Harvick on a tear

March 8, 2018

The NASCAR top series are on their western swing. This past week all three series invaded the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The weather included high winds that played havoc with the set ups. A stock car traveling at close to 200 mph encountering 25 to 30 mph winds will really move the car around in the corners and cross winds are even worse. Teams had their work cut out for them. Even though Atlanta was also a mile and a half track LVMS presents its own set of challenges. Lower progressive banking, along with a track that has become quite bumpy in places and pavement that makes new ...

NASCAR heads to Atlanta

March 1, 2018

Speedweeks 2018 is all finished but the NASCAR schedule is just beginning. Many fans say that the regular season doesn’t start until week two at Atlanta. The restrictor plate racing at the superspeedways is so unpredictable and usually it turns into a survival game. The mile and a half Atlanta Motor Speedway is a perfect storm of worn-out pavement and tricky handling challenges to make the crew chief and crew use every ounce of their know-how. All three of the top divisions of NASCAR race at this track. Fans have a tendency to call this size track “Cookie Cutter” because ...

Daytona had thrills and spills

February 22, 2018

OK, Speedweeks 2018 is in the books. Wow! Great racing and action were featured at all the events whether it was the half-mile dirt at Volusia Speedway Park or the high banks of Daytona International Speedway. Let’s take a look at all the final events beginning with the World of Outlaw Super Late Models doubleheader at VSP. Friday night the best field of super late models took to the perfectly prepared clay surface at VSP. The fast qualifiers were Scott Bloomquist and Mike Morris in the two group sessions. The four heat race winners were Scott Bloomquist, Dennis Erb, David ...

Crossbow a challenge for hunters

February 17, 2018

When I started deer hunting in the early 1960s, it was unlawful to hunt deer with a crossbow or to even be afield with this type of a weapon. The most common bow at this time was the long bow. The recurve soon came along, and the compound bow came on strong in the mid 1970s. It was in the late 1970s when big game bow hunting became popular with West Virginia hunters. In the 1990s, I can remember reading in one of the big game bulletins where one of the state wildlife management areas had more deer taken with a bow than with a firearm. It was in 2015 when the state legislature took ...

Dirt track racing lights up Tampa

February 16, 2018

Wow! There’s a lot of racing to talk about this week. The action got underway at Daytona International Speedway on Saturday. This column will focus on the dirt late models at East Bay Raceway in Tampa, Florida. The Lucas Oil Late Model racing series ran a six-day series. Let’s get right to the races. The early nights don’t have the very large winner’s purses and some of the big name drivers choose to sit out the early races, but as the purses go up so does the competition. Night one on Feb. 5 saw 39 cars take qualifying laps. Shinnston’s Josh Richards set fast time. ...

Race cars rolling at Daytona

February 15, 2018

We covered all the dirt track events at East Bay Raceway in the last column and there’s still some dirt tracking to be done in Georgia and Florida and we will fill in the blanks in the next few columns. This past Friday the ARCA and NASCAR Monster Energy Cup series rolled into the garages at the World Center of Speed, Daytona International Speedway. I’ll just get into the coverage. The ARCA cars took to the track for practice and qualifying for the Lucas Oil 200. There were a huge number of rookie drivers entered. Natalie Decker set her Venturini Motorsports car on the pole. ...