Yeah,
1976 still had the NEARA modifieds. Jerry Cook, Richie Evans, Geof Bodine every wednesday. Then 1977 they put a few hundred tons of clay on the track. I moved away before the 78 season, did the modifieds ever come back ?
Yeah,
1976 still had the NEARA modifieds. Jerry Cook, Richie Evans, Geof Bodine every wednesday. Then 1977 they put a few hundred tons of clay on the track. I moved away before the 78 season, did the modifieds ever come back ?
There might of been the odd mod show after 77 but for the most part Late models became the main class.
The old NASCAR NORTH tour and ACT tours became the big races of the season.
NEARA ....wasn't that a great era seeing Richie Evans , Jerry Cook , Bob McCreadie , and some of the locals Charlie Brown , Tom Boucher , Al Bradley , Bob Martin from Kingston , Gary Reddick from Watertown. It was also cool because after watching these guys race at Capital City you could catch them weekends at Evans Mills , Fulton , or Oswego's mod shows .
Yeah,
1976 still had the NEARA modifieds. Jerry Cook, Richie Evans, Geof Bodine every wednesday. Then 1977 they put a few hundred tons of clay on the track. I moved away before the 78 season, did the modifieds ever come back ?There might of been the odd mod show after 77 but for the most part Late models became the main class.
The old NASCAR NORTH tour and ACT tours became the big races of the season.
NEARA ....wasn't that a great era seeing Richie Evans , Jerry Cook , Bob McCreadie , and some of the locals Charlie Brown , Tom Boucher , Al Bradley , Bob Martin from Kingston , Gary Reddick from Watertown. It was also cool because after watching these guys race at Capital City you could catch them weekends at Evans Mills , Fulton , or Oswego's mod shows .
Wow - NEARA - I thought I was the only person who remembered that name 🙂
Those were some great nights, weren't they? Didn't Charlie Brown drive an old-style modified coupe? # 81? I remember building a 1/25th scale model of it...
Or Barefoot Bob piling into the turn 3 wall his first time out? Something about the brake and clutch pedals being opposite to his dirt car...
They did try to run the dirt modifieds and the dirt late models/street stocks there on the asphalt - was quite a challenge for them to set-up...
Your right Charlie Brown drove the yellow 81 coupe the car was owned by Roy Makinson (sp)
Charlie drove the car at Capital City on the paved track and Roy drove the car on dirt tracks.
The coupe was sold to Al Dickie and Roy built a new Vega bodied modified.
There's lots of good books about the drivers back then , I've read the stories of Richie Evans, Bob McCready , Jim Shampine, Bugs Stevens and am reading about Eddie Fleme right now.
Got a couple good books on history's of speedways, the old Watertown speedway before CAN AM was built , the first 50yrs of Oswego Speedway, and the first 50 year of the Oswego Classic.
Another good read is a book called Lancaster Hero's it's focused on Lancaster speedway in NY state that was part of the NERA circuit. Ton's of pictures of the 60's , 70's , modifieds.
Also check out http://www.canadianracer.com/track-select.asp it's an amazing sight . At one time there were allot of speedways in the Ottawa area years back.
Some other modified greats that made appearances during the NEARA era...
Jim Shampine, George Kent, Sonny Seamon, Dave Lee, Ron Bouchard, Satch Worley