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NASCAR season’s end offered thrills, spills

The 2017 NASCAR season has come to a close and I’m sure the teams are already preparing for Speedweeks in Daytona. Drivers get a much-deserved few weeks off to enjoy families and the holidays and reflect on this past year. A few of the teams give crews some time off also before action ramps up in preparation for action at Daytona. This year’s Daytona 500 will be the first race in which only one driver will have started the 2001 500 and raced against Dale Earnhardt Sr. Kurt Busch is that driver and he still is yet to confirm his ride for 2018. Danica Patrick has announced ...

Opening day is Monday

For some people, this is the best day of the entire year. This whole thing reminds me of a picture I saw in an outdoors magazine about 40 years ago. The photograph showed five grown men, who were old enough to be World War II veterans, in what looked like a hunting cabin. The caption at the bottom of the picture read something like this: “It’s 12 after four in the morning, under-cooked eggs, over-cooked bacon, and coffee that will most likely get more attention than respect. It really didn’t matter because everything tasted great on what is the greatest of all days, opening ...

Fighting to be a champion

This will be a special NASCAR Playoff column covering last week’s events at Phoenix Raceway and setting the stage for the upcoming Playoff races held at Homestead-Miami Speedway. All three NASCAR traveling series Championships will be decided there this weekend. I’m still not sold on this “one race decides the Champion” format but it does bring excitement to a fever pitch. In each division, four drivers enter this final event even in the point’s battle and literally how they finish in this race decides the top four finishers in those perspective divisions, and one will ...

Banquet honors local drivers

On Saturday evening some of the best racers in the region gathered together in the Beverly Fire Hall for the final event of the 2017 season. The Elkins Raceway Championship Awards Banquet is always one of the most fun events of our season. It’s nice to clean up, put on our nicer clothes and share a meal and do some “bench racin’” as I call it. There’s congratulations and hope for next season. We can reflect on the good and the bad. Thoughts are already turned toward next season. The track management said that there will be no major changes and if last year was any ...

Hunting vital to tourism

In a Nov. 3 news release, the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources announced that three new initiatives are being considered to increase fishing and hunting opportunities for recreational tourism. The new concepts to expand state park hunts should be finalized and presented to the WVDNR commissioners during the February meeting. The first of these new initiatives is to increase the opportunities to enhance trout fishing in and near certain state parks next year. Fish hatchery personnel are making plans to stock trout in selected state parks on Saturdays. In addition to this, ...

Titles won on the dirt tracks

There were several points titles settled in the two major dirt late model series. The Lucas Oil SLM series crowned Shinston’s Josh Richards Champion after his win in the Dirt Track World Championship race two weeks ago in Portsmouth, Ohio. This past weekend all eyes were focused on the dirt track at Charlotte Motor Speedway for the World of Outlaws World Finals. A total of 76 of the very best SLM race teams were on hand and the crowd saw great racing both Friday and Saturday nights. Brandon Sheppard won Friday night’s feature and also took the Points Championship in the Rocket ...