Perfect Storm: Community Rallies To Help Claremont Go Racing After Destructive Storm

(Press Release from NASCAR Integrated Marketing Communications)

Claremont Motorsports Park general manager Mike Parks couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

It was last Tuesday evening, and Parks had just left the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series track located in Claremont, New Hampshire, after doing some minor maintenance around the facility.

A storm had begun to roll in, and Parks decided that was the appropriate time to pack up and head home for the night.

“I went up late Tuesday afternoon to get some mowing done when it wasn’t 100 degrees,” Parks explained. “I started mowing the parking lots. I got one parking lot done, and I looked over and I saw a bolt of lightning come down.

“I said, ‘OK, that’s enough of that,’ and packed everything up and went home.”

Parks didn’t get far from the track before his phone rang. It was Mark Beaudry, who is part of the broadcast crew that streams races from the track, and he had bad news.

“Half hour, 20 minutes after I left the race track, my phone rings,” Parks said. “It was Mark, and he was in a complete panic. He said, ‘Mike, this place is destroyed.’”

Parks immediately turned his car around and drove back to Claremont Motorsports Park. When he got there, he was horrified to find the facility looked nothing like how he had left it only an hour before.

Trees and power poles were snapped in half. Roofs were missing from multiple buildings. A new VIP trailer was destroyed. Fences were ripped apart. Billboards were shredded. Debris was scattered everywhere.

“It looked like a bomb went off in the place, to be honest,” Parks said.

As he surveyed the damage, Parks quickly realized his priority needed to be getting power restored. The track had just received a full shipment of food for the upcoming race weekend, and if power wasn’t restored quickly, all that food would have to be thrown away.

“All our freezers were full as we were getting ready for the weekend,” Parks said. “Fortunately we had backup generators. I called a friend of mine, Hayden Scott at HMS Electric, a part-time competitor who has also been doing our electrical work for us.

“I bet he stayed until Midnight that night and he got the electrical fixed so we could get the generators going so we could get power to our freezers.”

That was one problem solved. Parks then had to figure out how to tackle the rest of the problems created by the Tuesday evening storm.

Parks posted photos of the damage to the track’s Facebook account Tuesday evening with a call for help from local race fans and businesses. He was not prepared for the outpouring of support that followed.

“We threw some pictures up on social media, explained what happened and if anybody was available, if we wanted to race this weekend, we could definitely use the help,” Parks said. “The community support we received was over the top.”

The support was vast and came from a variety of businesses and individuals.

It started with J.S. Automotive owner Joel Stoddard, who was supposed to sponsor Friday’s racing program.

“They own five independent automotive repair shops,” Parks said. “Joel took one person out of each of his repair shops and brought his tractors and dump trailers. Those guys worked their asses off from 7:30 in the morning to 7:30 that night. That’s a race sponsor doing that.

“Then I had a company, CLR Tree Service, don’t even know the (owner). He’s not even really a race fan. He saw our stuff on social media and said, ‘Hey, it looks like you guys could use some help today.’”

The help didn’t just come from local businesses. Parks said in all there were between 75 and 100 people at the track Wednesday helping clean up and repair the damage done by the Tuesday evening storm.

“I felt bad because I wasn’t doing any of the manual work,” Parks said. “I was just running around keeping everybody going and keeping them going in the right direction as to what needed to be done.

“We had guys like Robbie Streeter from Streeter Construction; he dropped what he was doing on his construction work. He came and he fixed all the roofs and all the billboards. He jumped in and helped with all the fencing. Zullo Construction and Zullo Property Maintenance, they came down helped us reset the light poles.

“Late Wednesday night, we turned the lights back on.”

Incredibly, by the time gates opened for Friday’s $5 Fan Appreciation Night, nearly all the damage done by the storm had been cleaned up except for a few trees.

The only significant damage that couldn’t be repaired was done to a VIP trailer, which will likely have to be replaced.

“I don’t want to downplay what happened in any sense, but it was the perfect storm for our event Friday night. We had a good sponsor for the night, we were already doing $5 Fan Appreciation Night, and we were doing an on-track pit party. We knocked it out of the park on Friday night.

“Car counts were the best they’ve been all year; we had absolutely the largest crowd we’ve had all year. It was the perfect storm.”

Parks expressed gratitude for every person and business that took time out of their days to come and help clean up and repair the damage done by Tuesday’s storm. Without each of them, it’s likely there would have been no racing at Claremont Motorsports Park last weekend.

“It gave me a little faith in humanity again, if that makes any sense,” Parks said. “I don’t know how else to explain it. Whatever needed to be done, they just pitched in and got it done.”