(Press release from Thunder Road Speedbowl)
Officials from the Bullring Bash Quarter Mile Challenge presented by RaceChoice.com and Thunder Road Speedbowl have jointly agreed to cancel the Bullring Bash’s appearance at the Coca-Cola Labor Day Classic on Sunday, September 1.
The Bullring Bash portion of the event, which was to consist of a 100-lap Tour-type Modified event and a 35-lap event for the Midstate Site Development Legends, will not be rescheduled. The remaining portion of the Labor Day Classic at Thunder Road, which includes a 200-lap event for the American-Canadian Tour and a 50-lap event for the Lenny’s Shoe & Apparel Flying Tigers, is still on as scheduled.
Bullring Bash is still exploring options for the 2020 racing season. Thunder Road is expected to make an announcement soon regarding an event to replace the Bullring Bash on the Labor Day Classic Sunday schedule.
“We’re all disappointed, obviously,” Thunder Road managing partner Cris Michaud said. “The Bullring Bash looked like a great concept when it was announced, and the racing in their first event at White Mountain Motorsports Park was fantastic. Unfortunately, both Josh and I realized that the support we needed isn’t yet there. Nevertheless, we’re looking forward to a great Labor Day weekend at Thunder Road, and we hope Bullring Bash is eventually able to realize the potential that it has.”
Just like the MRS ….done ! Nice try but the tour is stronger than ever , accept the Iowa crap , and Stafford weekly is the best and the open 80 races ….. nothing else is close !!!! Mods rule no matter what 🏁🏆
So we are down to 4 tour type modified series to chose from down from 6. The survivors are Whelen, Tri Track, MRS, and Stafford. The tour is the gold standard, good car counts and driver recognition. I would say TriTrack has been the 2nd most successful tour this season in strength and depth of field. It will be interesting to see how they do up in Oxford next week. MRS looks a little shaky right now with lower car counts and Claremont canceling. Stafford seemed to gain strength at their last event with MRS cancelling their conflicting show. I would like to see Stafford run the Opens once a month and have points next year. I wonder if they will reduce their Whelen shows to the opener and closer get rid of MRS and just run opens in place of them next year. That seems to be the direction they are heading. I am not sure about the American Mod series. They havent had any races, as all their events were scheduled at the bowl which hasnt opened yet this season. Has there been any progress at the Bowl? Hopefully next year there isnt as many Tour type series competing for a finite amount of drivers/cars/fans.
2020 These guys wont get another chance, similar to what happend with Gary Knight.
Stafford is the Jewel, if they would bump the purse a little higher and add 2-3 shows it would kill MRS and Tri Track. Even Waterford if opens could run Tour Types once a month and drawmore cars than these tracks up north.
Tri Track at Oxford with a huge purse will struggle to get 27-30 cars, you put that same race and purse in CT and you would have easily 40 plus cars not to mention a way better Crowd Size. For every car that does not go these series are losing an avg of 5 pit passes, 5 tires, 10 gallons of fuel, 3 spectators. X that amount by 10 cars and the #s are huge.
I am Not sure of the direction that Both Stafford and Thompson will go in 2020 and beyond BUT if you look at the 2 crowds that Stafford and Thompson had for the last 2 WMT races I would say wowwwwwwww, Bateman has some work to do to get the MRS back to standard, if Stafford and Thompson Both dropped the series, can it survive???, Will be interesting to see if Norm Wrenn Brings WMT events to his new tracks or stay with MRS.
At the end of June Blaise Brodeur was doing pit interviews at Thompson and threw out a few optimistic asides about Waterford’s opening later in the season. Currently neither he or Serluca are making any kind of comment about the future that I can see. The big news is Mike updating his Facebook page and the Waterford management team doing general race related promotion more like fans then deciders at a race track. It’s really, really late at this point. Stop the vaguely hopeful nonsense, be managers and say you’re going to get an event in or it’s unlikely for whatever reason.
Great round-up CG. This was a year of experimentation and pushing the boundaries. Those Bullring Bash guys promoted the heck out of that series and it just proved to be a bridge too far. TTOMS expanded and pushed out it’s geographic comfort zone and it’s still a work in progress with Oxford Plains being the ultimate test of their reach. You can stick a fork in the American Modified idea cause its done but I don’t agree the VMRS is toast. They’ve had high teens to low twenties for car counts in mostly Northern tier races. They started as a Northern tier series and perhaps now they’ll condense and refine it, make changes and hopefully continue. They have tradition.
Will Stafford drop the VMRS race? There’s no economic reason to keep it since the opens are better versions of the same thing so why split the booty. On the other hand Stafford is loyal at times and the VMRS has tradition so maybe they’ll keep the one show on the docket if the VMRS continues.Bet they’re talking about that right now. In any event I fully expect the VMRS race on August 30 to be a rousing success.
Would like one Open a month at Stafford but only if they drop the VMRS race and no points. Pay more money up front if you can do it and the teams will come. Start to show more loyalty to the teams that come as well like the TTOMS and don’t send anyone home without a feature start or some money. You done good this year so build on it.
Tracks are contemplating 2020 schedule already. There are many questions about what will emerge for next year but I’ll be curious if any try to duplicate Stafford’s open event success with multi open events in their schedule.
There are signs that the longer term trend is seeing weekly racing slowly die off but not necessarily in a bad way. Just a change. Weekly events to be replaced by fewer events but specials, tours, opens and extravaganza’s that excite fans and give teams more choice. I see a landscape in the future with common rules in most divisions where teams travel to different tracks for big events in multi divisional open formats. The weekly grind and predictability over and a day where every team is an invader and unpredictability is the norm and it will be great.
I had to make a one day only return to say I Told You So. If I’m going to get chastised for saying the previous postponed event was a cancellation (which it was), I figured I would take a victory lap. Pun intended.
Doug, I mean Rich, I mean Rich P, I mean Sybill, Stafford had one open race in two years with over 25 cars and it’s the crown jewel? Give me a break. It might be something or it might not. Time will tell. The drivers and fans aren’t running to Stafford for these events though. It’s barely off life support at the moment.
The crowd at Oxford will be very good. You should at least let them run the event or maybe actually attend the race before you spew nonsense about crowd size. CT people are just bent they can’t have a TTOMS race.
The MRS had more schedule cancelations than any tour I can ever remember this year. A lot of it can be blamed on poor leadership and big egos. Now look at them. They know there place now though. As predicted the racers and the fans have spoken in 2019.
One follow up to Wednesday’s race. Tommy Baldwin’s FB post says all you need to know about the Blewett incident. Funny stuff.
Stafford killing TriTrack? I don’t think so! They are completely different racing due to the purse payout and the size of the track. TriTrack is the ultimate bullring series; track size being the equalizer in many respects. And let’s not forget $6000 – $10000 to win. Nobody else is close, including Stafford. I know the WMT has $10-$12K, but that series also requires a substantially larger investment in equipment and personnel. The Stafford races are great open events for those that want to run a larger track, and are kind of an intermediate option between TriTrack and WMT. I think they need at least $5000 to win to get more teams interested. Those races need $$ in the purse, not points.
Jd spot on. Stafford is having a little bit of success because over half the entries are already there on a Friday night. It doesn’t matter how many cars if people don’t show up to watch it at an inflated ticket. Thompson tried the open shows a few years back and that was a complete bust. I was hoping for success for this series as it had so many great people involved. Sadly there are not as many Mods up North as there was when the MRS first started. You try to run touring races to far outside of the CT range and you are doomed in 2019. That is where the cars are unless its a special event like the SBM or Open Wheel Wed. Those are now staples just like the Turkey Derby and NS Shootout.
The one thing people better start understanding is it has zero to do with a purse. You are not getting those Tour regulars to an open show for money. The Tour is a lot of people with deep pockets and big egos racing for pride. Its not the drivers who don’t want to run but its kind of hard when they have no car under them. The Tour is growing and the rest are slowly dying. Sadly if Bateman didn’t interfere with every aspect of his series and make it his playground they could have been legitimate competition to the Tour. Those guys were a heck of a lot of fun and put on some great races. Of course they also had a lot of older drivers who have retired from racing over the last few years that have really cut into there car counts.
DGF are you there? You have a kindred spirit in JD. I’ve often said taunts using name calling don’t mean much unless you can get someone else to use it and JD delivered. And he congratulated himself so that’s familiar as well.
– No JD the Stafford opens were never on life support. From the first every one has had average plus attendance and clearly made money. Expanding after the first year so no, no, no life support.
-Yes JD Stafford had one race over 25 cars. No JD cherry picking doesn’t give the whole story. Twenty cars each in the first year, 21, 23 and 26 in the second. The 26 limited to the maximum in the feature with cars not making the field.
-No JD there is no doubt they are here to stay for the time being anyway. The first event this year was nasty with cooler temps and high winds and a strong crowd. The second again with high winds, not ideal and a strong crowd. The third perfect conditions and a very strong crowd. Preece and the 7 NY were part of the shows and the TC13 was popular as well. NWMT strong no but to make money they don’t need that kind of audience.
-no JD we in Ct are not bent or in any way out of sorts with the success of the TTOMS and completely support their success. Small tracks are equalizers. With Waterford on hold we don’t have what they need.
-No JD the Stafford opens are not the crown jewel of anything. They are unique, successful and should do well in the future and compare to nothing.
-No Tom Carey the Stafford teams did not comprise half the open field. And no, the fact that Stafford SK teams went to the expense to build cars and motors to compete in the races is not a weakness it
is exactly ideal.
-no JD and Tom Caret I don’t need to insult racing in your part of modified country to make this a tug of war.
On August 30th the VMRS series will role into town. It won’t be cancelled except for rain. It will have a strong field including the Stafford teams that Tom Carey think are a weakness , the crowd will be strong if the weather is good and money will be made. That’s the point after all.
Aside from all that you guys nailed it.
–
I am from CT so please go back to the drawing board.
Even the MTS as bad as it was lasted a full season or two. I can’t remember. I always look forward to the MRS race on Saturday night of the world series. Hopefully they get the usual big fields. As far as Waterford the concern shouldn’t be if they open at all this year, which is looking more unlikely everyday, but what the future of the track will be.
Stafford has figured out they can raise the purse over MRS, not pay the fee to have the tour there and a lot of the same teams plus some others who have cars that aren’t MRS legal but the fans like will show up. In the end they get same cars, good crowd and in the end make more money. Why wouldn’t you do it. Bullring had some good ideas but they drifted way out of areas with a strong modified base. It was just to far for most cars and not enough locals to fill out the field and draw fan interest. Luck might have been better if they could have used tracks like Monadnock, Star, Lee. Tri Track has been fortunate to have have taken over a couple successful big purse open shows, Seekonk open wheel Wednesday, SBM 125 and they have been able to build off of this. Also they have inclusive rules package, MRS for example has put it self on an island, made some odd rule changes especially in regards to motor packages that have driven many away, plus the weekly SK purse is better then a tour purse, not a recipe for growth. Car counts and quality of field would indicate that MRS is on the decline. The cars are out there it just seems to be harder to get them to the track,drivers and teams seem to be picking and choosing events and tracks not committing to one series or a full season with a series. This would seem to play into the hands of the open shows and make it tough on tours.
2020 schedules are going to be verry interesting, Thompson’s move to Sundays will affect these weekend shows at other tracks. Waterford should be open nxt year so I would think MRS or Tri Track will have some shows there. Teams are definitley Cherry Picking events over Series, points are kinda just out there.
Not Sure how that Boost in Nascar points fund is working, but more and more cars are signing up so its gotta be helping get and keep the cars.
You are all worried about Car counts and bigger purses for the Stafford Opens. Let’s worry about the best racing in New England – the sk and skl weekly divisions. Their car counts drop to 20 cars on occasion- due to low purses. Let’s support the weekly racers first. Having the NASCAR tour is enough and not as good racing as the weekly races IMO.
I don’t think front loading the purse is the answer in any of tours. The last starter needs to cover their tires and fuel plus to make it worth their while even thinking about making the trip.
Even though the tour is probably ranked #1 you still need a 50k spec engine, deep pockets and crew to run that deal. TTOMS, don’t need the crew to the extent the tour does and you have a multitude of engine options and the purse is pretty good. Stafford open don’t need the crew to the extent the tour does but the purse structure is not the best. Bull Ring, don’t really know where that will go but Josh has his work cut out for him. VMRS, Bateman is the problem there, just a matter of time for them.
If you are looking for car counts then put the $$$$$$ up from front to back and they will come. I love the WMT but the TTOMS has my attention.
Speedbowl, they are still feuding with the Town and the stands are only a piece of the issue. The stream to the rear of the property is the bigger picture, can you say DEP? Serluca, love ya man and you are the tracks biggest cheerleader but, let’s face it, you are done for 2019, cut through the BS and the truth shall set you free. What will 2020 bring, that is what I would concentrate on right now, rebrand and swing for the fence in 2020. You have the opportunity to be the biggest comeback story yet
That’s only my opinion.
We knew Oxford was going to be tough drawing cars. But… The response has been better than I expected.. Will continue to monitor who is coming right up til the Friday, but right now looks pretty impressive.
02 – Geoff Rollins
04 – Joey Jarvis
05 – Jacob Dore
3 – Matthew Swanson
3 – Matt Galko
4 – Jeff Gallup
6 – Woody Pitkat
7 – Andrew Charron
7 – Kurt Vigeant
9 – Tommy Barrett
12 – Steven Dickey
16 – Colbey Fournier
21 – Les Hinckley
25 – Brian Robie
25 – Calvin Carroll
25 – Ronnie Williams
27 – Anthony Sesely
27 – Derek Robbie
33 – Bill Dixon
35 – Kris Watson
48 – Jon Kievman
50S – Ron Silk
50 – Carl Medeiros Jr.
60 – Matt Hirschman
63 – CJ Bolton
66 – Andy Shaw
71 – Brad Babb
76 – Kirk Alexander
82 – Larry Barnett
88 – Russ Hersey
92 – Anthony Nocella
99 – Richard Savary
573 – Andy Jankowiak
Larry Barnett is a surprise – is he keeping the fenders on?
Oxford Maine gets more cars than a Stafford Open That made my week. But Stafford is the crown jewel??? Even Doug/Rich/Sybil will have a tough time defending that.
Also blows away the notion that Bullring was too far away. Just no interest there.
Can we get a welfare check on DaReal? Is he ok. Maybe he is doing a recon mission for a major modified scoop?
HHhhmmm… 11 cars for WMWP, and 33 so far for Oxford. Perhaps this is further evidence of “If you pay them, they will come”. Nothing against the Bullring Boys, as they had a good concept and I hope it eventually succeeds. However, the travel distance for a lot of the Connecticut teams I’d bet is about the same if not more to go to Oxford. As always, great job by the TriTrack crew to get a good solid field of entries!
Steve, Larry Barnett was running some VMRS races a few years ago. Unfortunately he had lousy luck for the most part; hopefully that is in the past. If it’s the same car it’s easy to find on the track. It’s painted the same as his Street Stock.
Part Two: Sorry Steve, I didn’t notice the car# originally. #82 has been used by Mike Holdridge this year in TriTrack races, so Barnett might be in that car. .
Barnett in the Holdridge car. Mike has a wedding to go to but Dale wants to bring the modified!!
JD, I took a few vacation days. Taking a little bit to catch up with Sybil and all her personalities.
Oxford is a track that people like to go to. Has always been popular, I hear Tour folks talk about going back up there.
TTOMS has a good following and going to a track people like. And a purse. What’s not to like? It’s beautiful up there, as is WMMP.
If BullBash did a couple races closer to where the cars are to get some cred (show they can pay the purse), things might have turned out better.
Looks like TTOMS is taking a careful approach, not adding too many races too quickly. Making sure they can put up the purses.
Gee JD if all your gonna do is take shots at Stafford and Doug you should have stayed away, Nobody in Ct or western Ma IS UPSET we cant get a Tri track race in Ct, tri track has been at Waterford which fits the style track Tri Track runs at, Jim does a great job at paying good money to his supporters and runs a classy show, Tri track has been around for many years while Stafford is in year 2 of open shows, NO NEEED TO COMPARE THEM, I HOPE Tri track has a great race at Oxford, why such HATE? IF YOU love or like or whatever Modifieds be happy we have many races to choose from no matter where they run. I hope to be at Stafford for the MRS and WMT shows and Mad Dog for Tri track in SEPT, lighten up AND ENJOY!!!
No need to compare them. I 100% agree. Now go tell tell Doug that. He has spent all summer doing just that.
I’m not taking shots, I’m correcting the nonsense that a certain few type and believe. I didn’t use the term “crown jewel”. I didn’t say Stafford Opens were “the best”. I didn’t say Oxford would struggle to get 27 cars. I didn’t say the Oxford 250 modified crowd would fall short of a Stafford Open show(a really dumb statement). Wrong on all accounts. So, I’m calling him/them out.
See you at Monadnock.
Well I didn’t see anyone use crown jewel about Stafford, I did not attend any of the 2018 open shows at Stafford, I did go to 2 in 2019 and while decent shows def nothing to RAVE ABOUT, I will keep an open mind about future shows to attr and act more teams but I have reason to think Stafford is Happy at what they are doing and won’t change much, who knows.
Oxford Plains has always been a tough sell for Mods when the WMT tried it for a few years in the late 80’s and when the MRS tried several years ago, its NOT modified country, Even Jim Schaefer said he was surprised at the entries and I hope they all show up and they have a great race and do it for years to come, might even get me to make plans to attend some year. the OXFORD 250 is a crown jewel in racing, no 1 can argue that!!!
love how Speedbowl believers now have come to realize its not happening. I’m still waiting for the FB alert that Waterford Speedbowl will open on New Years Eve!