Bring back dirt track racing
Tuesday, July 28, 2015 2:48 pm By DAVID HUNTER The stars of NASCAR raced at one of the hallowed grounds of motorsports, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, this past weekend. Even though the 2.5-mile rectangle oval is more suited for Indycars, it was a chance for fans to see hometown hero, Jeff Gordon, race one last time on his home track. However, I believe the coolest race of the week was on the half-mile dirt track in Eldora, Ohio with the Camping World Truck Series. When the series was created 20 years ago, most of the races were held on the traditional short tracks and a couple of road courses. However, as the series grew, NASCAR moved most of the races to the bigger tracks, which also hosted the Xfinity and the Sprint Cup Series. Anyway back to Eldora, the track has the small-town feel like back in the day, while track owner and former Sprint Cup champion, Tony Stewart has modernized it to the current standards of today. Fans from around the nation converge on a small town in Ohio for arguably the best race of the Truck series season, especially seeing trucks not usually equipped to run on dirt do slide jobs around the turns. As you know, automobile racing is my favorite sport, and I have attended or covered racing from many of the well-known racing series here in the United States, except for the NHRA, the Sprint Cup, and the more traditional dirt racing series, the World of Outlaws. However, back almost a decade ago, when I was covering sports for the Clayton Tribune in northeast Georgia after getting my college degree. One night, there were some drivers racing Late Model dirt cars at a track about an hour away from the office. So, I decided to cover the action since I had never been to a race at a dirt track before. The action on the track was amazing, and the drivers were cool to interview after they were done. As for the truck race at Eldora, it was really cool that NASCAR decided to go back to their roots and have a race from one of its major series on dirt like back in the day. It is by far the best race of the season in the Truck Series.
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