Can you hear that rumble?
It’s not thunder.
It’s the sound of revving engines from the Playground of Power. Stock car racing fans haven’t heard that in more than a year. For now it’s just a memory, but the wait will soon be over.
The Prince George Auto Racing Association is back in business after a year of pandemic exile and racing returns to three-eighths-mile oval track at PGARA Speedway on Saturday, July 10.
Racers in all four classes, including Ron’s Towing Hornets, Chieftain Auto Parts Mini Stock, Pro Minis, and Canadian Tire Street Stock will get their chance to run for the checkered flag in the first of six race nights this season.
PGARA is putting a COVID safety plan together and Lefebvre says the club will be following public health protocols to ensure they can safely bring people back to the track this summer.
“We’ve been watching the provincial numbers and assuming we go to stage 3 (of B.C’s Restart Plan) on the 1st (of July), we’ll be racing on the 10th,” said Lefebvre. “Last year was the first year in the history of the track we didn’t run a season.
“We had a turnout I haven’t seen in quite a few years for our meeting last week. Lots of people showed up and we did a quick straw poll at the meeting and we have a number of cars coming back from prior seasons, so I think we’ll have a decent turnout. Some guys might not be ready but I have faith once we get started we’ll see a lot of people coming back in. There’s been a lot of chatter on Facebook since we posted our schedule.”
Other race dates in 2021 are July 24, Aug. 7, Aug. 21, Sept, 4-5 (Hit-to-Pass) and Sept.11.
Lefebvre is hoping to see 2019 series points champions – Tristin Bruvold (hornets), Spencer Forseth (mini stock), Mike Garcia (pro mini), and Lyall McComber (street stock) – back for more racing in the season-opener. Bruvold will have to move up a class from the hornets, which for new racers.
“I think we’re going to see a minimum four to six cars in each class, just based on what I saw at the meeting,” said Lefebvre. “In 2020 we were all ready to go, we had some big shows coming and the pandemic stopped all that. We’re just trying to get the place back to the point where we can host fans again. This came on us a quickly so we have a short time to get everything ready.”
Work parties are going to be busy the next couple weekend getting the track ready for racers and spectators cleaning up the grounds and painting the grandstand and Lefebvre is hoping to get as many volunteers out as possible to lighten the club’s workload.
An experienced PGARA board of directors that works well together has been kept largely intact the past several years. Jamie Crawford is heading into his fourth season as president, Aaron Conn is vice-president, Lee Sheppard is treasurer, Lefebvre has been secretary/webmaster since 2007, and the directors are Bruvold, Shane Murphy, Grant Powers, Robin Case and Rob Verkaik.
The annual Hit-to-Pass demolition derby in September will bring a slightly different element with the compact minis bashing into each other in the Mini Mayhem class. That variation comes out of necessity, with fewer bigger cars available in the scrapyards.
“We’re trying it out, we’ve had some less than robust turnouts for the full-sized hit-to-pass and the cars are getting harder to find,” said Lefebvre. “There was a groundswell of a bunch of us experienced guys who wanted to run hornets (in hit-to-pass), but we were too experienced and so everybody got together and started this mayhem class. It’s not hit-to-pass, but if you bang into someone nobody’s going to black-flag you. A lot of guys had cars built for last year, there’s probably a dozen out there that are already built and probably another half-dozen being built.
“Eight or 10 years ago we put the first hornet class into hit-to-pass at the end of the year as a one-day show to get rid of those cars and it was really successful and now there’s renewed interest revived in getting it done. People are finding cars and we’ll see if the cars last and if the drivers like it and if the crowd likes it.”
