It’s so hard not to talk about Michael Waltrip. I mean, recently it seems like every time we turn around, he’s in the headlines for one reason or another.

The most recent controversy swirling around Mikey involves his being “parked” by NASCAR for intentionally ramming into, and then pushing Casey Mears down the track following a wreck that involved the same two drivers Saturday night at Richmond.

Translated, that means Mikey was told to go home, that he wasn’t welcomed to play anymore with the big boys at Richmond.

And then he comes out on Monday during testing at Lowe’s Motor Speedway and says, ” … I lost my cool for a split second and ran into the back of (Mears).”

Mikey, Mikey, Mikey, you pushed him down the track for a few hundred yards. That’s a bit more then a “split second.”

But that’s not all. Mikey also said, “I’ve never gotten parked before. I read in the paper where people got parked, but I didn’t know how you did that. Now I do.”

What? Really? You’ve got to be kidding me.
Maybe it was tongue in cheek, I don’t know. But my first reaction was he believes he’s never done anything wrong, until now. My second reaction was he’s trying to make us believe he doesn’t hang around the type of driver who might or has been parked, hence, he didn’t know what it takes to get parked.

Give me a break! He hangs out in the NASCAR garage, and so does Kevin Harvick, and Robby Gordon, who, as we all know, have both been parked, so Mikey must have a clue as to what’s going on when NASCAR tells you it’s had enough of your antics for one day, or night, or whatever.

The disturbing part is, if Mikey was just screwing with us, making light of the situation, that’s even more serious. I mean, first of all, I don’t believe any penalty handed down by the front office should be taken lightly.

Secondly, he was off the track for the last 58 laps, which calculates to somewhere around 60 points lost in the NASCAR Sprint Cup standings. And if he thinks NAPA or some of his other sponsors are laughing at or are happy with that little development, well, then I just don’t know what I’m talking about.

Lastly, I’d like nothing more than to see his happy, smiling face replaced by someone else on Speed TV’s “This Week In NASCAR.”

No opinion today; I just want to share something with everyone, something that I found humorous, entertaining and above all, pretty cool.

As everyone knows by now, I spent 11 years racing through the deserts of Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado and Mexico with my best friend, Dan Beaver, of Parker, in a Ford Tough Truck in Class 8 in the SCORE Championship Series.

After we won our second race together, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Dan, not as friend to friend, but as sportswriter to driver, and conduct an interview about his racing career and stuff like that. And the other day, I found the notes from that interview.

During the course of that interview, when I was asking about Dan’s early days in the sport, and who had the most influence on him, and all that sort of thing, and he brought up the legendary Mickey Thompson.

I knew Dan and Mickey were friends because I’d see them greet one another and talk and carry on at several racing events early in the mid to late 1980s.

And I did know that Dan and another racing legend, Bill Stroppe, were friends and had spent a great deal of time together and that Stroppe had been Dan’s co-rider and mentor in his early years.

But but I never knew that Dan had spent time pre-running the Parker 400 with Mickey.

Anyway, Dan shared this memory of Mickey Thompson:

“I remember we were driving down the Bouse Road in my old prerunner, and I must have been doing about a hundred miles per hour, driving the living hell out of it, trying to impress him, if you know what I mean.

“Mickey never quit talking, and all at once he asks me, ‘Are you the greatest race car driver there ever was?’

“And I said, ‘No I don’t think so.’

“He said, ‘Bullshit!’

“Then he says, ‘You’re looking at the best there ever was, son. I don’t care if it’s an off-road car, an Indy car, a sprint car, a NASCAR.’

“He says, ‘Nobody, can drive a car better than I can, and I can beat anybody in the world.’

“And he looked at me, and he says, ‘When you get that attitude, and that frame of mind, you will win.’

“And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Me?’

“It took a while, but the story sunk in. Now, I honestly believe that when I strap that brain bucket on, I’ll tell you what, when I get that attitude, I don’t believe anybody can beat me. And it works.

“That year I lost to Walker (Evans) by about a minute and six seconds. When I started the last lap, I was nine minutes behind. And I got it all back but the last one minute and six seconds.

“Mickey had me sky high before that race. I was walking around feeling like Superman’s gorilla. And I drove the livin’ hell out of that truck.

“Bill Stroppe taught me a lot. Mickey taught me a lot. Stroppe taught me more about driving technique; and being smart.

“Mickey taught me more about how to use my head, psychologically so to speak, how to get my mind ready for a race. And he did teach me a lot too about different angles of attack on ditches and ruts and things like that, to actually save the car, so it didn’t work as hard. He would make me turn around and make me go back over something.

“But he worked on my mind really hard, Mickey did. He taught me a lot of the psychological part of driving, and I never forgot those lessons; they were very valuable.

“I used them a lot, I still do.”

I can attest to the fact that all those lessons must have sunk in, because, in this writer’s opinion, although Dan may not have a shelf full of trophies to show for his efforts, whenever he was behind the wheel of a race truck, he was one of the best there ever was; he could go wheel-to-wheel with Walker Evans, Ivan Stewart, Dave Shoppe, Larry Ragland, Scoop Vessels, all of the big boys back in the day, and give them all a run for their money.

Honest, I don’t have anything against Michael Waltrip.

It’s just that he says and does so many things that … well … get to me.

For example, Monday night I caught the “This Week in NASCAR” show with host Steve Byrnes and commentators Kenny Schrader and Waltrip.

And in the wake of driver Aaron Fike admitting last week to heroin addiction and saying he shot up every day, including race days, the subject of drug testing in NASCAR came up.

And Waltrip said he disagreed with many of his fellow competitors, like Kevin Harvick, who are calling for a stricter drug testing program in NASCAR.

Waltrip, said everything is OK just the way it is, that NASCAR knows that he, and Harvick, and Tony Stewart, for example, are all OK, and show up each week, clean and ready to race. And, he said, NASCAR should only be checking up on the those drivers who might be suspect.

What?!?

Michael, this is 2008, buddy! Nobody is above suspicion today. Nobody, no matter how squeaky clean an image someone might project. And that includes you!

Unfortunately, NASCAR agrees with Waltrip. Yeah, it’s true. Apparently they test only those who they suspect might be guilty of using drugs.

What!?!

Wake up! Please, somebody in NASCAR, wake up! In a day and age when Sprint Cup racing is gaining popularity by leaps and bonds, when race after race is sold out, when television audiences are growing bigger and bigger, it’s time to take the bull by the horns and become the biggest name in sports, lead by example, and establish a zero tolerance policy and a mandatory testing program that is not random, but possibly required before each race.

Too tough? Think about it. These cats are climbing into four-wheel rocket ships, and driving at over 200 miles per hour in some instances, at times only a fraction of an inch apart, sometimes even closer than that, if you know what I mean, and NASCAR isn’t worried that one of those drivers might be under the influence of one substance or another, because they know who they are?

I find that incredibly naive.

No, I find that incredibly stupid.

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.

Yesterday I was shooting my mouth off about Yuma Speedway and its owner, the Cocopah Indian Tribe.

Today, I want to talk some more about Yuma Speedway.

I want to clear the water, so to speak, so we’re all on the same page, as far as the history of track is concerned. Let’s call this, “Yuma Speedway 101″ (I’ll warn you, it’s going to be a l-o-n-g one, but please bear with me).

Tomorrow, we’ll tackle “Yuma Speedway 102.”

While I’m no expert or historian by any stretch of the imagination, I believe I do know more about the track than most. It comes from having lived here for over 30 years and following the track and racing in Yuma with a passion.

The track was built and opened as a quarter-mile dirt oval in 1968 by a local visionary named Frank Golden. By visionary, I mean Golden picked what I believe is the perfect location, on the side of the mesa overlooking the Yuma Valley at Highway 95 and County 15th Street. He also had some grand dreams for the track, but, unfortunately, he lacked the financial means to bring any of those dreams to fruition.

Unfortunately, as it seems to always go with race track owners/promoters and drivers, there was also some trouble, some friction. I remember getting anonymous phone calls from people who said I needed to check into how the rules at the track weren’t being enforced, or how the rules applied to some, but not to all. And to be honest, in the 30-plus years I’ve been in Yuma, I’ve been hearing the same complaints over and over.

Anyway, Golden and his drivers had a major falling out, and those unhappy drivers split off and opened their own track, Quechan Speedway, in Winterhaven. The split was after the 1978 season, and Quechan Speedway opened shortly thereafter.

After that, Golden, tired and in failing health, sold his track. And two owners later the track still sat idle, rotting, reduced to not even a mere image of what it once was.

Enter Jerry Thomas. The Yuma paving contractor became the fourth Yuma Speedway owner and proceeded to transform it into a state-of-the-art facility. When he was done, there was nothing remaining of the original track, except the wooden grandstand and that gorgeous view of the Yuma Valley.

The nearly $1 million in changes included enlarging the racing surface to three-eighths of a mile with first-class lighting and a scoreboard; a pit area outside the oval, with lights; a shower and restroom facility for the drivers and crews in the pit; a new, multi-level, combination scoring tower and refreshment stand and offices up top; a new women’s restroom; a new ticket booth; a new pit booth; and a lighted parking lot.

When I saw it for the first time in its finished state, I was like Dan Akroyd in “The Great Outdoors,” and all I could say was, “W-o-w.”

In fact, it was such an impressive facility, that one racing publication proclaimed it “the best dirt oval this side of the Mississippi.” Yes indeed, Jerry Thomas had done a remarkable job.

And needless to say, the racers agreed to return. They closed the gates at Quechan Speedway after the 1988 season, and life was good, again, at Yuma Speedway, or rather, the new Yuma Speedway.

But Thomas wasn’t done. No, not by a long shot. Along with a first-class racing facility came first class shows. He wasn’t banking on local programs alone. At the git-go, in 1989, Thomas and his friend, Jeff McAnally, acting as co-promoters, brought in top-level shows, including the World of Outlaws, USAC midgets and some of the best late model racing in the Southwest.

The second year, Thomas went it alone as the promoter and the shows were equally as impressive. But it also took its toll on the owner, and he grew tired of being a promoter too and chose to let someone else deal with the headaches. As I said, race track owners/promoters and racers almost always find a way to disagree about something.

Anyway, first in line, after Thomas and McAnally gave it a try, was the combination of Andy Therkildsen and Steve Brucker for a year (1991); followed by Therkildsen as a solo act for two years (1992 and 1993). Therkildsen had a good run, and also made a valiant effort to get the Slick 50 Sprint Car World Series to call Yuma Speedway home. And he came oh so close to sealing the deal for the nationally televised winter racing program, which instead moved from Manzanita Speedway to Canyon Raceway. All I can say is, what were those people thinking?

Therkildsen also recognized the need to use Yuma Speedway for over events besides racing, like concerts, and he managed to bring in Brooks and Dunn, yes, the Brooks and Dunn, for a show, which, unfortunately, received little publicity or exposure in Yuma. And it was right after the duo was named CMA Vocal Duo of the Year in 1992.

Anyway, Therkildsen also brought in circus performances, and stadium type off-road racing shows.

And then, Therkildsen was gone. I was not privy to what transpired, but I can’t help but believe the track would still be open and thriving today if Therkildsen, love him or hate him, was still on board.

When he exited, local racing icon Kent Rautenberg took the controls in 1994, but, unfortunately, only lasted half a season before leaving town. Thomas then ran the track as the interim promoter before handing the reigns over to Mark Norris in 1995, who made a go of it for three seasons.

And Norris, like Therkildsen, love him or hate him, made things happen at the track. He introduced the wildly popular “Ego Challenge,” where anyone off the street or in the grandstand could bring their everyday car — or truck — to the track, and take it for a spin on the racing surface. It was actually a timed-lap, and the event winner was the driver who had the quickest time.

He also brought in the popular, three-day-long Dwarf Car World Championship, and re-introduced Yumans to the SCOA winged sprint car series.

For the record, SCOA officials fell in love with Yuma Speedway and referred to the facility as their “home track.”

Then, through a course of action that still nobody has fully explained to me, sort of like the circumstances surrounding Therkildsen’s departure, Norris was out. He had lasted three seasons, longer than anyone. He made no bones about the fact that he was losing money, but he explained openly that he had a five-year plan, and he expected to be in the red during the first three years before finding his way into the black.

But he was out and Dome Valley farmer Ronnie Moore was in as the newest promoter.

Moore, hailed as the man who would “save racing in Yuma,” opened the track, renamed “Yuma Speedway Park,” under his direction for the first time in 1998, and for the last time in 1999.

The irony is, when rumors were running rampant in 1999 that the track might be closed in 2000, Moore made a tearful promise to the drivers and crews assembled for a drivers meeting one fall night, that there would be a 2000 season.

But all the drivers found was a chained a locked gate, to which Moore explained he and his father had purchased the track from Thomas after the 1998 season, and after the conclusion of the 1999 season, he said he didn’t have enough money to make the payments and operate the track too.

Of course, there were also some hurt feelings. Just like I said earlier, race track owners/promoters and racers almost always find a way to disagree about something. And in this case, Moore wanted nothing more to do with it. He took the attacks personally. So he locked the gates, put the entire facility up for sale, and the circle track has been idle ever since.

Oh, there are ongoing sand drag races up on top, which Moore actually introduced to the facility in 1998. But he said the sand drags in 2000 and thereafter were being run by a group that leased the facility from him. Other than that type of racing, there hasn’t been a stock car or sprint car grace the oval in over eight years now.

As a side note, as with Therkildsen, there were several speedway regulars who were unhappy with Norris as the track’s promoter, who were happy with his departure and Moore’s arrival. All to which, I like to point out, if Mark Norris — or Andy Therkildsen — were still here today, and still promoting the track, good, bad or indifferent, all of those crybabies would still have a place to race.

OK, Moore finally sold the track to the Cocopah Indian Tribe in 2005, and while the tribe seems content to keep the sand drags alive, it is yet to make a move toward re-opening the circle track, which is a subject we covered yesterday.

Sad, isn’t it? Here we have what is considered one of the best racing facilities in the country, right here in our own backyard, and, with all respect to the sand draggers, it’s doing nothing.