When will it STOP! Rains Affect 6th Week of Racing!
by Bill Green "From Behind The MIC!"
Tampa, FL (July 19th, 2003). Every racer in Florida is asking the same question, "When will it STOP?" When will it really stop raining? It’s not that we’re not use to afternoon thunderstorms and a little rain here in Florida. The problem is it waits until race night evenings to rain. Nothing all week and then the heavens opened up at heat race time.
This past weekend would be race weekend number six at East Bay Raceway Park to be effected locally by Mother Nature. Other surrounding tracks have had their problems with the wet stuff. One even waited it out last week and finished races at 2AM.
East Bay Raceway Park taught itself a valuable lesson on Friday, July 18th. The Go-karts finished a normal round of practice. The driver’s meeting was short and sweet. But, then Mother Nature showed up and dumped 3 inches on the 1/5 mile kart track in less than 45 minutes.
Just as everyone was about to give up, track owner Al Varador decided it was so muddy in the infield that most would have trouble pulling their trailers out anyway, why not try to make the track race able.
The grader was summoned and the peeling of the top two, to two and a half, inches of rain soaked gumbo clay was underway. Packing cars from the big track worked the clay into a smooth surface and races began at 9:45 PM.
While the infield and pits drained off some, the bobcat and graders worked to keep the pit driving lanes free of loose mud and all ended well.
Racing finished with a Feature only program at 12:05. Fifteen classes, over 90 karts, ran 10, 12 and 15 lap Main Events in 2 hours and 30 minutes. The point’s weekend was saved and the track was as good as everyone had ever seen.
To bad that Saturday Nights stock car racing didn’t fair as well.
The same cycle of rain came, track was peeled, and packing began, but this time the rain came back, and just kept coming. Another weekend lost to Mother Nature, but she did spur some healthy debates on year round racing, covered speedways and Florida’s race season in general. Even heard talk of Sunday rain dates, but that’s a tough day to run mid-afternoon.
