The travesty of a modified race......Saturday, May 26, 2012

The feature race of May, 26 2012 was as poor a piece of modified racing entertainment as I have witness at Riverhead.

I put fairly substantial dollars into a modified and into a late model, and so I expect to see the opportunity for these cars to compete week in week out. This season has brought a firmer and stricter tone of officiating. I applaud this shift. We long to see this track administered as consistently as possible.

That being said, last night's modified scoring and race administration was horrid. Simply put, the officials and scorers had little competance in efficiently getting cars racing. We wound up with what I believe were 15 laps of green flag racing.

Let me ask / pose the following points:

1. Why could NOT the scorers quickly relay information to the officials? Monitoring the NASCAR frequency during yellow yielded a comical degree of ignorance. One could view certain track officials during this chatter and see their frustration. Moment after moment was wasted away.

Please everyone, let's get this taken care of going forward.

2. Why did 25 cars start during a handicapped race? This is a recipe of chaos! Let's go back to heat races, if we're blessed with such turnout. Its hard enough to officiate 10, 15 or 20 cars, but officiating 25 cars?

3. Since there was only a demo derby afterwards, why couldn't the mods continue? Aren't we the premier division? Has the Daytona 500 ever become the Daytona 212 due to excessive yellows and reds?

Douglas Corwin
Eastport Feeds

Well put. As stated they are the premier division in which i believe many people come to watch. Let em race.

With modified car counts as they are, heat races would be good, however cars can get caught up and wrecked there too. I only think the Cromarty's are trying to do the right thing and put everyone in the show and not send one or two home.

with heat races, you dont have ALL the slow cars in front of the field. You'd be handicapping 15 cars, and the remainder of the slow cars would be at the back of the field.

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Originally Posted by Teds Race Tours

with heat races, you dont have ALL the slow cars in front of the field. You'd be handicapping 15 cars, and the remainder of the slow cars would be at the back of the field.

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heat races worked for forty to fifty years why change something that is not broke.

Heat races also give seat time to the people who need it most and that goes for ALL divisions and not just Modifieds. If people want to complain about the cost to run heat races than make the rule that you can only buy 1 set of tires a week and either make each team start the feature on the same tires that they ran in the heat race or some other type rule that would keep every team on equal tires without adding costs

To help the officials a little, they were having trouble with the radios so info comming from the upstairs was not being heard.
With that being said with some cooler head in those helmets there would have been more green laps then yellow, given the problem with the radios taking that time away it still took 1 hour to go 15 laps.

50 minutes of that hour was spent by the SCORERS trying to figure out the lineup ( THEY DON'T HAVE A CLUE! ). What about the 8X stopping in his favorite spot off turn 2 TWICE. The second time he could easily have gotten off the track and didn't. This was the 4th caution and no penalty was issued. The rest of the field and the spectators were penalized with single file restarts. The 03 spins the 59 and no penalty, the 99 spins the 2 and he's put down a lap. What happened to the consistent officiating we were promised at the beginning of the year? Each time we get a new chief steward we hope for change, it just doesn't happen.

I do remember a drivers meeting on that day around 3:45pm that the co chief steward said if you basically do anything as in rubbing the leader the wrong way or even touch the leader you will be penalized.. which was proven in the charger race. And the 8x was penalized one lap for that 4th caution that came out.

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Originally Posted by JH6868

50 minutes of that hour was spent by the SCORERS trying to figure out the lineup ( THEY DON'T HAVE A CLUE! ). What about the 8X stopping in his favorite spot off turn 2 TWICE. The second time he could easily have gotten off the track and didn't. This was the 4th caution and no penalty was issued. The rest of the field and the spectators were penalized with single file restarts. The 03 spins the 59 and no penalty, the 99 spins the 2 and he's put down a lap. What happened to the consistent officiating we were promised at the beginning of the year? Each time we get a new chief steward we hope for change, it just doesn't happen.

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I agree with you 100 %... Jerry (59) was taken out by the 03... nothings done... Timmy has a nerf bar in his rr tire and it blows while hes under the 2 and gets put a lap down... To top it off the 59 than is told he jumped the start... REALLY? Than where was the lazy green and why didn't he get his spot back, the caution wasn't for him. I guess it depends on who you are and what you do for them!!!!

Watch the video and the 59 does NOT jump the start as announced either!!:mad:

they do watch.... don't bash too much or they will get you

The racers will also lose out on state points. They did not race to halfway and NASCAR will kick the race. Meaning no state points. All NASCAR events have to complete at least the halfway point in the race to be offical. This race will not count towards the State and National Points Championship. This is a complete screw-up by the Riverhead officials. Riverhead has the best weekly car count and the most competitive field of Modifieds anyone could ask for. What a shame.

They did just add another twin 30's race first Saturday in August....What a coincidence

You mean they made the feature a 60 lapper with a competition caution!!!!

I sat and talked with Steve Tooker today and he would like to clear up a few things about last Saturday and future shows.

First off, there was not any issues with the scorers at any time during the modified feature. It all had to do with the radios and communications of the scoring. The issues were unknown at the time and caused mass confusion by all. THIS HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SCORERS! The problem has been looked into and addressed during this week (I presume by John Elwood. Steve didn't mention what issue was found nor did I ask). Steve did state that they have 15 radios and most officials have 2 radios and nothing would work correctly at the time. He assured me they will do all they can so this does not happen again.

As for the calling of the race. All divisions have time limits. Yes, there was a demo only after the race but the race was becoming a demo itself. Steve said, "the drivers seemed impatient all night". This was right from the first green flag. At the time, a decision was finally made to call the race so no more teams incurred damage to their cars. The call was made as Steve and Mike felt it was in the best interest of the drivers and their equipment. Also, some have stated that slow moving restarts by McGuire caused many of the later accidents. Actually, McGuire noticed cars still on the frontstretch when coming down the backstretch for restarts and kept the pace slow so that cars could bunch up. I think that was a good move as things would have been far worse.

Another thing mentioned is handicapping and heats for future 35 lappers. Steve and Mike both feel this may come about but not definite as of yet. Tires seem to be one issue with heats. If you must race on the heat tires you use, what shape will they be in for the feature after going through their heat cycle and cooling off for so long. Will this make the features better or worse? Or, let teams change tires and then incur more cost to teams which would put the teams with money in the top 10 every night there is heats. And it would be very hard to police any of these options, but being looked in to.

The Cromarty's, Steve, Mike and John are trying their best to better the racing for all at the track. When no calls were made for years, all complained. Now calls are being made and still complaints. They are honestly trying to do the best they can for all racers, each and every week.

On another note: Those who are not racing and sitting in the stands, please do not make judgement calls about what happened by hearsay. Many statements have been said by some of what was said at the drivers meeting by Steve. It seems it has turned into the telephone game and as each person tells another the story changes. The drivers and crews or anyone who was there knows actually what is said at each and every meeting. Please don't jump to conclusions on hearsay. As I stated above, all involved at Riverhead are truly trying their best to better everything there...

Forgot about the 25 cars starting.
They added the 2 cars because all pay to have a license, pay a pit gate fee, pay for fuel and pay for tires. Saving 2 cars from not racing at all was a help.
My opinion is that the 2 extra cars did not cause the racing issues Saturday night and the call to add the 2 cars was a great way of showing they want to help everyone they can.
I know if I had a car and time trialed or qualified 24/25 and was told I could race, I would appreciate that fact.
Now if they want to start 30 or 32, well I would definitely think, no way!!!
Again, they are just trying to get everyone the chance to race, within reason.

Thank you for this information, it gives a insight of what they are trying to improve on, it takes a collective unit and they are listening to each other! Communication is the key!