Welcome to “Yuma Speedway 102″
April 16th, 2008, 11:10 am · Post a Comment · posted by rhoeft
Welcome to “Yuma Speedway 102,” my ongoing, seemingly never ending look at the local track and what’s become of it.
Yesterday, in “Yuma Speedway 101,” I laid out the history of the track, in terms of owners, promoters and so forth.
Today, in conclusion, I want to revisit the track’s closing in 2000, and what has transpired outside the locked gates in the last eight years. And I promise it will be much, much shorter than yesterday’s rant.
In retrospect, I’m thinking the saying is true — the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Frank Golden opened Yuma Speedway in 1968 and a squabble with drivers caused it to close, for all intents and purposes, after the 1978 season.
Ronnie Moore took over the track in 1998, and squabbles with drivers caused him to close the track after the 1999 season. He says it was financial reasons, but he and I both know that hurt feelings, more than anything, caused him to lock the gates.
Anyway, back in 2000, when it became apparent that Yuma Speedway would not be open for another season of dirt-track racing, a few of the locals banded together and attempted to get the gates back open.
Long story short, they tried to convince Moore to allow them to lease the facility, and failed.
Moore had stated that if the drivers wanted to give it a go, he’d consider an offer. He said the drivers would have to do it all, however, from the top to the bottom, start to finish, and he wouldn’t be involved in any way.
And with local racer David White leading the way, meetings were held and committees were formed, and the wheels were put into motion, no pun intended.
Unfortunately, the link between Moore and White’s enthusiastic group became fragmented, for lack of a better term, and communication between the parties dwindled to nothing. In other words, Moore just quit listening.
In the meantime, at one of the group’s meetings, a fellow from the Imperial Valley, Mike Wood, showed up one night and said the folks over there had heard about what was going on in Yuma, and he came with a proposal of his own.
As you might guess, he immediately had everyone’s attention, and he went on to say that the IV Expo (also known as the Imperial County Fair) board of directors would sure be interested in having David White and his group come over and focus their energies on getting Imperial Valley Speedway, located on the fairgrounds, up and running again.
And the Yuma racers did go west, and to be blunt, did one heck of a job getting the Imperial track back in shape after a long period of inactivity, not to mention putting together a well-organized board of directors and a roster of racing program personnel, and everything else that goes with operating a race track.
It all spoke volumes about the local racers’ abilities and desire to go racing, and left no doubt in this person’s mind that they would have done just as good a job or better if they had been handed the keys to Yuma Speedway.
But that’s a whole different subject.
It’s now eight or so years later, and as I predicted back when this whole Imperial Valley Speedway adventure started, the honeymoon wouldn’t last forever. You see, there was a stipulation that when the first, Southwest Racing Association (that’s what the racing group formed in Yuma called themselves) board of directors was organized, that it include equal representation from both sides of the Colorado River; in other words, just as many chiefs from Yuma as there were chiefs from the Imperial Valley.
And I mentioned to David White that it wouldn’t last forever, this equal representation stuff, and that sooner or later, it would be an Imperial Valley-run track. I mean, after all, it is “their” track, and to have a group from Yuma running it, well, that just can’t happen. And, from what I saw recently on my first visit to the facility in about four years, that’s pretty much the way it has turned out.
Even the car count has a whole different complexion. “Back in the day,” as my kids say, there was a heavy Yuma flavor, in all divisions. As a matter of fact, it was Yuma drivers and their cars that pretty much populated the divisions until the Imperial Valley contingency started to grow.
And make no mistake about it, the Yuma drivers took home their share of the hardware, in the form of division championships. Again, to be blunt, they kicked butt.
But today, well, there’s only a spattering, at best, of Yuma drivers.
Which makes me long all the more, for the good ’ol days at Yuma Speedway.
