NEETS in AARN
The AARN this week has an article written by Tom Iaeger who was at our last Grandview race! It's on page 50 for those who get the paper. Wish I could copy and paste it but since I can't, I'll write it out here....let me limber up me fingers first......ok here goes! Enjoy!
"Believe It - NEETS Is A Neat Racing Novelty" by Tom Iaeger
On July 26, I hit Grandview for a NEETS event, which was a pair of 150 lap features, one for Big Cars and another for Small Cars.
It isn't racing as I am used to, but it was a fun event, kind of like a three ring circus, because there's something going on at three different places on the track at once.
And, to give credit where it's due, I saw more three and four wide racing at this one event than I have the past couple of seasons combined at all the tracks I've visited.
I'd previously attended a NEETS event on asphalt at what then was called Mountain Speedway during the first weekend of 2007. That's right, January 5 or something like that, but it was a balmy high fifties day and a great night out. I got in for a handful of canned food items to be given to a homeless shelter.
Contrasting the two events, Mountain and Grandview, it seems to me that asphalt is the better surface for an event of this type.
At Grandview, a heavy shower halted action in the Big Car race - they say they run rain or shine, but under those conditions, throwing the red until the rain stopped was not unreasonable - and from that point till on, the track was too wet to allow any real good racing.
I couldn't get Paul Simon's "Slip Slidin Away" out of my mind. Still, it wasn't as bad as I had thought it might be. When it was obvious that it was going to rain, this image popped into my mind in which all the cars went sliding down the high banks, pointing in different directions, and piled into one non-moving mass of metal on the inside of the first and second turns, stuck there till everyone ran out of gas shortly after dawn on Monday and they called the race official.
Nothing even close to that happened, but on the other hand, that same rain would not have affected an asphalt surface as radically. Fortunately, the track dried out enough during the balance of the Big Car feature to offer the Small Cars a good surface for most of that division's race.
The fields were good at 44 Big Cars and 34 Small Cars, and that brings me to my next point. I'd have thought with all those cars on the track at once, that Enduro racing is a crapshoot. You get lucky you don't get crashed by some yahoo and you might win. I came away with the impression that Enduro racing is a bit of an art form. Both winners, Shawn Naftzinger (Big Car) and Steve Todorow (Small) were repeat winners, and many of the drivers running up front were also former winners.
Somehow, despite the confusion and carnage, the cream rises to the top, and it seems it's often the same cream. Actually carnage is a misleading word. Sure, there are plenty of bumps and bangs, especially after the rain hit the track, but there were also few real wrecks, which, I suppose, is another testimony to the "artness" of Enduro racing.
Gotta give a nod to the announcing team. While they put a lot of effort into being entertaining and funny, they also did an excellent job letting the fans know who the front-runners were and where they stood in terms of laps down to the leader. And that's important, because without their run-downs, no one would have a clue.
From wandering around the grandstands during the races, I got the impression that the majority of the people watching were connected somehow with someone at the track, but that's not a bad thing.
For $7, it was a good afternoon's worth of entertainment for either the serious race fan looking for a few grins or for those people who would never go to a race, except that someone they know is in it.
The program lacked nothing. I saw a race and I saw a mud bog. I got my annual sunburn, 'cause when the sun was out, it was out. I got my weekly bath, 'cause when the sun was in, it was raining, or looking like it was about to. I got some grins as drivers tried to extricate themselves from the mud holes or other unhappy situations. I nodded in appreciation as drivers ran four wide or, at other times, as they banked hard off one another and yet managed to gather it all up without crashing.
And I held my breath for a second when one poor guy drove into the third corner and converted his power slide into a three-and-a-half times over barrel roll. Yes, it had a little bit of everything.
The next NEETS Enduro, the fifth in a series of five this season at Grandview, will be held on August 30, and I just may be there for a second dose.
Ms. NEETS/Registrations
Enduro Racing Ain't for Sissies
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