Day 135 Racing

I spent an interesting evening watching old videos of car racing.

Or, I should be more specific and say, I watched videos of cars racing on tracks that I've been to.

I watched videos of Cameros at the Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mi.  I watched videos of races from the racetrack in Flatrock, Mi and Owosso, Mi.  There was even footage from races held at the Berlin Speedway just outside of Grand Rapids.


It was fun to watch races of some of the older races that had a host of well known drivers, people like Lake Speed and Richard Petty; Darn Earnhart and Tony Stewart; Geoff Bodine and Cale Yarborough. I watched Mario Andretti and his son, Michael on the MIS track.

I watched a race called a railroad car race, where three cars are tethered together and the first car controls the speed of the train, and the rear car controls the breaks (that is crazy in a Figure 8 race).

A lot of good memories came back to me; taking my husband to his first Figure 8 event at Flatrock; watching the Cameros in 1985 at MIS; remembering watching the stock car races from atop a Ferris wheel at Lakeside (any of you remember doing that, or am I the only one?)

There were a few things that niggled at the edges of my memory though, and so I went back to the video of the Berlin track and it hit me like a sledgehammer.

Johnny Benson.  Johnny Benson was a track hero at Berlin.  He was a local boy with a fast car who seemed to go for broke whenever he raced. And he did go for broke on a number of occasions, occasions where his car got away from him and he hit the wall, or the road got away from him on the corner banks. How that man survived the number of crashes he was in is a mystery to me.  There were a lot.

Then, Johnny moved on from the small track in Berlin to the mother lode, Nascar. He raced at Daytona from 1996 to 2004. He raced in several Winston Cup races.  Take a look at this exciting finish to one of those races.Somewhere along the way he found his groove in racing trucks.  Around 2010 Benson finished his racing career having difficulty with sponsorships.

Then another memory started teasing my brain. There was another Nascar driver who made it into the big leagues, for one season anyway, from Grand Rapids.  I couldn't remember his name, just that he attended some public speaking classes with my spouse.  As I was stomping up the stairs, his last name came to me - Senneker.  Grabbing that, I was able to remember his first name, Bob.

It's funny how the memory works, one connection to another to another. It was fun to remember the good times from years gone by.  The memories are good enough that I'm thinking I'll look for a nearby event. 


There is a speedway north of town just off the interstate. C and I tried to go there a few years back, but the races had been cancelled because funnel clouds had been spotted in the area. I'm not quite sure why I enjoy racing so much - maybe because I grew up with those household names, and cheap entertainment back in the day. Maybe it's because I can vicariously go fast through the efforts of others.

As I reviewed some of this footage, and the names of drivers were mentioned, I couldn't help but think of my mom and dad who  used  to watch races on a dirt track in New Mexico. The names I remember them batting about became big names later in Nascar - Foyt, Unser, Petty.

Mom is about to turn 83.  I wonder if she wouldn't enjoy a visit to the track for old times sake. Even if the driving stars are different today, I know I wouldn't mind.