Posted by George LeBlanc --Previous Message--
on 4/14/2006, 7:02 pm, in reply to "Re: trying to find history on a car"
205.188.117.9
Chuck, you opinions on Duke Donaldson and Freeport Stadium are typical of the "holier than thow" opinions that I have experienced in my lifetime from from "school teachers" like yourself who never built a car, never drove a car, never promoted a succesfull race track for many years, paid outrageous money to it's drivers,(40 percent of the gate) owned an Indianapolis roadster that qualified for the race one year,and turned a drivers strike, ( a demand from the drivers tracks top division in to a shut out, "I don't need you" to finish out the 1967 season, (they realized the had no place to go with their topless cars)..they even came to Staten Island to race for a $100 to win and got chased away. Duke Donaldson was a great promoter and suffered the fate of many northeast speedways in the mid sixties. Drivers strikes where prevalent in 1966 and 1967 and were the demise of several speedways. Promter Gabe Rispoli moved up the Class B division when the top division pulled out and was able to operate his track with those cars and drivers. Duke Donaldson was smart enough to revise the rules and brought back the modifieds to Freeport in 1968 with 7 inch maximum width street tires ,390 C.I. limit which resulted record car counts and good crowds. I know, I ran my 32 Plymouth there on street tires and loved it.
: :
:
:Freeport stadium tried to build up
: interest in their lagging
: "modified six" fields by
: having the roofs cut off of the cars
: and calling them open cockpit
: modifieds. One of the promoters at
: the time was Duke Donaldson who had
: part ownership in some Indianapolis
: cars and was an open cockpit
: enthusiast. (as well as being one
: of the most egotistical and worst
: stock car promoters ever!) Anyway
: Mickey Corr cut the roof off his car
: but left it so that it could be
: bolted back on when he wanted to
: race elsewhere. For a couple of
: summers he and his wife Fran would
: go own vacation with their racecar
: and he would race other places.
: Before this orange number 40, Mickey
: owned a non-ford number 140 and a
: modified number 1401/2 that were
: driven by Bob Lamoreaux. Hope this
: helps some. It took the Campi's with all of their money to finally ruin the track. I said to Don Campi to his face one night at New Egypt Speedway when he asked me what I thought of the Improvementa that he had made to the new Freeport Speedway, and I said to him,"You destroyed for the backyard racer". He walked away. I now you have many fond memories of Freeport,but you can't make negative comments about a man like Duke Donaldson, who made alot money and flaunted it, but did a much better job at running a race track than the Campi's did with all of their money.Keep building your models,that's as close as you will ever get.
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