Gresham Motorsports Park reopens with 26th World Crown 300
Months of anticipation will come to a head
this weekend when Gresham Motorsports Park reopens with the 26th-Annual World
Crown 300. The historic late model stock car race will close out a three-day
weekend speedfest that begins this Friday at the totally refurbished racing facility.
Formerly Peach State Speedway, the facility has undergone a massive
eight-month renovation that has completely changed the landscape of the
track. "It's hard to totally conceive how much work has
been done here," said Dan Elliott, Gresham Motorsports Park General
Manager. "We've repaved the track, but that is just a part of what we've
done. We've also made major improvements to the rest of the facility, things
that will enhance the experience here for our fans and sponsors. What is for
sure is that the weekend is going to end with another great edition of
the World Crown 300. It's race weekend and it's time to show off what we've done.
This is a culmination of nearly a year's work." Included in the GMP facility improvements
were the resurfacing of the half-mile oval and the creation of a quarter-mile
track, all-new lighting and sound system, an aluminium grand stand, rest room
and concession amenities. The track is also one of the most echnologically advanced
anywhere with an Inis Motorsport, Ltd. wireless and solar powered safety
lighting system, a 7-loop data/timing scoring system and a two-lane
drive-thru Infield Technical Center. Meanwhile, a host of top Late Model Stock
Car drivers have entered Sunday's 26th-annual World Crown 300 event.
Defending champion Russell Fleeman of Dacula, GA leads the list of this
year's hopefuls. Fleeman will have his work cut out for him against the likes
of three-time World Crown titlest Paul Kelly and former World Crown winners
Bobby Gill and Fredrick Moore. Additional challenges will come from young chargers
Chase Elliott and Max Gresham while Taylor Saterfield, Cassius Clark, Ryan
Sieg, Shane Hall and Jeffrey Choquette are just a few of the more than 40
entries expected for Sunday's 300-lap headline event. This year's World Crown weekend will take the
green flag Friday when the INEX/600 Racing Series Legends, Bandoleros and
Thunder Cars make their first-ever appearance in the more than 40-year
history of the track. Adult tickets for Friday's inaugural GMP
event are just $10. Saturday's World Crown action will feature
main events in the Mini-Stock, Renegade (Street Stock), Trucks
and Iceman Late Models as well as Late Model Pole Qualifying for
Sunday's World Crown 300. Sunday's schedule is chocked full of
activity with a dedication and ribbon cutting of the new GMP facility,
pre-race entertainment and the running of the 26th-Annual World Crown 300 at
2 p.m. Eastern Time. "It's going to be an exciting weekend,
not only for the fans, but for the competitors too," said Elliott.
"Be sure you are here early so you don't miss a minute of the weekend -
from Friday's first-ever NEX/600 Racing program to Sunday's pre-race where we
have a couple of surprises planned that we know the fans will enjoy - right
down to the final lap of this year's World Crown 300." Tickets for the 26th-Annual World Crown 300
are also now on sale at www.GreshamMotorsportsPark.com and will be on sale all
three days of the event at the GMP ticket office. ===========================================================
Gresham Motorsports Park is a short drive up
I-85 north from the Atlanta Metro area:
* Take I-85 to Exit 140 - Dry Pond Road Exit.
* Travel south on Dry Pond Road approximately three miles before turning right at Hwy 82.
* Travel ½-mile south before turning left on Lyle Field Road *
The Jackson County Airport will be on your left, Gresham Motorsports Park will be on your right. ============================================================
About Gresham Motorsports Park Opened as Jefco Speedway with a NASCAR Late
Model Sportsman (now Nationwide) race in 1967, Gresham Motorsports Park has
served the auto racing community for more than 40 years. The half-mile
asphalt oval located just outside Jefferson, GA, has undergone a total
facility renovation and will reopen with the 26th-Annual World Crown 300 November
13-15, 2009. The multi-purpose venue is currently formulating plans to host a
wide range of events in 2010 including multiple divisions of auto racing,
local and regional Trade Shows, Farmer's and Flea Markets, Car Shows,
Concerts and other community events. For more information about Gresham
Motorsports Park - or to enquire about booking a 2010 event at the facility -
please contact Dan Elliott at info@GreshamMotorSportsPark.com
============================================================
One great asphalt late model publication is
Late Model Digest. Editor Jim Carson puts out a 64-page issue every two
weeks, covering the asphalt short tracks nation wide. It's $30 per year. Late Model Digest, PO Box 340, Murphy, NC
28906 www.LateModelDigest.net The latest issue features an interview with
Tony Gresham, and we reprint it with permission. Catching up with Tony Gresham Interview conducted by Jim Carson One of the Southeast’s traditional Late
Model events is the World Crown 300. From the mid-1980s through 2008 it was held at Peach State
Speedway in Jefferson, Ga. This season the race will mark the rebirth of the half-mile
oval, now called Gresham Motorsports Park and owned by the family which operates
the Gresham & Associates insurance brokers. In addition to final preparations
for the remodeled half-mile, Tony Gresham and his father Jim are also guiding
the career of Tony’s 16-year-old son Max, who has four major Late Model
victories in the past 15 months. Late Model Digest: What’s the reasoning
behind taking over the Peach State facility? Tony Gresham: It's a couple-fold. My dad's
always kinda gotten into things with both feet, no matter what line of
business we’ve been in. The rumors were swirling and signs pointed to having
the gate locked on that place and my dad took an interest in trying to make
sure it stays open. We had an assessment of the piece of land the track sits
on, and it worked out very well from an investment standpoint. We put two and
two together, and figured we could salvage the facility and make a reasonable
investment for the family at the same time. It led to the renovation. We
didn’t plan for it to be as expensive as it turned out, but if we were gonna
make some changes, we’d try to make them lasting and make it a place where
people would enjoy coming to see. We’re committed to making it the finest
facility we could put together. LMD: What will we see with the place at the
World Crown? Gresham: You will not recognize much of the
place. Gone are all the physical structures that were there previously. The
only thing that has not been replaced or torn down is about 3/4 of the
outside wall of the track. That section of the wall we felt had the
structural integrity that it needed. Everything else essentially will be new.
The grandstands on the hill have been moved from the northeast side of the track
to the southwest side, and it’s now all aluminum grandstands that will seat
about 4,000. The key to that change was to put the sun at the spectators’
backs during afternoon events; that’s the only reason we turned the track
around. The old building outside what used to be turns one and two is gone.
We expanded that area into a ticketing area and vendors’ area, so there’d be a midway as you approach the
track. There’s a new entrance about 100 yards further up the street, and it’s
nice and wide so rigs can get in and out and not worry about rolling off into
a ditch. LMD: Voice of experience? Gresham: No, but we did stick the rig going
to the Pensacola track the other week. Anyway, we pulled the old surface up
and put a new surface down. It’s a polymer-blended asphalt with an
extremely-high amount of grip. We enlisted the assistance of Kim Stokes, a consultant
for SMI (which owns seven tracks on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule),
to get the proper mix and the right contractors to get the surface down.
The #1 issue from any racers we heard from is “Please don’t change the
characteristics of the track.” From several of those guys who helped with tire
testing, the nuances that were in the track previously are still there … every
bump, camber change and wrinkle is still there, only now it’s smoother with
a ton of grip. All the fencing is new, and there’s a legends track in the
interior that’s a lot like what the Nashville Fairgrounds has, where the
half-mile and the quarter-mile share the front straightaway. We’ve lowered
the infield eight feet, so that with tall rigs in the center of the infield,
it’ll still give clearance for the people in the grandstands to see the back straightaway.
There’s a new tech building with concessions, bathrooms and a small meeting space,
and from the grandstands you can see the back straightaway over that. There’s
a new control tower and press box, with VIP seating for probably 30 people
and 20-25 in the media center, plus plenty of room for scoring and timing. Behind
the main grandstands and coring tower, there will be a new place for concessions,
souvenir sales and bathrooms. If it will quit raining, we’ll get ‘em done,
but that’s a question mark on whether those will be complete in time for the
World Crown. If we don’t, we’ll make arrangements for that weekend. And
there’s a lot of stuff underground, including seven scoring loops in the
half-mile, so that they’ll have track data for teams that want to test there
… hopefully some NASCAR teams will come and test. LMD: Is anything planned away from the track
itself on World Crown weekend? Gresham: The grand opening weekend is
primarily a community weekend. The people of Jackson County have given us an
unbelievable acceptance. The track’s been through many owners and
promoters, but most of the community has accepted us warmly, and the Chamber of
Commerce has been very helpful. Everyone has some idea of the value the track
brings to the county. LMD: What about naming the track after
yourself and your family? Gresham: I can’t really give you a solid
answer on that one. My dad spent a lot of time going through different names,
but that was his decision alone. LMD: Are you looking at only special-event
schedules in the future, or would you like to develop weekly classes? Gresham: We’re gonna be a special-event
facility. Now we have 12 dates circled on the calendar for next year, plus
the World Crown. LMD: In recent years it has been tough to
draw crowds to the Jefferson track. Gresham: That’s our focus, bringing fans to
the track. Even the Chamber of Commerce and the commissioners are bringing in
side events along with the races, so there’ll be a dual attraction there. And
we’ve got opportunities to bring series to the track which haven’t spent a
lot of time in Georgia in the last six years. LMD: In the 1990s, I’d walk through the
parking lot at Peach State and it seemed like a quarter of the cars had South
Carolina license plates. Are you targeting the Upstate at all? Gresham: At the last ASA Southeast race at
Anderson, Dan Elliott’s wife and daughter, my girlfriend and myself probably
spent an hour handing out flyers for the World Crown and putting them under
windshields. We had a great response to that. And one of the divisions at the
World Crown is renegades; we don’t have that class in Georgia, but there was
a robust crowd of those cars that night at Anderson. So hopefully some folks
from there will come. LMD: Did Max do any of the tire testing at
your track? Gresham: Max hasn’t even been on the track
yet. The tire testing was done at first by Chase Elliott, Casey Roderick and
Trey Poole, and then another session with Russell Fleeman and Jason Hogan.
Max’s giving me a rough time ‘cause he hasn’t been up there. Since the
shutdown of ASA Southeast, we’ve been in a hustle to find something
competitive for him. It flipped us upside down, because we were all in with
that series. What the shutdown led to was a hange in equipment. We decided to
go Super Late Model racing, and the motors had to be freshened and
everything. There was an open test (Oct. 17), but we’d already had the track
in Nashville rented for All American 400 practice. There’s a lot of speculation
about his involvement and what advantages Max might have there, but we’re
putting that to rest. LMD: Are you excited with what Max has done
in two years of Pro Late Models? Gresham: Yeah. Actually we had a
disappointing Late Model season this year. Max opened with a couple of wins, but we ran
into trouble at Cordele and it cost us a car. Plus we had some crew issues,
with guys in and out of the hospital. The brightest spot was the four races
with the Joe Gibbs Racing guys in the NASCAR Camping World East Series. He
qualified on the outside pole at New Hampshire and finished ninth, had a
strong run at Adirondack, and really did well in the car at Iowa and finished
third (in a West Series race). He shared the car with Matt DiBenedetto, and
Kyle Busch drove the car once. They asked us to come back and meet with them
at their shop over the winter, so hopefully we’ll come back with an agreement
for him to run more. LMD: How did you end up with Gene Roberts as
Max’s crew chief? Gresham: The way that came about is we were
working with Joey Clanton and Beau Slocumb with their legends program, and
Joey had other opportunities that he liked to pursue. He suggested we talk to
Gene, and he knew Gene had the knowledge we needed to put good equipment on
the track and educate Max and help Max carry himself on as a race car driver.
LMD: Like many new Late Model drivers, Max
came up from legends cars. Some of us don’t really think much of the
scaled-down cars. Do you think they’re really a good training ground? Gresham: Guys that drive legends cars … some
of ‘em say they’re the hardest cars to drive. This is my opinion: it
teaches them the fine motor skills and car control. The downside I see is
that there are aspects to legends cars that lend themselves to bad habits.
Legends cars are so light and stop so quickly, that most drivers when they
advance have a hard time figuring out where the corners are and when to move
up and when to brake. That’s especially true for guys that spend a long time
in legends cars; those habits become innate things. LMD: You were always a race fan, and your
dad attended NASCAR’s first race at Atlanta Motor Speedway in 1961. But
your first serious involvement in racing wasn’t until Max started in a
bandolero car in 2002. Did you ever think you’d be this deep in the sport
seven years later? Gresham: No. When Max started in bandoleros,
we were just having fun, and we kept having fun. The first time this became
pretty serious – where there was more to it than Max getting out with a smile
on his face – was when we were preparing for the Legends Nationals in 2006.
From there he showed that we can work hard and put it all together. We’ve had
as many as 12 cars in our shop, with legends and Late Models, and thunder
roadsters that my dad drove. It’s a great experience for us, getting the
family involved so much. We joked that legends car raicng was kind of a
traveling carnival, where we watched each other’s kids to keep them out of
trouble. It grew from there, and that’s probably the biggest reason my dad
said we’ve got to propagate this and make sure that that track stays open. ============================================================
Late Model Digest Editor Jim Carson puts out
a 64-page issue every two weeks, covering the asphalt short tracks
nation wide. It's $30 per year.
Late Model Digest, PO Box 340, Murphy, NC 28906 |
November
10, 2009 |
Ó
SCMSRN.com/Paul J Miller 3rd, 2000-2009