over theyears as he's now a pretty smooth guy.
Mark Martin, you brought that.
Mark was a tough guy as well.
He stiffed me in a way at Pocono.
I asked him a question and heanswered it and I asked him another

(01:19:27):
question and he pushed me away.
David Hyatt wasn't very happy withme, but in the next race I talked
to Mark, why did you do that?
You got your one question, yougot your one answer, and that's
all you were going to get.
That was it.
So I've never been a Mark Vinson.
That pretty much answers all my questions,but now it's time for you folks.
Mike, tell them the story about whenyou were working for NASCAR that you

(01:19:49):
got to do the event for Daytona USA.
Oh man.
Daytona USA was a spot where fanscould come in and ask questions just
like we're about ready to do now.
Back in the day, thePepsi Theater was there.
They had just put in a newscreen for the video section.
And my job that day was supposed tosit up with five NASCAR Craftsman

(01:20:12):
Truck Series drivers who were brandnew in the series at the time.
They have director's chairs for us.
And the five guys were there before I was.
They introduced me to comeup to do the interviews.
And the freakingdirector's chair collapsed.
I fell backwards.
The first thing I was asked,I wasn't asked, Are you okay?
Did you break our 10, 000 screen?

(01:20:35):
They finally came overand said, Are you okay?
I said, yeah, don'tworry about your screen.
I didn't land on it.
That drove me nuts.
Is that what you're talking about?
No, I'm talking aboutyour trip to California.
They had an attractiondown at Daytona USA.
They called it Daytona Dream Lapse.
It was kind of like a roller coasterthat would go through the racetrack
and you would have a visual sittingin the roller coaster of how it

(01:20:58):
might've been in a stock car.
At that particular point, and myjob is to be like a PA announcer and
let everybody know what's going on.
I did the voiceover out inCalifornia, of all places.
They couldn't put it anywhere inbetween California and Waukensland
or Daytona, what the heck.
So they bring me out to uh, California,now I gotta become a member of SAG.
Organization where most actressesand actors have to join that.

(01:21:22):
So I have to pay dues to be SAGin another commercial sense.
So I didn't have to usethat union card at all.
Drove me nuts.
One of the stories, one of thegreatest moments I've ever seen
in my career, took place two yearsago in downtown Watkins Glen.
There was a race driver you may haveheard of, his name is Rusty Wallace.

(01:21:42):
And he had just received hisstar on the Walk of Fame.
Wallace is a pretty busy guy, he didhis autographs, he did his interviews,
and he was on his way back to his car,and out of the corner of his eye, He
caught a familiar face and he wentover and spent the next 10 minutes
talking to his friend Al Robinson andthe story that I want to hear Al tell

(01:22:05):
is the one he told to Rusty that day.
Will you do that for us Al?
It was indeed.
I was driving through Muncie, Indianaone night in the 1980s, and I found
myself behind a rather beat up lookingWinnebago, and the Winnebago had Missouri
plates on it, and it was festooned withBusty Wallace and Kenny Wallace stickers.

(01:22:29):
The Winnebago stopped at a gasstation just about the time it
became necessary for me to alsoreplenish the tank on my rental car.
Asked the woman as she stepped outof Winnebago how she and her husband
got to be such big Wallace fans.
She said, we didn't have much choicebecause Rusty and Kenny are our sons.
That's how I met Judy Wallaceand also Russ Wallace.

(01:22:51):
And I still don't know whatRusty's real first name is.
You know, there was a controversy anumber of years ago as Is Rusty Wallace's
name on his birth certificate WilliamRussell or is it Russell William Wallace?
On the subject of the best interview,I think routinely the best interview
that I remember was Neil Bonnet.
All you had to do was walk up andsay hello to Neil Bonnet and he

(01:23:12):
would give you as much time as he hadbefore his next sponsor appearance.
He was a genuinely pleasant personto talk to and a real gentleman.
As well as being a great race driver.
Frank, I already warnedyou about this question.
It has to do with Al Robinson.
You and Al had a traditionat midnight hour at Daytona.

(01:23:34):
Can you give us a little backgroundon where that tradition started?
Whose idea was it?
Why did you pick that song?
Well, I don't know so muchabout the song, and Al's going
to have to help me with this.
Actually, a bunch of us usedto do Daytona all night long.
As they kind of narrowed down theirstaff, and I became politically not

(01:23:57):
welcome up in the booth anymore.
Unless I'd sneak up there at night.
Al would take over the midnight section.
He was the prince of darknesssomewhere around midnight.
I'd go up in the booth for at leasta couple of years there and we
would do the howling at the moon.
Absolutely correct.
Frank, our technical expert, DavidBell created a, uh, In the Midnight

(01:24:22):
Hour by Wilson Pickett, who I'msure many of you remember very well.
It was a staple of the Strokeof Midnight to, uh, play In the
Midnight Hour by Wilson Pickett.
At least David Bell'souttake version of it.
One of the guys I worked forin the PR department down at
Daytona was named Mark Lewis.
Mark Lewis, actually.
He liked to, uh, refer to himself asbeing the most influential African

(01:24:44):
American executive in motorsports.
Right.
And he would help Al throughout the night.
Right.
Mark was a great guy to have around.
He usually stuck in until about 3 a.
m.
or so, at which pointfatigue began to play a role.
Let me tell you another story about Frank.
Before a race, the driversare in the pre grid area.
They're all strapped in their cars.
They're trying to concentrateon the task ahead.

(01:25:06):
And there was a young woman by thename of Stephanie Van Wye, who was
just starting her racing career.
She was a very accomplished equestrian.
Stephanie was trying to focus.
And Frank asked me for the microphone.
Proceeded to sing HappyBirthday to Stephanie.
Oh, of course.
That story has never died.
And I'm the one who gets blamed.
Frank did the singing, I get blamedbecause I handed him the microphone.

(01:25:28):
We've played enough jokes on peopleover the years that At one point,
in fact, it was the last race of thenational season out of Bridghampton.
For those of you that rememberBridghampton, I think I had run
off the road and come back on ina formula car, so I didn't win the
race, but Chip Ganassi won the race.
Chip pulls into the pits and is lookingfor accolades and there's nobody there.

(01:25:50):
I had pulled in someone behind him.
Chip's entire crew, along withlots of other people, filled
my car up with whipped cream.
They had a couple of dozen cansof Reddi Whip and paid me back.
Looking at the audience andtrying to figure out what might be
repeatable, what's the stupidestthing you guys have ever done where
you put your foot in your mouth?

(01:26:11):
It was in a basketball game.
I was announcing inMontrose, Pennsylvania.
The shooter was comingacross the top of the key.
And I started saying, heshoots from the top of the key.
Well, he scored.
So I was going to change it to,he hits from the top of the key.
And I said, he shitsfrom the top of the key!

(01:26:32):
When that happens, you don't stop.
You just keep on going.
Keep on going.
How many know the music group?
Glenn Donnelly was very famous for havingmusical groups come in to the County Fair.
There was a big stage built inthe center of Weedsport Speedway,
then called County Fair Speedway.
It was on a Sunday night during the races.

(01:26:54):
The next day, Molly Hatchet was goingto appear at the County Fairgrounds.
So, I go down to interview the winner,and Glenn says, Take the group!
Take the Molly Hatchet group down with ya!
They had been up in thetower, tipping a few.
So I says, okay, come on guys, Now,look, I grew up in the 60s, Beatles,
Beach Boys, those type of groups.

(01:27:14):
So I come down, I can't rememberwho the winner was, And I says, hey,
alongside of me, We got the groupthat's gonna be playing here tomorrow
night, The Molly Hatcher Group.
By the way, guys, where is Molly?
Where is she?
laughing I gotta tell you this, whenI got up in the tower, Glenn says,
Boy, if you didn't sound like a jerk.

(01:27:34):
I said, where weren't you?
Where was she?
Stupidest thing I've ever said.
That was out of California Speedway.
It's called out of Club Speedway now.
And I introduced Jimmy Johnson and I'mout in the Southwest for the first time.
So he's from El Cajon, what did I say?
El Cajon, don't forgetthat'll never happen again.
I was announcing at Daytona for MRN,but I had the distinct privilege in

(01:27:56):
1999 for being the guy in the tower.
If you're working for MRN in yourtower at Daytona or any of these
tracks, all you do is fill in betweenduring the commercial periods when the
radio network is doing their thing.
This was earlier in the weekand it was the IROC series.
I'm announcing all these famousname drivers that we all recognize
driving these Pontiac Trans Am cars.
And I'm not sure who it wasthat came over the radio.

(01:28:18):
And it was either Roger Penskehimself who owned the series or
Hilton or somebody from the track.
Tell that announcer, thoseare not Pontiac Grand Ams.
Those are IROC Grand Ams and theyhad lost their Pontiac sponsorship.
So the cars were the samefrom the year before.
They were obviously Pontiacs.
Anybody with half a brainwould have known that.
But they were no longer Pontiacs asfar as Roger Pinsky was concerned.

(01:28:38):
I'm not going to tell you the mostembarrassing things I've said.
I don't want to remember them.
Come on, I got a good story.
I'm at Daytona and it'sthe middle of the night.
Al, you might have been there.
This is very late at night.
I think Tom Natchew was there with us.
It's like three o'clock in the morning.
We're looking for something to talk about.
A few years earlier, I'd written a poemabout what it's like to run a 24 hour

(01:29:00):
race and have your motorhome with you.
It goes like this, and I won'tread the whole thing, but it shows
that somebody's listening evenat three o'clock in the morning.
I found the cheese the other day.
Looked a lot like curds and whey.
Someone had shoved it under the seat alongwith the peach and two slices of meat.
It was all kind of fuzzy.
And what was that smell?
Here in the Delvecchio Bad Smell Motel.

(01:29:24):
Just about that time thephone rings next to us.
We pick it up and there's avoice on the other end and it's
There is no poetry at Daytona.
So, we never got through the hotel.
Well, that kind of reminds meof a story when I was down at
Virginia International Raceway.
The new Mini Cooper that's out is madeby BMW, I don't know if you know that.

(01:29:47):
So I call it the BMW Mini Cooper.
One of the guys from BMWsaid, it's not a BMW.
It's just a Mini Cooper.
Don't tell anybody BMW.
So I kind of got scolded that day.
Now I can tell you that'snot a BMW Mini Cooper.
Wayne County Speedway is inthe middle of North Carolina.
Well, it started out as a dirt track.
It became a paved track.

(01:30:08):
And it was one of those areas wherefighting in the pits was mandatory.
During a race, car coming out ofturn number two hit the outside wall,
bill rolled down the back straight.
Ambulance crew standing by the ambulance,they run down the back straight,
get down to turn three where the carsays, Damn, forgot the ambulance.
Back they go for the ambulance.

(01:30:28):
Same track, guy gets black flag,he won't come off the track.
Cars keep going around, under theyellow, he won't come off the track.
They bring out the red flag.
He won't come off the track.
I'm on the outside wall.
They bring a tow truck out.
The guy wasn't going very fast.
He was a street stock.
He was just kind of motoring around.
He comes down like this and the towtruck, tantamount against the wall.

(01:30:50):
By the way, I want tomention Keith Zares here.
We've mentioned other announcers.
Keith is the announcer at Adirondackand Evans Mills and also does
infield announcing at Oswego.
Same track, late model race.
The owner of the car gets upsetbecause his driver has just been
penalized for spinning somebody out.
He runs out into the pit area,which is outside the parking lot,
rather, which is outside the track.
Brings his car down onto the track.

(01:31:11):
He's going this way.
The field is going that way.
Goes around several times.
They call the police.
911 is called.
Here comes the police.
The blue lights are flying in here.
The guy goes off the track.
Now you've got three cop cars and thisguy racing around the parking lot.
Finally out into the road,and they finally stopped him.
This track, by the way, is locatedin Nahunter, North Carolina, the

(01:31:32):
pig capital of North Carolina.
Perfect.
Not the cops.
North Carolina is the second largesthog producer in the United States.
What was the most exciting lastlap that you have ever called?
1983 International Classic.
Oh yeah.
At the Oswego Speedway.
At EV.

(01:31:52):
200 lap race and it was as boring asthey get until the last seven laps.
Doug Hebron was leading, Bentley Warrenwas running second, Warren Coney was
third, Eddie Bellinger was fourth.
Seven laps to go I start to sayHebron is running out of fuel.
Doug Caruso, one of the brothers ofthe owners of the track, chose Mesa's.
Really, it's a boring race.
You're not going to make it exciting now.

(01:32:12):
Well, he was running out of fuel.
Coming into the white flag, therunning order was Hebron, Bentley
Warren, Warren Conium, Eddie Bellinger.
Coming out of turn number two, Hebronbogged down, Warren was behind him,
Conium went by, Bellinger went by.
At the end of the lap, it was the exactopposite order that they started the lap.
Bellinger won, Warren Conium second.

(01:32:36):
Best last lap was atLittle Valley Speedway.
Promoted there for one year.
I brought in the BRP Modified Tour,which was pretty unique to Little Valley.
It's primarily a late model track.
Kevin Mullen, a driver from Ohio.
Weston, PA.
And Ronnie Smoker, who is from nearbyEden, New York, or Boston, New York, which
is just up the road from Little Valley.
They ran a number of laps sideby side, and that just doesn't

(01:32:58):
happen any place much anymore.
And Smoker's car was smokyfor the last five laps.
And we were never surewho was going to win.
I mean, you just didn't knowthey did not make contact.
It was a great race andSmoker did end up winning.
We learned later that the smoke was not abig problem at all, but that was primarily
because Smoker had a fan base there.
Nobody knew Bowling.
They put on a great race.

(01:33:19):
And of course, the last lap wasFormula 1600 series that I announced
for, you never know who's going towin the race until the last lap.
And what, again, if you're anOvertrack fan, you need to realize
that road racing is a little different.
The cars disappear and all kinds of thingshappen out back and a different group of
cars appears coming out of the last turn.
It can be just about impossible to figureout, you know, what's going to happen.

(01:33:41):
But one of the races that madea biggest impression on me for a
great finish was a Bush North race.
In 2001 and going into the last lap, AndySanter was leading Butch Lightsinger,
who was a well known road racer at thetime, going into the second to last turn.
Andy's car got off courseand got upside down.
And all of a sudden, here'sButch Lightsinger with the win.

(01:34:03):
Well, the NASCAR pits were inflamed tosay the least because the supposition
was, since nobody had seen whatwent on on the back part of the
track, that Lightsinger had gotteninto Andy and put him upside down.
So he towed Andy's car in, and by now,you know, there's lots of murmuring
going on, and Andy came over andsaid, Screwed up bad, didn't I?
He never touched me.

(01:34:24):
I looked in my mirrors instead of watchingthe track, drove right off the road.
Wildest last laps I ever announcedwas at the Moody Mile at Syracuse.
And there was about twoand a half laps to go.
Danny Johnson was leading, drivingthe Freightliner car number
six, and as he goes down intothe tricky number three corner.
I said, wow, a little puff of smokecoming out of Danny Johnson's car.

(01:34:47):
Now, over the years, I'vebeen known to maybe fabricate
a little bit here and there.
Embellish, embellish, embellish.
I think that's the word.
And there were a couple of peoplestanding behind me up at the tower.
One of them being PastorWells and his wife.
He goes, yeah, sure.
Tell him it's smoking, Joe.
I go, it is.
It really is smoking.

(01:35:07):
And he comes out of turn four and down thefront straightaway to get the white flag.
And as he goes into turn number one, hereally puts out a puff of smoke and he
stands on it coming out of turn numbertwo and down the back straightaway.
And this time when he goesdown to the turn number three,
it is a big puff of smoke.
And when he comes out of turn numberfour for the checkered flag comes

(01:35:30):
across the line, he puked the engineright there on the start finish line.
I turned around and I said, there,I told you what I lied to you.
Most exciting race I ever called ona last lap was Wanda Did Not Exist
at VRR, Virginia National Raceway.
The track is almost four miles around.

(01:35:50):
I didn't have a time and computer.
I didn't have a TV.
But I called the bestdamn race I ever called.
There was all kinds of lead changes.
There was all kinds of things going on.
Guys rubbing each other.
It's the best race I've evercalled that never happened.
Frank, that sounds like something youtold me once, uh, in the SBRA Tower.
If things get a little monotonous, youcall a race battle that doesn't exist?

(01:36:14):
Yeah, of course.
That's exactly what Mike said.
Embellish it a little bit, you know.
And sometimes you have tolook far down the field.
Sometimes we've got a 40 carfield, you know, the front's kind
of stretched out a little bit.
Look down and see what the 18thplace car is doing because that
18th place car, that guy or gal isdriving their hearts out against the

(01:36:35):
19th, 20th, 21st, 22nd place car.
And that's where the battle is.
And that's your job isto make it exciting.
and get somebody to focus onwhat's really happening out there.
That's just as cool asthe front, if it's closed.
But if the front's stretched out, youknow, you might as well be talking to
your hairbrush instead of a microphone.

(01:36:56):
1971 72, a guy came up to meby the name of Jack Brandt.
He was kind of a co promoter for IraVale back in the Ira Vale promotion days.
And Jack said to me, Joeysays, And I said, no.
And he says, what do youknow about a motorcycle?
And I looked over at one andI says, it's got two wheels.
He says, good, you're the announcer.

(01:37:17):
He was promoting during thestate fair, an AMA sanctioned
motorcycle race on the Moody mile.
I says, gee, Jack, I really don'tknow nothing about motorcycles.
That's okay.
You'll do good.
So I get all thecredentials and everything.
And that was announcing from the oldtower in the infield and with the
old grandstand at the fairgrounds.
We had all the top riders there.

(01:37:38):
I remember, uh, Kenny Roberts was there.
And one of the things I learnedreal quick, I was told, they're
not drivers, they're riders.
I said, okay.
They went out and they did somewarm ups and everything, and the
grandstand was absolutely packed.
I'm really embarrassedbecause I don't know much.
I walked through the pits, I gotall the information I could get
and everything, but I just didn'tfeel I was doing a good job.

(01:38:01):
And when they went out for oneof their qualifying heats, Coming
off of turn two, I thought I saw arider slip to the inside and fall.
And when I said that, I said,Wait, we got one, two riders down.
I looked at the grandstand and I seeneverybody stand up and look in point.
Well, then I realized I could see turntwo in the back straightaway, but they

(01:38:21):
couldn't from that old grandstand the waythe elevation in the old grandstand was.
So I said, ah, my secret.
Man, I'll tell you, I had four or fiveriders down at a time coming out of turn
number two and I made it really exciting.
And Kenny Roberts wonthe race, by the way.
Did they charge you a dollarevery time you said driver?
I didn't race.

(01:38:41):
I did.
It cost me about 25 bucks.
No, I didn't get fined.
I got a hot dog.
You may have caught it atthe beginning of this thing.
My name is Roy Soto, and that'simportant for this story.
Down in Binghamton, Jack Crawford,who was a sprint car driver, and
I promoted the first World ofOutlaw race in New York State.
We signed the first contract.

(01:39:03):
Glenn Donnelly got in ahead of us.
They were the race at Rolling Wheelsthe night before, but it got rained out.
So we had the first race downat Five Mile Point Speedway.
It was on television inBinghamton at the time.
About two weeks before that, ArtBonker, who was the promoter at Five
Mile Point, where the race was goingto be held, we were leasing the track
from him, Gordie Cunningham, said tome, Why don't you come to the track?
You don't have a race atOswego on this Saturday night.

(01:39:25):
He said, come to the track,announce a few races, and promote
the World of Outlaws race.
Wow, that's a great idea.
I'll do that.
The track announcer at FiveMile Point was Dusty Doyle.
Dusty got into the amber liquid alittle early almost every race night.
So Dusty comes out and he says, Ladiesand gentlemen, We've got a young

(01:39:46):
man here in the Binghamton area,you may know him from television.
He's gonna be promoting a Worldof Outlaws sprint car race.
Here at Five Mile Point Speedway,and he wants to get his feet a
little bit wet in race announcing.
Ladies and gentlemen, Leroy Sneva.
And Dusty Doyle always made thecomment when he counted cars, 2,

(01:40:11):
4, 6, 8, 10, 12, plus one more.
He would never say that word.
One of the greatest complimentsI've ever heard made of an announcer
was made by a fan named DickO'Brien, who Larry knows very well.
He spent a lot of time at the OswegoSpeedway, and he once said that Roy
Silver could make a two car conciergeexciting, and that's about the

(01:40:32):
highest praise any announcer can get.
My question for you, Larry, didyou ever have a reporter forget
to plug in the microphone?
No.
Yes, Jim Richmond.
Me, I was the idiot.
That's right, yeah.
I've had many instances like that though.
The tricky turn three.

(01:40:53):
The number three turn.
Well look, there's also, you cantake a flyer out of there and
end up in the raffidily patch.
I've had a lot of guys in the raffidily.
You guys are great.
Who was the most colorfuldriver you guys ever out?
I'd say Will Kagel.
Yeah.
Will certainly, you know, willused to do some things that,
particularly in a caution.
He was accused of doing alot of different things.

(01:41:14):
It was because he did 'em.
Yeah.
One of the things he would go throughand I would play it up an awful lot.
He'd pull his harness straps a little bit.
Look at him.
He's trying to psych upthe driver on the outside.
He is pulling his sleeves up.
But at one time he said tome, I don't like when you call
attention to pullin the sleeve up.
Because if you remember,mirrors were outlawed.
And Will was known to have a braceleton that may have had a reflector on it.

(01:41:40):
So he could see around the track.
I hope you guys have had as much fun asI have, because this has just been a bop.
Let's please thank all these guys up here.
So, on behalf of the Center, Gary,Greg, Frank, Joe, Leroy, and Mike.

(01:42:05):
Name became so popular in Binghamton.
I was a baller at the time, andsomebody made me a pair of heel
plates that said Leroy Sneva on them.
Are you related to Tom Sneva?
Really?
Cool.
Leroy Van Dyke?
Anyway, thank all of you for coming.
Thanks to all of you forcoming, and thanks very much.

(01:42:26):
Mr.
Robinson has a question.
Oh, Mr.
Robinson.
Yes.
I'd like to mention the personwho's not here who made me an
announcer for the first time.
The link deal can't fail.
And of course, it's my first opportunityto announce the major events,
courtesy of Gary Montgomery and the1983 Race of Champions in Okinawa.
I want to take a moment to thank eachone of these gentlemen for taking

(01:42:48):
time out of their busy schedule.
It's just been a thrill workingwith all these gentlemen and
I respect them immensely.
They have left me with memoriesthat will last forever and totally
enhanced my experiences goingto the races over the years.
Thanks guys.
Thanks everybody.
This episode is brought to youin part by the International

(01:43:09):
Motor Racing Research Center.
Its charter is to collect,share, and preserve the history
of motorsports, spanningcontinents, eras, and race series.
The center's collection embodiesthe speed, drama, and camaraderie
of amateur and professional motorracing throughout the world.
The Center welcomes serious researchersand casual fans alike to share stories of
race drivers, race series, and race carscaptured on their shelves and walls and

(01:43:33):
brought to life through a regular calendarof public lectures and special events.
To learn more about the Center, visit www.
racingarchives.
org.
This episode is also brought to you bythe Society of Automotive Historians.
They encourage research into anyaspect of automotive history.
The SAH actively supports thecompilation and preservation of papers.

(01:43:54):
organizational records, printephemera, and images to safeguard,
as well as to broaden and deepenthe understanding of motorized
wheeled land transportation throughthe modern age and into the future.
For more informationabout the SAH, visit www.
autohistory.
org

(01:44:14):
We hope you enjoyed another awesomeepisode of Brake Fix Podcast brought
to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
If you'd like to be a guest onthe show or get involved, be sure
to follow us on all social mediaplatforms at GrandTouringMotorsports.
And if you'd like to learn moreabout the content of this episode,
be sure to check out the followon article at GTMotorsports.

(01:44:34):
org.
We remain a commercial free and noannual fees organization through
our sponsors, but also throughthe generous support of our fans,
families, and friends through Patreon.
For as little as 2.
50 a month, you can get access to morebehind the scenes action, additional Pit
Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies.

(01:44:55):
As well as keeping our team of creatorsfed on their strict diet of fig
Newtons, gumby bears, and monster.
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