By DAVID MILLER
Special to The Dispatch
Brian Rickman remembers a time when competing in four races in four days was common.
That was roughly seven or eight years ago, when he and other drivers would travel to races in Tennessee and Arkansas and back to Mississippi on select weekends throughout the year. But as racing has become more expensive to fund, those opportunities have become fewer.
“We’d be in Tennessee, like Duck River, come back to Columbus, Jackson or Meridian,” Rickman said. “You’d have racing from Thursday through Monday.”
Holidays, like Memorial Day weekend and Independence Day, still provide those unique opportunities. Magnolia Motor Speedway will hold its race — a $2,000-to-win NeSmith Late Model National Touring Series feature — tonight instead of Saturday. The race is a back-to-back Nesmith feature with Wynot Motorsports Park, which hosted a NeSmith race on Saturday. Having a points race for a significant purse helps facilitate moves in which track managers work with one another to set combo races.
“You have some guys who simply are stuck in one place and don’t really want to go here and there,” Rickman said. “If tracks got together more often and did some kind of points deal, you would probably have guys get together to try and chase it. It’s just one of those things.”
Rickman, currently second in the Mississippi State Championship Challenge Series points race, will compete at the MSCCS race today at Greenville. As much as he hates to miss a race at Magnolia, such is the nature of chasing points in another series, he said. Saturday, Rickman competed in a $3,000-to-win Super Late Model race at Corinth. Jackson Speedway also hosted a race Saturday, but it was headlined by a Sprint Car feature.
“I haven’t been to Corinth in 10 years,” Rickman said. “They just happen to have a big race up there.”
Millport, Alabama native Jeremy Shaw, who won the NeSmith Late Model race at Magnolia on May 14, will only race today at Magnolia. One of his children had a birthday party Saturday. Under normal circumstances, he would have raced at multiple tracks this weekend, he said.
“Back when I was running Modifieds, and they were popular around here, they’d do a portion for Mods and Lates, and it would consist of three to four tracks,” Shaw said. “Normally, we’d have a Friday, Saturday and Sunday night race. I enjoyed it back then. All the tracks ran the same rules back then, and they did a mini-points system between tracks, and they had extra money as incentive. I enjoyed it.
I had a little less real life going on then, too.”
Having a significant payout may be the only way to re-establish mega-weekends in which everyone in the state competes at the same three or four tracks, as the cost of racing continues to rise, Shaw said. Though fuel prices have leveled around $2-per-gallon and reduced the cost of travel, it’s impact is still felt by race teams.
“When fuel prices drove up, it drove the price of everything up,” Shaw said. “Fuel went back down but everything else stayed up. You talk about running three nights in a row, several hundred dollars in tires, and if you take anyone with you, $300 in pit passes and registration, not counting your fuel. It’s just a deal where people would like to do that, but it’s just not as easily as achieved as what it used to be.”
RockAuto.Com Super Late Models, NeSmith Street Stocks, 602 Late Model Stocks and Factory Stocks will also be in action tonight.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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