Sid’s Vault Productions Crew Bringing Sid’s View Back To New London-Waterford Speedbowl In 2015

When the court dramatics surrounding foreclosure of the New London-Waterford Speedbowl were settled recently, one of the first questions many fans had concerning the return of racing to the facility was whether or not that would include the return of something that had become part of the fabric of the shoreline oval.

Would new ownership and management mean the return of Tom “Sid” DiMaggio and his Sid’s Vault Productions crew to the track?

On Sunday DiMaggio finally offered up an answer, the one many were hoping to hear.

“We’ll be back,” DiMaggio told RaceDayCT Sunday afternoon.

The Vault Productions produced Sid’s View “Webisodes” over the past few seasons have become part of the experience of racing season at the Speedbowl. Those productions ended abruptly early last July though after a disagreement with the former track management crew forced DiMaggio to make the decision to walk away from the track.

DiMaggio said he and his team will ease back into the Sid’s View “webisode” productions in 2015.

“We’ll be there on a weekly basis but we will only be doing probably five, at the most, full-blown Sid’s Views with the whole 25 in-car’s and grandstand commentary and the elaborate graphics package with car numbers and all that stuff,” DiMaggio said. “That will cut back on the editing time and that time is going to be put toward finishing up the documentary. Because the foreclosure saga is over we now have our ending for that, and we just have a lot of video geek stuff to do.”

DiMaggio said to expect the standard long form “Sid’s View episodes for at least the Wings and Wheels Show on Aug. 8, the Tri-Track Open Modified Racing Series event on Sept. 13 and the finale Open show on Oct. 24.

“And then we’ll choose a couple other one’s at some point,” DiMaggio said. “But we’ll all be there every week. We’ll all have [hand held cameras] on us ready to capture action. We plan on putting some type of video content out every week. [Official Eric Webster] will run his camera every week. So some weeks we may get the last three laps of a great side-by-side finish or another week it might just be ‘Webby-Cam’. … There will be a lot more of us walking around the pits like we used to do that we kind of got away from.”

The Vault Productions crew has been working on their Speedbowl documentary project since 2010 and DiMaggio said he hopes to have it ready for release in 2016.

DiMaggio said his sponsors, Mr. Rooter Plumbing, Honest John’s Used Cars, Thirty Marketing, Nicks Service Center, WeldingProcedures.com and Eastern Connecticut Lawn Care continue to support what he and his crew are doing.

“They all support our direction with what we’re doing for 2015,” DiMaggio said. “The plan is to get the bulk of the documentary done this year so we can hopefully go back to doing the “webisodes” weekly again in 2016.”

DiMaggio said he is excited to work with the new management team, led by longtime track competitor Shawn Monahan, who is the new general manager.

“I think the upside with Shawn is huge,” DiMaggio said. “I think he can be really good at this. He’s obviously unproven because he hasn’t done it before. I’ve always thought that he could be really great at this. IN that respect, we’re excited to be back and be a part of something that could be really good.”

DiMaggio said his team was forced to make the decision to stop doing production at events at Thompson Speedway.

“The Thompson deal is really just a matter of availability,” DiMaggio said. “I just can’t get a crew for their schedule. They were great to us up there though. We really appreciate everything [Thompson general manager Josh Vanada] and [Thompson race director Scott Tapley] did for us there.”