At the New Egypt Speedway, it’s survival of the fastest.
By: Scott Morgan
Number One staggers on the turn. A flash, and stable ground becomes a jagged slide. The slender hold on traction might survive, but in the turns, it’s not the leader’s call. The turns belong to velocity.
Out here, the leader is prey, baiting his hunters at the terminal edge of gravity. The numbers, hewn in torrid colors on their chassis, are trivial. The only number worth the chase is Number One.
And Number One has faltered on the turn.
Speed drags Number One across the brittle flooring in a huff of dust. The predators regain their traction on the straightway and engulf their unprotected prey in a flurried roar. In the second it takes for them to pass, the lifeless hulk is rendered obsolete.
The quarry is out; the hands have changed.
There is no pity for the routed.
From the inner oval, red shirts scramble to remove the carcass from the track. They have less than 20 seconds to secure a path around him before the pack returns to ravage what is left. Yellow banners drape the sky; pacers lunge bravely onto the track; and for the next few moments, speed surrenders its bravura to precaution.
Dirt rolls underfoot like choppy seas, while lurking hunters prowl behind the pacer’s wake. You can see it in their eyes and feel it in the tremors their machines induce. They hunger to pass; to reacquaint themselves with speed.
And then they’re gone; away in yet another breathless roar.
This is life at the New Egypt Speedway; survival of the fastest on an oval ring of matted earth.
Out here, the slightest tactical error can literally spell the difference between a victory and a crushing, breakneck defeat. Make no mistake about it, it is dangerous on this track. Speed and friction and gravity entwine here in a tenuous ballet of one-upmanship to see who claims the safety or defeat of the humans in their cars. Those who push the edges even the slightest bit too far become fodder in a dangerous avenue of screaming race machines. Those who hold back do not survive the race to press their luck a second time.
THE TOWER
Overdrive begins and ends above the bleachers. This is the control tower, nerve center of the speedway; the spinal chord through which all communications from around the grounds flow. Perched behind their microphones and pane of glass, announcers Nick Leach and "Pistol" Pete Wortman brandish the evening’s verbal one-two punch.
At 4:15, while the fans directly below slip comfortably into their bleacher seats, Mr. Leach calls out the names behind the numbers behind the cars. "The Screamer," Tommy Beamer. Billy "the Kid" Pauch.
From this vantage point, it is easy to see the entire track and to watch the splashy, flashing cars do their warm-up laps. They hug the turns and test their bounds as Mr. Leach elicits audience volunteers to sing the national anthem in the coming weeks.
There are dates still open to volunteer, he tells them. There has never been a disappointment.
By 4:30, Jackie Jablonski shows up to run through what she can expect tonight. She is a beautiful 19-year-old whose stiletto-sharp fingernails belie a quiet charm. For the 2002 season, Ms. Jablonski is Miss New Egypt Speedway the queen of the track who, ironically, has no itch for speed. The cruising is done by her boyfriend, sportsman’s driver Scott Reid of Freehold, the speedway’s 1999 Rookie of the year.
IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT
As the evening’s events become a more definite path in the tower, Mr. Reid is down among the crowd. But he is not signing autographs, or eating a pretzel or puffing one last cigarette. He is studying the movement of the track. He is plotting, calculating. Jotting mental notes as to how the track is responding to the drivers.
It is easy to get lost in thought with him. His eyes never venture from the cars, his ears attuned to the undulation of the hum. The stimuli tell him things only drivers understand. Things intangible to someone whose driving life is red lights, asphalt and speed limits.
"Racing is in my blood," he says with unassuming confidence. The knowledge he takes from these pre-race laps soon will translate into instinct. In the race, you can’t be focused 10 cars ahead. You have to know where you are and where you’re going.
And always how you’re going to get there.
If you misplay instinct, the only alternatives left are luck, a spin-out or an all-out crash. And speed does not look favorably on fortune.
IN THE PITS
Speed itself is made or broken in the pits. Tucked behind the rumble, the pits look more like a traveling, surrealist carnival than the gateway to the races. Track technicians and mechanics, decked in high-contrast one-piece suits, drift among the flashy-colored cars to mend their problems.
But despite its festival appearance, the heavy scent of gasoline and motor oil tell what really happens here. Sprint cars cluster round the fuel trucks like honeybees to nectar; hoods gape like dormant maws as technicians crank up notches and crank down trouble.
Behind the scene and close to the mouth of the track, four-wheeled ATVs push the next fleet of cars toward their purpose. It is off to the course for the new drivers; for a quick flexing of automotive muscle and a quick weigh-in at the scales.
IN THE OVAL
Kevin Watts muses how men who earn their keep behind the wheel have trouble pulling into the finite space of the scale.
"Guys can drive around, but they can’t drive straight," he says with a grin. Nevertheless, it is his job to see they meet the weight requirements. Three hundred pounds minimum to start.
It varies a little at the end.
Visibility is somewhat lacking in the inner oval. Mr. Watts explains the red of his shirt as the only thing keeping the inner track officials from being handed over to the ambulance crews sitting just a few feet to the right. Unlike "Star Trek," he jokes, a red shirt is supposed to keep you from becoming "kill of the week." These red shirts keep the drivers cruising and keep them cruising legally.
"Everybody here with a red shirt has a job," Mr. Watts says. "And everybody does it right." Even if the drivers are sometimes less than gracious.
IN THE THICK OF IT
Graciousness has no allies once the drivers take the course. Jim Potts and Jeff Knosky know that for sure. The pair have been setting the pace here for the past three seasons. They, in the pace truck, are the front line of safety whenever anything gets out of control.
And something just got out of control.
At the north turn, the leader has just lost his grip on the track. It isn’t clear if the other cars would even want to slow down, but they couldn’t slow in time to miss him if they tried. It is their position and their cool heads that keep the leader’s skid from becoming a massive, smoking heap of metal.
Mr. Potts loses no time, peeling into the fast lane and then slowing the racers down. At his rear bumper, the line of cars aches to break away. With a measure of satisfaction, he explains his role.
"Think of it like this they used to call these things pace cars," he says. "But a better name right now would be safety vehicle. We’re the only thing keeping these guys from cutting loose."
With cruise control now set at a modest 30 mph, a flick of the wrist turns on the truck’s flashing overhead lights. The flicker alerts the drivers that they’re about to get their chance to cut loose again. Slinking back into the inner oval, track officials and their fallen charge clear the paths for the pack to reclaim their speed. A sharp thrust to the left and the truck becomes a non-entity. From the rear window, what was once an impatient, orderly line of cars flies away in a blur.
The race is on again. The truck awaits its next adventure.
It doesn’t take very long …
BEST SEATS IN THE HOUSE
For those not governed by their adrenal glands, of course, the ultimate spot is in the stands. Here, the smell of pneumatic rubber and diesel smoke melts away to scents of London broil sandwiches and funnel cakes.
At the turns, where danger is safely tucked behind sky-high nets of heavy mesh, the draw lies in the sights, the smells and the audio.
The sharpest point on the curve is the point at which the races reach their trans-sensory crescendo. This is where the insect-like buzz of the cars builds to a roaring climax; the point at which the tiny size and distant images of the cars becomes a life-size streak of color.
Listening to (and more importantly, feeling) the roar, it is easy to understand what fans find so intoxicating. Combine it with the voyeur’s eye-view of danger in the making, and it’s easier still.
Harry Reckhow, a long-time race fan from Old Bridge, put it best: "I come for everything the excitement, the wrecks, the flips."
Mr. Reckhow waits in the bleachers for his favorite racer to come out Billy "the Kid" Pauch, the man whom Mr. Reckhow used to watch at the Flemington Raceway before it closed. It’s been a while since the first night Mr. Reckhow first came here, and it will be a while before he finally leaves for good.
Until then, it’s a cheer for Billy the Kid and a night under the setting sun amid the aromas, the kinship and the speed.
Most definitely the speed.