Posted by On June 24th*, 2023 I drove my new-ish all-electric non-emitting car fifty kilometres south of my home to the Eastbound International Speedway in Avondale to watch gas-guzzling exhaust-spewing rubber burning overpowered muscle machines with numbers and company logos painted on them turn left for much of the afternoon.
I am of course referring to the Pinty’s** Pro-Line 250 stock car race, a big-ish bruh-haha that brings Canada’s nearly-NASCAR drivers out east – and we’re talking east – for a spin around our local track (okay, 250 spins). It’s an official stop on their competitive season, the result of a $665K bribe deal that the Newfoundland provincial government made with NASCAR to bring the drivers out here for three consecutive years. In a meandering fiasco of bad weather and even worse rescheduling I had only caught the end of the previous year’s race – m’lady missed the whole thing – but for this sophomore year the notorious Newfoundland weather kept itself at bay and we managed to catch the whole event.
Okay, we missed the qualifying time trials and whatever other sundry events that preceded the main event, but to be honest it didn’t seem like they were trying nearly as hard this year. The inaugural Pro-Line had scheduled a musical act, a warmup race featuring local drivers, clowns, dinosaurs, balloons, and unicorn rides while this one featured, well, nothing outside of what was necessary to run the big race. But at least the big race happened and it happened on schedule, which is saying a lot ‘round here.
(Though the first year it was the Pro-Line 225 and here we are at the Pro-Line 250. That’s twenty-five extra Pro-Line’s right there.)
When the green flag dropped to start the race there were perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three cars on the track, including three or four locals, one of whom was female and driving a pink car. Of course the not-nearly sold-out crowd was cheering for these few Newfoundland drivers, but not for very long. The local participants mostly raced straight to the back of the pack due to undisciplined braking and a large number of solo spinouts. Wait…that’s not entirely true, one of the local drivers made a pretty good showing, finishing, what was it, maybe tenth overall?
At the end of the day about sixteen or seventeen cars finished what turned out to be a rather exciting race, there were a couple of pretty good smash-‘em-ups early on (nobody was hurt, of course), there was a nail-biting back-and-forth shootout for third place that went on for the last twenty laps, and one of the cars eventually took the checkered flag to a smattering roar from the sparse, lackadaisical crowd.
It didn’t even rain. Talk about a slam-dunk of a day. Can’t wait for next year, y’all.
*Happy Birthday Mom!!!
**I know it doesn’t work acronymically, but wouldn’t “NASCAN” have been a better name for the Canadian arm of NASCAR than “Pinty’s”? Oh right, how could I forget…naming rights.
Todd Man Out 