The rains of August stopped long enough Saturday night to give blue skies and air filled with the smell of racing fuel and burning rubber! The night started off with Marcie Maynard singing the National anthem in front of 4600 anxious NASCAR racing fans followed by four of Arizona's finest short track Stock Car aces! After the dust had settled Tucson's own Dustin Jones had won the four lap Trophy Dash! With an all new racing format that demanded good results in the evenings heat races to ensure a good starting position in the nights feature events, the racing in those 8 lap heats was fast and furious. Seven classes competing for over $10,000.00 in purse and 5% in NASCAR Point fund dollars resulted in feature events that kept fans on the edge of their seats throughout the evening. The features started with Austin Tribelcock winning the Bandolero race and Matt Williams dominating the popular Legends feature. The NASCAR Mini Stocks were hotly contested by father and son with the older and wiser Jim Bates taking home the glory! Ben Shepherd thrilled the standing crowd with a last lap, last turn pass of Brian Herrington Jr. to win his first feature event and the first for a Ford at Tucson Raceway Park since the days of Bill Cheesbourg. Billy Johanneck bested 2005 Tucson Raceway Park champion P.J. Megna by just inches in the Grand American Modified feature. Matt Levin continued to show his driving talents in Alan Levin's bright orange NASCAR Late Model. "Stormin" Ron Norman again showed why he has won many features and championships by narrowly beating the popular Chad Bowden and hard charging Matt Levin in the 40 lap Super Late Model feature.With the support of Mother Nature, Tucsonans can look forward to fifteen more action packed nights of racing at Arizona's only paved NASCAR short track in 2006
That was the Press Release for our very first event held on August 12th, 2006. The 06 season would finish with the popular Tucson native Mike Egurola winning the season ending traditional Bud Shoot Out completing our first year at TRP.Our 2007 season would begin with new competition rules and divisions needed to best fit the competitors budgets and give the fans a good show.The Super Latemodel and Latemodel divisions were effectively combined into one division and the Bomber division was created to give potential new racers an affordable division to compete in. NASCAR would continue as the sanctioning body and racing would begin with increased division car counts and great racing. The monsoons of summer would create havoc with the event schedule and drain financial resources with poor fan counts due to the weather and event cancellations. The season would again close with the Bud Shoot Out in late October with another first time winner Matt Levin thrilling the large crowd. During the winter of 07 decisions were made after researching thirty years of weather tracking to start the 08 season in February and break for the monsoons of July and August to have a better chance to complete every scheduled event. NASCAR was again onboard for the season but in May the decision was made to severe our ties to NASCAR even though we personally felt a very strong bond and saw great value in our parternship.By the time our monsoon break event of July 5th had come around we had seen the economy striking a big blow to our competitor base and the car counts continued to dwindle as sponsor dollars were drying up and competitors could not afford to race. Mesa Arizona's Scott Reaushenberg was the dominant Late Model feature event winner in the Project Blue Oval Ford Fusion but 07 Arizona State champion Joe Paladenic won the championship again with great consistency and speed. During the monsoon break it became painfully obvious that the competitors could not return to weekly series racing after the break due to financial issues and a decision was made to conduct only special events for the remainder of 2008.We returned to racing with the first ever Twin 200 Lap Bomber and Bomber Lite Enduros in October followed by the PIR Stars special Thursday night event that saw 50% of the competitors coming from out of town. The year came to an end with the Bud Shoot Out increased to 150 laps with a 75 Lap Bud Lite Open Comp Factory Stock event added to the prestigious event. Ron Norman would go onto win the Shoot Out after Reaushenberg in the Ford had a tire go flat while leading the entire field by over a lap at the 3/4 mark. The final event of the 2008 season posted the largest purse in over 10 years for all the divisions but it still failed to get large enough car counts to insure a good show and profitability.
On November 30th Joyce and I turned off the lights and locked the doors for the final time at Tucson Raceway Park. We left the facility in tiptop shape ready for racing again if and when another operator comes about. We put our hearts and souls into making the facility a viable and profitable entity and our last hope for survival was our innovative Victory Circle plan that failed to materialize in a timely manner.
Those of you that supported our efforts over the last three seasons know who you are and we Thank You from the bottom of our hearts, for those of you that resisted change and bucked the system and undermined our efforts you now have a vacant raceway with no hope for survival during these trying times. Only time will tell what will happen to TRP but God willing it will again see racing in the future.
Happy Holidays
Dan & Joyce
