Welcome to my ‘I probably beat you home’ story. Riverhead Raceway is about five miles from where I live. Consequently the travel time between my home and home track can vary from five to twenty minutes based on traffic. Those who have smoke over their heads at this point remember; we who live in the Riverhead area will have about a four and a half hour drive back from Thompson next Sunday night.

One reason I was looking forward to this event was that Bones Bourcier was flying in from Indiana to do a book signing. When Bones arrived, I stole the opportunity to bring him by the legendary Jarzombek race shop. It was great to see my favorite scribe so energized.

He was like a kid in a candy store. I don’t know what Bones enjoyed the most between seeing the classic Mods, viewing old photos, trading stories or rekindling the memories of a visit he once made there to see the family patriarch, Super with a Speedway Scene compatriot over twenty years ago. A special thank you to Rick Jarzombek for being such a gracious host, a great friend and perhaps my greatest mentor.

Back at the Spring Sizzler, Bones had told me he was coming out to Riverhead. I knew that it would have been a shame for him to travel over eight hundred miles and not go the last three to visit such history, especially for someone who has documented so much of ours. I got nearly as much enjoyment out of the visit just watching and listening like a fly on the wall.

Bones was quite thankful but it was I that was so honored to bring him there. Bones Bourcier is the Editor at Large for and a regular contributor to Dick Berggren’s Speedway Illustrated magazine. Bourcier’s credits also include assisting in the autobiographies of Tony Stewart ‘True Speed’, Bill Simpson ‘Racing Safely, Living Dangerously’ and writing the books for which we know him best, ‘Richie!’ and ‘Bugsy!’ All of the above books are available from Lew Boyd’s coastal181.com.

There were a number of people at Riverhead who were disappointed that there hadn’t been a story posted after the Stafford rainout. Unfortunately, Amie was in the middle of revolutionizing the MSS site. As I understood this, before she could put up the new front page, all of the archives had to be reformatted.

Since I had seen a beta version of this prior to its’ launch, I was really sure that everyone would love it once it was up. Now that it is up and running, let us know how you like it. Keep in mind that Amie will be tweaking this for a couple of weeks to get the most efficiency out of the new software and provide our visitors easier access to our information.

There were others who look forward to seeing what I have to say about the taxis and trucks. Ironically my StockCarCity article didn’t get posted last week either. SCC publisher Mike Calinoff had a family medical emergency that he had to dash off to address. I circulated copies of both stories at Riverhead. If anyone would like me to email a copy of these articles, send me an email with ‘Lost Stories’ in the subject bar. I will shoot them out to you.

The Modifieds were incredibly fast at Riverhead. As I understand it, five of the cars that failed to qualify for the race turned laps faster than Tony Ferrante, Jr.’s pole time from last August. The entire forty-one car contingent was separated by less than seven tenths of a second and the twenty-three of those who made it into the show based on time were separated by .253 or just over a quarter of a second.

Many of the competitors pointed out that Hoosier had brought a softer tire to Riverhead. Others remarked that the surface of the track was unusually clean. Veteran car owner Tony Ferrante believes that the added speed was a by-product of a clean racetrack and the fact that in addition to these tires being a little softer that Hoosier had balanced the compounds between the left rear and right front tires.

The track surface was considerably cleaner than usual for the first Tour race of the season at Riverhead. The Memorial Day weekend activities at Riverhead include a full day of Enduro racing on the Sunday of the holiday weekend. This usually leaves the track littered with debris and soaked with a variety of fluids.

Bill Denniston and his staff did and exceptionally complete job of cleaning the racing surface and the infield after last weekend’s action. Supposedly the entire track and infield was swept prior to a cleansing with a very large amount of oil-dry. After the surface was swept again, Mother Nature helped out with some rain towards the end of the week. I am sure that most of the teams on the Tour are hopeful that they find these same conditions when they return August 6th.

Eric Beers turned the fast time of 11.573 seconds to take the Budweiser pole. Five of the nine Riverhead Raceway regulars qualified for the race led by Jimmy Blewett in the TS Haulers #12. The others were past WMT Riverhead pole-sitter Chuck Steuer, Frank Vigliarolo in the Bear Motorsports #14, local veteran Chris Young and 1994 Tour Champion Wayne Anderson.

Things weren’t all sunny for the locals. Three of the four Riverhead Raceway Modified past champions, including last season’s champ Tom Rogers, Jr. that missed the show, did so by no more than fifty-seven thousandths of a second. The best finish of the Riverhead regulars was turned in by Chuck Steuer who qualified sixth, picked sixth in the redraw and finished sixth in the race and no he doesn’t drive car number 6.

Riverhead is a difficult place from which to do live updates. Fortunately I was able to secure a good location from which to phone in the updates. Vicki did a great job once again and we look forward to this Sunday’s race at Thompson. Thanks to Dave Meredith who offered to post updates this week.

I was shocked to hear that both Ray Rossi and Ted Baxter were viewing live updates. I don’t think there has been a Tour race at Riverhead without at least one of those guys in the stands since the inception of the Tour. And Ted, Vicki will be sending you an autographed picture.

Ted Christopher started third, took second position on the initial start of the event and dashed to the lead about thirty-five laps in. Christopher drove pole starter, Frank Vigliarolo clean, even when there were several opportunities to push him out of the way early in the race. Once Ted got the lead, the #13 got very wide.

Eric Beers arguably had the fastest car all day. He appeared to be among the fastest in practice, he took the pole and it seemed as though he had the fastest car during the race. Eric was on Teddy like white on rice for nearly one hundred laps. Beers tried to pass Christopher high and low, even while he was under pressure from last August’s winner, Donny Lia. I like both of these guys but if the shoe was on the other foot, I think Teddy would have picked a lane for Eric.

Ted took down the win. There were a couple of feel good stories from the Riverhead race. Dick Houlihan was able to put the #46 in the show with a great time trial effort. Tony Ferrante, Jr. ran in the top ten for most of the race and wound up holding on for an eleventh place finish. I think the #18 team was just happy to get to the end of a race with four wheels on the car and the podium finish was just gravy.

I was glad to see ‘Jaws’ at Riverhead. Perhaps Howie might put the picture of the big guy picking Mike’s pocket up in the gallery. It was good to hear that he would be playing in the Tom Baldwin Memorial Golf Outing Thursday. Yours truly and your favorite shutterbugs the Hodges will be there. Hopefully we will have some coverage of that event up on the site Friday.

Bob Dillner of SPEED News fame was there to cover the race for his site Speed51.com. It was great to see Superstar Bob. Dillner used to work for Area Auto Racing as a Riverhead Raceway beat reporter before he was old enough to get into the pits. Bob is a great guy, even if he did look like the Uni-bomber with a shirt over his head Saturday.

Thanks to the Cromartys for their hospitality. Thanks to Bob Finan for talking up MSS and all of us who are affiliated with this site to the crowd Saturday. Thanks to Howie Brode and his crew for watching my stuff. Thanks to Frank Saladino and Pat Hughes for allowing me to share space with them and providing our lineup sheets. Thanks to Tony Ferrante, Sr. for everything, including dinner. Most of all on behalf of Linda & Norm, Amie, Jackie, Howie & Mary, Polly, Dave & Hazel, Renee, Alex, Vicki & myself and everyone else here at ModSeriesScene, we would like thank you our readers. Hopefully we’ll have some fun stuff from the golf outing later this week.

If I don’t see you Thursday, I hope to meet you on Sunday.