The 4th Turn: April 17, 2025
By Tom Boggie
I feel like Michael Corleone in “The Godfather: Part III.” Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.
That right, it’s another year of The 4th Turn.
Albany-Saratoga Speedway will kick off its Diamond Anniversary season Friday night by hosting the Super DIRTcar Series, the first time the SDS has ever been at Malta in April. The 60-lap feature will pay $7,500 to win (thanks to Bart Contracting), the biggest opening night payoff since 2018, when Tim McCreadie took home $7,500 after 44 laps of work.
There aren’t a lot of connections left to the original days of Albany-Saratoga Speedway. It’s been 60 years, after all. But when I was at Malta on Tuesday night for practice, I knew there was someone I could get information out of.
Nick Ronca.
“I was working down the road, where the hardware store is now, and we would see them working up here every day,” he told me. “There was nothing here, just the woods. We had no idea what they were doing.”
What they were doing was building The Great Race Place.
The man behind the original development was Joe Lesik, who owned Utica-Rome Speedway at the time. But Lesik lived in Westfield, Mass., and wanted to build a track closer to home. So he sold Utica-Rome to Dick Waterman and purchased a tract of land off Route 9.
Albany-Saratoga Speedway was born.
In those days, tracks needed a NASCAR sanction if they wanted to avoid the “outlaw” image, and Lesik tried to get a NASCAR sanction for Albany-Saratoga. But his attempt was blocked by the owner of Thompson Speedway, who felt Albany-Saratoga would infringe on his territorial rights.
But Lesik had a lot of connections in the racing world, and opted to run under a United Stock Car Club sanction. USCC was run by Harvey Tattersall, who also ran Riverside Speedway, and when Albany-Saratoga opened up on July 15, 1965, Tattersall encouraged many of his Riverside drivers to support the new track. The opening night winner was Bill Greco, one of the top runners at Riverside.
During the offseason, Lesik again approached NASCAR about getting a sanction and this time, he got approval. That was a major step in the development of Albany-Saratoga, because many of the top New York drivers, guys like Bill Wimble, Ken Shoemaker and Pete Corey, were running at Stafford Speedway, which was dirt at the time, on Friday nights, Now, they could stay closer to home and race on asphalt, and the switch to a NASCAR sanction also brought a lot of the top New England drivers, like Rene Charland and Ernie Gahan, to Malta on Friday nights.
Lesik’s health started to deteriorate and in the offseason after the 1968 season, he sold the track to Lou Figari and Larry Mendelsohn of Speedway Promotions, who had created the highly successful All-Star League in 1967.
Malta’s reputation as The Great Race Place was further enhanced in 1970, when Norwood Arena in Massachusetts dropped its NASCAR sanction and Stafford switched to Saturday nights. That left Albany-Saratoga as the only NASCAR track that ran on Friday nights, and the pits were packed every week. The star-studded drivers’ roster now included Fred DeSarro, who drove for Sonny Koszela. DeSarro won five features at Malta in 1970, won the track championship by a whooping 162 points and also won the NASCAR national modified championship.
The winds of change blew again late in 1973 and early in 1974. Figari, who was in ill health, died in 1973, and Mendelsohn, who reportedly had brain cancer, took his own life on Jan 3, 1974. Dick Corbeil, the promoter at Islip Speedway on Long Island, was brought in to run Albany-Saratoga. But the handwriting was already on the wall. Only five races were run in 1974 and eight in 1975 before the gates were closed for good, paving the way for C.J. Richards to buy the track and reopen it as a dirt track in 1977.
LITTLE KNOWN FACTS
Here are a couple of things you may not know.
During the first season at Albany-Saratoga in 1965, one of the feature winners was George Proctor, who won the late model feature on Aug. 20. Proctor, a Hall of Famer and the patriarch of the racing Proctor family, died last October at the age of 91.
The Charger division debuted at Albany-Saratoga in 1968, and included both Brian Ross and Nick Ronca. Ross, who I personally think is the most talented driver to ever come out of the Capital Region, recorded his first win at Malta on July 19, 1969 and Ronca sat in victory lane for the first time on Aug. 22, 1969.
AROUND THE TRACKS
Last season, Tim Hartman Jr. won 13 of 14 sportsman features at Lebanon Valley on his way to the track championship, and he picked up where he left off last Saturday, winning the Spring Fling, which paid $4,000 to win.
He had to start 15th, by virtue of a “revenge draw”.
“I knew where I was going to start,” he said Tuesday night. “I knew whoever picked 15 was going to give it to me.”
Hartman Jr. didn’t think he had a shot at the win until a late restart. “I knew I needed one perfect lap to get the lead,” he said. “Things opened up in front of me, and I thought, there it is.”
The $4,000 payday was the biggest of Hartman Jr.’s career.
Airborne Park kicked off its season last Thursday, with Felix Roy winning the Leon Gonyo Memorial for 358 modifieds. Roy will be a Friday night regular at Albany-Saratoga this season, driving a car that will be housed and maintained at Elmo’s Speed & Supply in Ballston Lake. Chris Reckner will be the crew chief on the car.
Lebanon Valley will be back in action Saturday, hosting the DIRTcar 358 Series, along with the DIRTcar Sportsman East Region series. The Valley hasn’t hosted the DIRTcar 358 Series since 2007. The big block modifieds will make their debut at the Valley on May 3.
Dirt track racing lost a good friend with the sudden passing of Jason Herrington on March 14 at the age of 52, but the memory of “The Flying Farmer” will live on. The first 358 series race at Albany-Saratoga on April 25 will be dubbed “The Flying Farmer 31” and will feature $101 bonuses to heat race winners, a halfway bonus and $1,000 sponsorship from track handicapper John Casterella. In addition, Andy’s Speed has instituted the Big Red 1 Checkered Flag Tire Challenge. Any 358 driver who wins both his heat race and the feature on the same night will get a new Hoosier tire from Andy’s Speed.
Here’s an idea I really like. Lebanon Valley has announced that points will be awarded in heat races in all divisions this season, with three points to the winner, two to the runner-up and one to the third-place finisher. The only exception will be on nights when show-up points are awarded, like the Super DIRTcar Series races. It may not seem like a lot, but those points could really make a difference at the end of the season.
By the way, sportsman and pro stocks are also on Friday night’s card at Albany-Saratoga, with the sportsman running for $1,060 to win. Any limited sportsman that want to try to qualify for the sportsman feature are welcome to do so.
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