Legends cars compete at the New London-Waterford Speedbowl Saturday in qualifying for Sunday’s Bridgewater Raynham Overhead Door Battle of the Sound
WATERFORD – The crown jewel event of INEX Legends competition is coming to the New London-Waterford Speedbowl in 2016.
New London-Waterford Speedbowl general manager Shawn Monahan confirmed to RaceDayCT on Saturday that the track will host the INEX Legends Nationals event next year.
INEX, which was formed in 1995, is the international sanctioning body of Legends, Bandolero, Thunder Roadster, and Legends Dirt Modified racing.
As part of this weekends Super Bowl of Racing at the track, the facility is hosting its biggest Legends event, the Bridgewater Raynham Overhead Door Battle of the Sound. The event, which pays more than $2,000 to win has attracted more than 50 preregistered entrants.
“John Kelly, my Legends inspector, has done a great job all year keeping communication going with everybody from INEX,” Monahan said. “He just bridged myself and [INEX executive competition director] John Haggan together recently and they saw the amount of work that we’re doing.
“I’ve got to give credit to [Battle of the Sound organizer James] Schaefer and his guys who put together this Battle of the Sound event, to just bring that much attention to this place. And they saw the amount of excitement it was drawing for these competitors. To the point where we basically have ourselves a mini Nationals event here. They recognized that and they know that our racing facility and our track has what it takes to house some good racing. I believe they are equally as excited as we are to finally bring it to the New London-Waterford Speedbowl.”
The Legends Nationals have been held previously at such tracks as Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway. The event will be held this year Nov. 12-14 at Anderson Motor Speedway in Williamston, S.C.
“To join those tracks and know we’re going to have guys coming from places like Virginia and Texas and California right here to our beloved third of a mile oval is so exciting,” Monahan said.
Monahan said a date has not been set yet for next year’s event. He said he expects it to be a three-day event running from Thursday through Saturday.
“It’s going to be some time in October,” Monahan said. “We’re going over the preliminaries of when to make that happen to not conflict with other tracks in the area and to be what I think is going to be best for everybody involved. It will be a Thursday, Friday, Saturday show so we have that cushion of Sunday in case we have bad weather.”
This is huge for the speedbowl. Unfortunately the legends are not a favorite division of most people that go to the weekly races at the bowl. I’m not sure if I would attend this event if it is only going to be legends and nothing else. We’ll see.
Exactly. This is a great track for all racing- full-fendered classes, modifieds, and legends. But if there’s no modifieds in action that weekend no fans will show up. But the Nationals are absolutely huge from my understanding. Gonna make a lot of money at the pit gate.