HowieTheHat

Ringoes,NJ – With the backdrop provided by the successful annual Racers Luncheon, ARRA – Auto Racing Research Associates announced that due to their rapidly increasing roster of data and statistics on their popular website, they have been forced to move to new quarters and expand. They had no choice. The ARRA historians have been busy for months on end, compiling stats on Tracks, Drivers, racing organizations and series’, individual cars and car owners and much much more. That only means that they were quickly closing in on their websites maximum capacity and needed new digs. Expected to be sprung onto the internet within the next day or so, the new website uses the same format as their previously successful website…in fact, those that had the website bookmarked can still use the same web address to access the new site. Once they get to the newly designed site…race fans, etc, will have the chance to choose whether to go to on of two brand new sites. Basically, you will have the choice to go to a page that contains the statistics regarding Tracks, Series’ and Organizations. The other choice will take you to a site dedicated to the stats of ARRA’s roster of Drivers, Cars and Events. All three sites will feature all of the methods of navigating around the site as the old one and will be familiar to anyone who had visited the older site. This change of events will allow the nearly twenty crack researchers and historians to continue their fast pace of research that they have been demonstrating for years now! In addition, ARRA President Fred Voorhees announced a new affililation with the Flemington Speedway Historical Society. ARRA will now be known as the “Official Research Resource” of the Flemington Speedway Historical Society and will assist in finding information whenever the society needs some specific data dug up. In addition, the two organizations will work together for the betterment of the sport and the gathering and preserving of our sports vital history! They will work together and cross promote each other organizations and plans call for additional Northeast racing organizations to join forces with them to continue to assure that our sports history is in good hands. Be sure to visit ARRA’s every growing website at: https://sites.google.com/site/arradocumentingracinghistory/ You can also visit ARRA’s sister website – administered by ARRA Associate Members Dennis Clapperton and Jeff Zimmerman. If you have many hours of time to kill with an absolute plethora of racing data in one place… visit RaceStatCental at: https://nemodfacts.racestatcentral.com/ And still another great racing website to visit is provided by one of ARRA’s newest member….AARN columnist Guy Smith. Guy is meticulous in his research and you are sure to enjoy a visit to his site here: http://www.roamingtheraceways.com/ Thank you to everyone who has stopped into our websites and had good reviews and kind words!

Big announcement coming out of the World headquarters of the Auto Racing Research Associates - ARRA - in less than a week. An official announcement will be made at the Drivers and Press luncheon that is being put on by the Flemington Speedway Historical Society. The luncheon has been a very successful annual event put on by former driver Gary Mondschein. The luncheon is scheduled for this coming Monday. ARRA will have a display up at the luncheon for those attendees who are interested in what we do or have any donations of racing publications.

Screw that....it was early enough. I threw my slippers on and went out to dig out that issue. Took a look at it and it DID make for an unusual format. Let me make that clear...the format of that show was different and I say that because I have to say that I think it meets our criteria. That is why I wanted to take a look. I thought that I could remember back because a few of us historians must have had a discussion about this due to the unusual aspect of the qualifying. At first glance, I thought that the small block and big block "preliminary" features were exclusive to drivers in either big block or 358. That was not the case. Any driver could have entered both prelims....contrary to the usual deal with touring divisions "splitting the fields" which then would be exclusive...meaning one driver runs in one prelim. This was not so at Devils Bowl this night. From the article...it says each of those prelim events had qualifying heats...making them legit. And the result was that those two prelims determined the field for the Battle At The Bowl 50 lapper. We counted it on our books...as both Brett Hearn got credit for the small block prelim and Matt got the credit for the prelim and the main event. More and more these days...prelims are being counted....however, we at ARRA still need each prelim to be open to ALL competitors who wish to attempt to qualify for it. This was a tricky one...and I sort of want to put a caviat with this one until I might confer with a few other historians, but I am pretty sure that including the wins was the final outcome of our discussions back in August about this event. Hope this helps. Fred Voorhees President ARRA Auto Racing Research Associates

I am answering this while relaxing in bed ready to hit the sack. I would want to refer back to that event, but honestly, it sure sounds like it smacks up hard against our #2 in our adopted list of criteria. Yet, I see that it has been counted in his sum total. Let me look into that event...that may need changing.

Sorry to have to announce that Southern Tier modified star Mike Colsten passed away this morning.

At this time of the year…all of the historians here at Auto Racing Research Associates – ARRA - would like to wish the merriest of holiday seasons to racing’s fans – promoters – members of the press – Series directors… teams and track workers. We are all members of one of the greatest families there is…..the auto racing fraternity! Fred Voorhees – President/Co-Founder Bill Braga Jr. – Co-Founder Bill Hanna – Co-Founder Steve Barrick – Co-Founder Bill Skinner – Member Jeff Ahlum – Member Jay Mooney – Member John Nelson – Member Larry Jendras – Member Tom Schmeh – Member Ken Parrotte – Member Kevin Eckert – Member Guy Smith – Member Bob Mays – Member Steve Bubb – Member Mike Monnat – Member Michael Sessler – Member Alan Brown – Member Dennis Clapperton – Associate Member Jeff Zimmerman – Associate Member

Ringoes,NJ – Auto Racing Research Associates – ARRA - continue to work towards gathering information to compile in their efforts to document our sports history. New files are often being added to their ever growing in size and recognition website of documented careers of drivers and the history of tracks, organizations and series’. The group of dedicated historians are running full bore into the Winter time “off season” though the lack of racing doesn’t mean that there is a lack of research! In fact, it ramps up and this latest news proves that. Hot on the heals of ARRA Co-Founder Bill Braga’s research effort on Andy Bachetti….Bill just recently released his research effort on Andy’s Brother In Law Ronnie Johnson. This was quite appropriate as Braga also completed a research on New York State modified division legend “Jumpin” Jack Johnson (Father of Ronnie and Father in Law of Bachetti) a handful of years ago and the family triumvirate complete racing history is now documented on the ARRA website. Just a few short weeks ago, uber-active ARRA historian John Nelson, the groups mid-west collaborator, submitted his missive on the Farmer City Speedway. Just this weekend, Nelson has forwarded even more stats on his latest project – the Macon Speedway. Macon joins Farmer City as two Illinois state speedways on our roster. Please take some time to visit these two new additions to our roster of top names drivers and race tracks, organizations and series’! ARRA’s “Speedways of Yesteryear” historian, Bill Skinner, continues to add to his series of studies of top finishing spots of heats, consis and features at various tracks of yesteryear. Skinner just this weekend submitted further updates on Alcyon Speedway and recently added Vineland to this current effort and both can be inspected on our website. Much, much more statistical information on both the Albany-Saratoga and Fonda Speedways has been added to their pages thanks to two dedicated statisticians that have joined our “contact periphery” that is always out there to help in locating information when needed. Statistician Andy Hickok came on board after conferring with ARRA historian Thomas Schmeh and has proven invaluable in our updating our information on this beautiful New York state facility. Fonda speedway’s track statistician offered his help in updating and adding to our files for Fonda and we are indebted to Ron Sczcerba for the aide on getting as much information as we can provide for this long-standing racing showplace. This work comes about during a flurry of research work efforts by the ARRA staff! Just recently, the Ringoes,NJ headquarters of Auto Racing Research Associates released another announcement of other projects new releases including the Bachetti project by Bill Braga and two completed research projects of ARRA President and Co-Founder Fred Voorhees covering the careers of Delaware State driving star Ricky Elliott and New York wheel man Gary Tomkins. Also announced at that time was the recently added weekly winner’s history of now gone Garden State speedplant The East Windsor Speedway. Research work continues to forge ahead among all of the ARRA historians, so race fans can continually expect new research projects to come out occasionally. ARRA’s statistical website can be found at: https://sites.google.com/site/arradocumentingracinghistory/home Please feel free to visit our sister websites. ARRA associate members Dennis Clapperton and Jeff Zimmerman do a great job in cataloging Northeast racing stats at their website RaceStatCentral and that can be accessed at: https://nemodfacts.racestatcentral.com/ Well known AARN columnist and ARRA historian Guy Smith also has an ongoing website detailing various views of racing….broken up into two sections – “Roaming The Raceways” and “TrackChaser”….those ARRA sister websitsites can be found at: http://www.roamingtheraceways.com/default.html

Off of the vine fresh on our website! Just thrown up yesterday. Another awesome job by our historian Bill Braga Jr. https://sites.google.com/site/arradocumentingracinghistory/home/ronnie-johnson

John....I have my own personal thoughts on this upcoming project.....but I will keep them to myself. I will say that I will make use of my Newspapers dot com subscription to "check" dates vs wins. Just for the hell of it Trust me.....I will be checking up on the stats. Yep.....don't want another Freddie Rahmer incident. For those that don't know....Freddie Rahmer called me up and was rather rude. Lost a lot of respect for him after that phone call. All stemmed from us not claiming six sportsman division wins for him that he and his wife claims that he had gotten. We scoured the papers and never found anything on those six wins....and they said they had the information.....just couldn't be bothered to dig it up. We have run into other situations where drivers didn't agree with what we documented, but that comes with the territory. Freddie Rahmer will never get the respect from me from here on in though.

Bob....Will himself kept meticulous records of his career...so he says and it is backed up by his wifes say so. Bill Hanna talked it over with Will this year at Orange County and Will is open to sharing his notes with Bill in his research efforts. We shall see and like you....I am interested to see the results.

It can be a tricky situation that can be determined many ways. Here is another. The former DIRT Week Winners Classic or whatever it was called. Win a qualifying event on the DIRT Tour any you are in this event. Obviously, this event isn't open to all competitors. However, lets look at it another way. The field for the classic is open only to those drivers who have won a qualifying trail event. BUT, weren't those qualifying events at each individual track open to all competitors who cared to try to qualify for DIRT week by winning that individual event? So therefore...to get to the Winners Classic...could you say that because the individual qualifying events WERE open to all competitors...that the Classic was then open to all competitors in a way? It has made for some long discussions.

FFTR hits the nail on the head because the two of us have had, as he mentions...lots of discussions on this very subject. The fact is that we are not talking about the Chili Bowl event itself, but one of its qualifying events. No driver can compete in each qualifying event....only their particular qualifying event.....thus, each qualifying event is NOT open to ALL drivers. Thus, it does not meet our criteria. This particular criteria usually will not cause such a problem...but in this instance...it does. I will say that yes, as Dean Reynolds states....the Outlaws once did not count Pre lim events....but now do. That in mind....it might be possible that our guys here at ARRA could maybe re-open our discussions about including such instances.....such as Billy's pre-lim Chili Bowl win as an official feature win.

Jumper....you have stumbled upon a sore spot with me. I fully admit that I have been a Billy Pauch fan for his entire career. The deal with our not including that on his win list is the fact that that preliminary event was more or less a "qualifier" event and wasn't open to anyone interested in qualifying for the Chili Bowl. One of the criteria for counting a win as a win is that the event has to be open to any competitor in that division to try to qualify for the main event. Fight For The Rail has tried to convince me for years and years that the event should be included. However, if you go to the page on our website that details our criteria....you will see that the Chili Bowl prelim would fall outside of our parameters. Listen, I would love to see that win on his record....but..... https://sites.google.com/site/arradocumentingracinghistory/this-is-arra

We have been told!

Oh yeah.....this Winter will find ARRA historian Bill Hanna undertaking a Will Cagle career research!