(Press Release from Stafford Motor Speedway)
Legends cars in action in 2014 at Stafford Speedway (Photo: Stafford Motor Speedway/Driscoll Motorsports Photography)
After a 20-year hiatus, the INEX / U.S. Legend Cars returned to weekly competition at Stafford Motor Speedway in 2014. After a limited schedule in 2014, the Legend Cars will run all 21 Friday night events plus the NAPA Spring Sizzler and NAPA Fall Final weekend events for a total of 23 races in 2015.
“We’re excited to have the Legend Cars as part of our full race program in 2015,” said Stafford Assistant GM David Arute, who was instrumental in bringing the Legend Cars to Stafford this past season. “We had great competition with a condensed schedule and the racing should be even better with our expanded schedule for the Legend Cars. With all of the young drivers in the Legend Cars we’re really excited about the prospect of watching the next Stafford Speedway star come up through the ranks.”
One driver who will be looking forward to the expanded schedule is Devin O’Connell. O’Connell is a graduate of the Monday night Wild Thing Kart Series and he put his experience and knowledge of the Stafford Mini-Mile to good use as he won on his Stafford Legend Cars debut this past September. O’Connell has the Stafford track title in his visions for the 2015 season.
“I ran Monday nights for 5 years from the Tiger B division all the way up to Junior Outlaws,” said O’Connell. “My experience definitely helped me because a lot of people go to Stafford and don’t know the line around the track. With my experience I knew the line was able to hit my marks going into the corners. I’ve finished second several times before but I’ve never won a Legend Cars championship so that is our goal for the 2015 season at Stafford. We almost won the Summer Shoot-Out championship this summer at Charlotte in the Semi-Pro class. We were leading the points going into the last race but a car in front of me got loose and their bumper got into my right front tire just right and blew the tire out. Stafford is definitely going to be our home track for the 2015 season and I can’t wait to get back out there every week.”
With only an 11 race schedule, there was plenty of competition on track as 6 different drivers found their way to NAPA Victory Lane this season. Cory DiMatteo led all Legend Cars drivers with 3 wins, while his brother Dana, who became the first Legend Cars track champion in Stafford history, tied with Mike Christopher, Jr. and Jordan LaMothe with 2 wins each. Single feature wins were turned in by O’Connell and Brendon Bock.
Along with O’Connell, Stafford has thus far received number requests for Cassandra Cole, Mikey Flynn, Teddy Hodgdon, and Noah Korner for the 2015 season. The first Legend Cars feature of the new season will take place on Saturday, April 25th as part of the 44th Annual NAPA Auto Parts Spring Sizzler Weekend on April 24-26. The Legends Car season will conclude with the NAPA Fall Final scheduled for Oct. 3-4 and a track champion will be crowned that weekend along with champions from Stafford’s five NASCAR Whelen All-American Series divisions.
They put on a good show, but do we really need them on the VMRS and WMT dates? I don’t wanna be their till midnight? Hopefully this gets them more cars.
The layout at stafford is terrible and is zero benefit to the weekly show so my vote is drop this division along w either the limited or late model division. Too many divisions make all divisions weak