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Saturday night, Feb 23rd, Thunder Mountain Speedway held their annual awards banquet for the 2007 season. After the awards ceremony concluded, promoter Dick Stark made some greatly anticipated announcements for the future plans of the race track, and wanted to clear the air of all the rumors that had been circulating during the off-season.
One of the first announcements made was about the group at the helm of the race track. It was announced that after an agreement just made a day prior to the banquet that the former partnership had reached an agreement and that Dick and Shelly Stark will be the sole promoters for the upcoming 2008 season. This is great news as now that all are in agreement and Dick and Shelly have taken full reigns of the track they can proceed unhindered with their 2008 Racing season plans.
The second announcement made was about which night the Speedway would be running on, a topic highly debated on this site. It was announced that Thunder Mountain will indeed become a Friday night racing facility for the 2008 season, with a race starting time of 7:30pm. Among the many reasons for opting to go to a Friday night format, promoter Dick Stark pointed out the by running on Fridays, there is not much in the way of competing Speedways within the area, as the closest Speedway to Thunder running on a Friday is Penn Can Speedway in Susquehanna, PA which is close to 40 minutes away. The switch makes sense as on Saturday nights there are two other speedways running within a 20 minute radius that would all be competing for cars. This decision offers both fans and racers the best, as it gives Friday racers another option in the southern tier, and will alleviate some of the pressure of the other Saturday night tracks, allowing them more room to prosper.
To clear up other rumors, here are some points of items that were announced:
The IMCA Modifieds will be running as a regular class at Thunder on Friday nights. Right now the track will be a part-time IMCA sanction, and is currently working with IMCA towards becoming fully IMCA sanctioned. Along with the IMCA Modifieds, the following classes will be run weekly: Sportsman Modifieds, Hurricane Street/Pure Stocks, 4 Cyl Road Bandits (Pups), and a combined class of Road Warriors (8cyl stocks) and Six Shooters (6cyl fwd cars).
The Modified class has NOT been officially dropped . In the interest of trying to keep the class at Thunder in some capacity, Stark announced that they will be holding a meeting in the near future with the Modified teams to discuss options for the future of the class at the Speedway. He stated that it was no secret that with the economy the way it was and lower fan and support class counts that they could not maintain keeping the Mods the way they were, but they have not closed the door on them and would like to work something out that will benefit both the Modified teams and the speedway.
Also pointed out about the new six shooters, the 6 and 8 cyl classes will be run together depending on car counts, but will have seperate points and point funds. If there is enough support for each division, then they will split them and run them seperately, but it is dependent upon car counts.
More information will be announced shortly. Thunder Mountain will have booths at both the Oakdale Mall car show and the Carquest Motorsports Expo at the state fairgrounds..
Again, here are things in a nut-shell:
Dick and Shelly Stark will be independently running Thunder Mountain for 2008.
Thunder will be a Friday night racing facility with a start time of 7:30pm
IMCA Mods, Sportsman, Hurricane Stocks, Warriors/Six Shooters and Bandits are all on the card for weekly racing with the Modified class still being a possibility, they have not been dismissed.
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