Henry Cataldo in the Pits

:mad: To Henry Cataldo: Your actions in the pits tonight after the Charger race could have had very tragic results. Maybe you should think about such actions before you do them.....
For those of you who don't know, tonight after the Charger race, Henry Cataldo obviously had a beef with Eric Lutz. The incident of which I am speaking is when they came down the pit road after the race had finished, Henry pulled to the right side of Eric Lutz's car and proceeded to speed up and drive into the side of the 36. When Henry did this, he bounced off of the 36. Unfortunately, he did this about 1 pit stall away from where I was standing behind our race car and talking to a friend. If it were not for the quick actions of my friend, the results could have been tragic.
Word to the wise: If you're going to get mad at someone and use your car as a weapon, DON'T do it where there is a possibility of injuring innocent bystanders. Personally, I have never had any reason to think badly of you, and I've always thought of you as a decent driver, but your actions tonight were wrong as wrong could be. I don't care how mad you were at Eric. There was no reason for that type of retaliation; you could have gotten someone seriously injured or killed.

"Track management" was trying to impress Jerry Cook by trying to have a flawless show. After verbally abusing Tommy about ruining past races, he was forced to make a decision of starting on the pole without his radio's, or keep his radio's and go to the rear of the field.

Congratulations to Tom Anderson for a very well-earned win. He was fast in practice, he won his heat fair and square, and he deserved to be on the pole.

The shenanigans that the Chief Steward pulled with him and the drivers of the #30, #65 and #47 (i.e., demanding that they give up their radios in order to start in the spots they qualified for) don't begin to tell the whole story of the night in the Charger Division. Our driver (Henry Cataldo) finished the race in 7th (which would have left us in 4th place, 40 points out of 1st), but we were placed last by the Chief Steward (and we are now in 7th place overall, 68 points back), due to an "incident" that is referred to by Jeff T. elsewhere on this thread. Unfortunately, Jeff has his "facts" very wrong (as does the Chief Steward). The incident was started not by Cataldo, but by the driver of the #36, who initiated contact with Cataldo's car on pit road by sideswiping him and forcing the #44 wide as he tried to go around the #36 car (so if anyone was using his car as a "weapon" as Jeff charges, it wasn't my driver). Then a member of the #36 crew stuck his head in the window of Henry's car and began to yell at him. By the time Henry got back to our pit, this crew member (Chris Busick) was at our pit (in direct violation of Raceway rules--or so we thought) starting trouble. He came back to our pit twice more to continue the argument after having been told by a track official to leave following the first confrontation. According to Raceway rules, the team driver is responsible for the actions of his or her crew members (or so we thought), but at the end of the day, our driver and our team got harpooned while nothing was done to anyone else.

Is it any wonder that car counts (and attendance) are so dismal this season? I don't go to the Raceway if our team is not running, so I could be wrong on this figure. But as far as I know, only ONE CAR has failed to qualify for a race in all divisions combined this season.

Last Saturday night, a grand total of 22 Modifieds showed up for the 77-Lap Tom Baldwin Memorial:

1.) At Tom Baldwin's home track,

2.) With the highest purse of the season up for grabs,

3.) With many fans in the stands disguised as empty seats,

4.) In a qualifier for the North-South Shootout,

5.) With Jerry Cook and Dick Berggren in attendance (at least THEY thought it was an important race).

As the Chief Steward said at the beginning of the season, we're supposed to be putting on a "show" for the fans. All well and good, but there's one thing that he forgets to consider. The drivers and crews put a lot of time, money and sweat into their cars in order to put on that show. Each driver in that show puts his or her life on the line every time they get into the car. In return, the drivers, the teams and the fans expect and deserve a level playing field and officials who officiate without fear or favor.

That's not what exists now; if the Chief Steward thinks his actions are improving the quality of show he's putting on, he's not paying attention. The drivers and the fans are voting with their feet.

One can only hope that the rumors of an impending sale of the Raceway are true, and that the new owner will clean house and get rid of all of the people who are driving the Raceway and its reputation into the ground. The quicker the better.

How can I have my facts "Wrong" when I was standing right there and viewed the incident myself? Your driver pulled to the right side of the 36 and drove into the side of him. First off, he should not have been passing in the pits, especially on the right side since the 36 car does pit on the right side of the pits. Second of all, if I was so wrong, I guess the reason why my friend had to jump out of the way of your driver and your car was because HE wasn't doing anything wrong, Huh? Take off your rose colored glasses please. I been around the pits at Riverhead to recognize payback when I see it. My whole point is don't do payback where innocent people can get hurt.

Okay, we've heard both sides of the story, and we will not descend into bickering, so I'm going to close this for now.