Delays rebuilding WVMS postpone WoO RaceFest
By Kevin Kovac
World of Outlaws Late Model SeriesThanks to an extremely rainy spring, the World of Outlaws Late Model Series will sit idle during the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend.
The national tour’s scheduled highlight of the holiday weekend, the RaceFest doubleheader on May 28-29 at West Virginia Motor Speedway in Mineral Wells, has been postponed due to weather-related delays in the track’s reconfiguring, WVMS and WoO officials have announced. RaceFest will be rescheduled as a one-day WoO show on July 30.
In related news, the WoO event set for May 27 at Beckley (W.Va.) Motor Speedway has also been postponed. Track and series officials expect to soon release a new date for Beckley’s inaugural World of Outlaws program.
WVMS’s RaceFest weekend, which returned to the WoO schedule in 2010 after a five-year absence, was slated to serve as the grand debut of the facility’s much-anticipated new layout. Reconstruction work to shorten WVMS from its longtime 5/8-mile length to a 3/8-mile oval began more than a month ago, but a run of wet weather throughout the spring slowed the project to the point that the track will not be ready for competition by Memorial Day weekend.
“The weather around here has just been miserable all spring,” said WVMS co-promoter Scott Strode. “Honestly, since April 1, we’ve had no more than one day of sunshine a week. It’s just been rainy day upon rainy day, so the work crews just haven’t been able to complete the reconstruction as planned.
“We’re obviously very anxious to start racing on the shorter track, but before we open up we need a little more time to make sure all the work is done and the new track is 100 percent ready to go. We’re disappointed that we have to give up a real big holiday weekend of racing, but we’re excited that we were able to come up with a new date to bring the World of Outlaws back to West Virginia Motor Speedway during the summer.”
WVMS’s mid-summer date will precede a WoO stop at Eriez Speedway in Hammett, Pa., which is hosting the tour for the fifth consecutive season.
The effects of West Virginia’s rainy spring have also been felt at Beckley Motor Speedway, which to date has been thwarted in its attempts to open its 2011 season. Promoter Jim Williams was hoping for a turnaround in the weather for his historic World of Outlaws event on May 27, but after learning of WVMS’s RaceFest postponement he agreed to postpone Beckley’s WoO event as well to prevent teams from making a long trip to the Mountaineer State for only a single race.
Williams is working with series director Tim Christman to find a suitable spot for Beckley on the tour’s 2011 schedule.
Above-average spring precipitation in the Keystone State, meanwhile, has contributed to the unexpected closing of Central PA Speedway in Clearfield, Pa., which was scheduled to present a WoO event for the second consecutive year on July 27. The management of CPS announced last week that the track will not open in 2011 due to reasons that include weather-related damage to the 3/8-mile oval.
