Sunday, September 9, 2007 11:09 PM CDT
Dragway driver doubling military duties with racing
By RICK DAWSON Staff Writer
rdawson@jg-tc.com
CHARLESTON – Casey Martin is biding his time before he goes on active duty in Iraq. Stationed with the Army in Clarksville, Tenn., sometimes that means drag racing when he gets the opportunity on weekends.
The Mount Sterling, Ill., native saw a flier at Havana’s Mid-State Dragway recently that advertised the Coles County Dragway’s $3,500 Super Pro event Sunday. Sold on the notion quickly, the trip was his first to Charleston’s eighth-mile track. In approximately half a dozen starts upon arriving, his best finish this year was in the top four of the Pro class at Havana.
“This year it’s kind of hard to tell because we didn’t know what it was going to be like at the beginning of the year,” Martin said. “So we’re just kind of playing it by ear. As races come, we just kind of talk on the phone until someone says, ‘hey, let’s go.’”
Next week he plans to hit the NHRA Mid-South Nationals in Memphis. Next year his plan is to plot a regular race schedule closer to his new home – the Beech Bend Raceway Park in Bowling Green, Ky.
Allowed to enter more than one car twice in two classes, some took advantage Sunday. Barclay Schmidt came with a Super Pro entry, a ’74 Oldsmobile Cutlass that he began racing in 1994 at the age of 16, and a Pro model for the $1,500 to win for cars without delay boxes, an electronic device used to make reaction times better.
Schmidt, a carpenter from Imperial, Mo., was riding a hot streak entering the weekend. He followed a runnerup finish in the Pro class at the Sikeston (Mo.) Drag Strip with a victory a week later in the $2,000 Super Pro to win at the track. So he paid for double entries in both classes Sunday.
He first pitched his tent on the grounds with his family of four Friday, waited through a storm that postponed Saturday’s NHRA National Dragster Challenge and was still uncertain when a misty fog descended on the track Sunday morning.
“It poured all weekend, all day yesterday and all night,” said Schmidt, who frequents the Gateway Drag Strip in St. Louis but travels as far as Jackson, Tenn., aided by sponsorship from Valvoline Instant Oil Change, Rat Racing Engines and the Carpenters’ District Council of St. Louis, among others. “We found some firewood, built a camp fire, had a little campout.
“It was pretty dreary. I didn’t know what to expect this morning, whether we were going to pack it up and go home, just call it a camping trip, or whether we were going to do some racing. We were going to stick it out until they told us to leave.”
Humboldt’s Jason McConnell, running in the top five in the track’s point race, used the rain delay to catch up on some needed repairs. He was also coming off a Labor Day weekend victory at the ET Raceway in Lyons, Ind., and was looking forward to taking a shot on both Saturday and Sunday.
“It kind of swells your head a little, I guess,” McConnell said.
Unlike others, he entered just one car, his 1970 Nova.
“In fact I worked on two cars this week,” McConnell said. “That’s why I was a little behind on that one.”
Sunday’s racing action finished after the Journal Gazette/Times-Courier deadline.
** Racing at the Coles County Speedway Saturday and the Charleston Speedway on Sunday was rained out.
Contact Rick Dawson at rdawson@jg-tc.com or 238-6855.
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