Posted by In the Spring of 2022 the Newfoundland government backed a truckload of money* up to NASCAR’s front door and convinced the stock car conglomerate to add a Newfoundland race to their Canadian stock car series for each of their next three seasons. The Eastbound Raceway is only about a half-hour from our house so m’lady agreed that I should get us tickets to the inaugural Newfoundland and Labrador Pinty’s Pro-Line 225 race and I did. Good ones too, among the very few reserved “premium” seats at the track, fourth row on the aisle directly at the Start/Finish line. The tickets cost almost $100 each with fees and such included compared to about $65 each for the GA’s but what the heck, it’s not like we were buying tickets to many things that summer.
The race day was scheduled for June 25th, with a rain date set for the following day (pre-prescribed rain dates are ubiquitous at outdoor events in Newfoundland for good and obvious reasons; it’s an exposed rock in the North Atlantic after all). In case that wasn’t enough foreshadowing, when m’lady was forced to book a flight on June 26th for a work trip we figured her noontime departure wouldn’t interfere with the race in the event that – gawd forbid – the rain date proved necessary. With a 4:30 start-time at least I would be able to go.
The weather report looked pretty promising for race day but it turns out that a 30% chance of rain means: it might rain. It rained. But it didn’t start coming down until after m’lady and I and our backpack stuffed with sweaters and Pringles and water bottles and sunscreen and snack bars and and and were parked in our primo seats at 1pm ready for the opening event of the multi-event day: an hour-long concert featuring Newfoundland country artist Justin Fancy, which might even be his real name.
And he was good too. The guy totally had the new-country thing down; the look, the sound, the songs, everything. The sound sucked bad, but he had a good drummer and a great sideman who switched it up between fiddle, acoustic guitar, and bazouki. But man oh man, Justin Fancy’s young guitar player was sa-mokin’ with a capital “smokin’”. Dude was seriously great with the twang and the chicken pickin’ and he could sing too. Justin let him play one of his own songs about halfway through the end of the set and it was pretty great. I wish I had caught his name.
“About halfway through the end of the set,” is my sneaky way of saying it started raining about a half-hour after the band started, forcing them to cut their set. But as short as it was, those half-dozen songs were the only official entertainment m’lady and I would get on June 25th, 2022. Though most people ducked under the stands to wait it out we stuck to our seats and let our smiles be our umbrellas for the first ninety minutes of drizzling. Eventually we bailed and waited in the car for another two hours or so listening to almost-hourly reports over the loudspeaker that repeatedly claimed they’d make another announcement in an hour.
(When we had arrived we had been directed to a very unorganized, impromptu overflow parking lot behind the track where we [and everyone else] simply walked through an unmanned open gate to get to the stands. In the entire day neither of us saw a ticket-taker; absolutely anyone and everyone could walk in and join the general admission masses free of charge. Good old Fast & Loose NL.)
By the time 4:45pm came we had missed the local’s race that had been scheduled to fill an hour after Justin Fancy’s set, we had missed the qualifying trials for the big race and the extensive introductions of all twenty-two drivers, twenty of which had come from out-of-province, and we had obviously missed the start of the 225-lap main event. The clouds were as dark as ever and the sporadic rain was back at it, coming in sideways with the high winds and the latest “update” on the race’s status was forty-five minutes late. “Let’s go,” I said. “If we get home and discover the race is on we can come back and catch the last half.”
Oh the foreshadowing!
By now I’m sure you’ve guessed that the race actually took place on June 26th** but have you guessed that they changed the start of the race from 4:30pm to 11am? Right when I would be driving m’lady to the airport almost an hour from the track? No?
Me neither. When they announced later in the evening that they were scrapping the concert, the locals race, and the qualifying laps so they could drop the green flag at 11am I was taken totally by surprise. After some frustrating non-communication with the powers-that-were I deduced that refunds weren’t being offered and I quickly discovered that most buy-and-sell social media platforms had rules against selling tickets of any kind so I was left to ponder. M’lady was all for me dropping her off at the airport two hours early so I could catch the race but I didn’t like that option very much.
Instead we left the house about twenty minutes early on June 26th so I could stop at the track along the way and try to sell the tickets in person. Now, I’ve done my share of ticket-shwilling in parking lots around this world and I tell you, nobody was buying. It was all I could do to sell a single pass at a $30+ loss before darting back to the car and racing her to the airport in the nick of time (ie one full hour before departure. Airports can be so dumb).
And so I was left with a single ticket. Wha else was I going to do? I crossed off all my Townie errands save one that was immutable, did that and booked it back to the track as fast as legal. I figured I’d catch the last half-hour at most but I arrived near the end of a lengthy caution and found only 120 of the 225 laps had been run. The guy I had sold my ticket to mentioned he would probably be leaving early and he was nowhere to be seen but there was a lady in one of the two seats. I sat between her and the guy I had spent an hour chatting with the day before. We picked up where we left off. He gave me the run-down on the race thus far and even shared his sunscreen with me. When I’d left the house that morning I was sure I was going to sell the tickets so I didn’t bring a backpack full of supplies. No Pringles, no water, no snack bars. Luckily I was wearing a hat because it was roasting outside. What a great day for a race!
I started chatting with the lady to my left who was on her third seat-jump of the day and described herself as the Racing Lady from Pouch Cove (pronounced “Pooch Cove”). She was really friendly and I assured her that her seat was safe and she could stop worrying every time someone came up the stairs towards us. Turned out one of the cars had lost a wheel and had careened into some protective water barrels, destroying them. When they finally replaced the barrels and dropped the green flag to restart the race she leaned in and yelled in my ear over the roar of the racing engines, “Sorry if I get a little excited now and then but I just can’t help it!”
“Woo!!!!”
And man, what an exciting race! Though the lead car never changed once in those last 105 laps it was really fun watching him barely hold on as the second and third place cars kept changing and surging forward to overtake him. There were no major crashes but several well-timed spinouts that brought out the caution lights and bunched the cars back into a tight, exciting formation.
And though I so, so wish m’lady had been there for it I surprised myself by having a really great time and as hot as it was I especially appreciated only seeing the last half-ish of the race.
Certainly enough to look forward to going the next year and the next.
*$600,000, as in: $200,000 for each year.
**Let this one stand as an anomaly amongst anomalies; a mini-concert within a racing-story-that-isn’t spread over two completely different days.
Todd Man Out 