Greetings from King George, Virginia
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From the travels and adventures of the
“World’s #1 Trackchaser”
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King George Speedway
Asphalt oval
Lifetime Track #2,293
THE EVENT My trackchasing hobby takes me all over the world. Each year I will visit 25-30 American states and several foreign countries. Long ago I moved into the #1 trackchasing position in both the number of different racetracks seen as well as the number of countries where I’ve seen racing. Today’s adventure was one more of the 2,000 trips that have taken me up, down and around the long and dusty trackchasing trail. If you would like to see where I’ve been and experience those adventures here’s the link: If you’ve got a question, comment or whatever please leave it at the bottom of this report. It’s very easy to do. Or you can visit me on Facebook. Thanks! ON THE WAY TO THE RACES FOREWORD Friday. My 2017 trackchasing season had to begin somewhere and sometime. In advance of this trip both the timing and the location looked like poor choices. I was coming off my first flu like illness in many years. I had been relegated to bed for the past five or six days. Fortunately I was just beginning to come out of it when this morning’s airplane called my name. My plan for this trip would include both Missouri and Virginia. However, the headline from this morning’s USA Today weather page warned of the “largest ice storm in the last 10 years” in and around Missouri. The advance forecast for Virginia called for a 60% chance of rain with a high temperature of just 40°. Neither one of these choices seemed ideal for a person just coming off his sickbed to start the season. Nevertheless, the season needed to be started. I woke up this morning to find that one of my potential flights back to the Midwest of been canceled because of the ice storm. This would put pressure on available seats for me to take on the remaining flights of the day. I would have to leave the house sooner than I had originally planned. I was in rush mode now. Last night I had taken the time to reserve a hotel in St. Louis for the next two nights. I used Priceline and my purchase was nonrefundable. This meant I had to make the trip whether I felt like it or not at this stage. If the airplanes wouldn’t go because of the bad weather in Missouri or I couldn’t get on them because of a lack of standby seating the money spent on at the hotels would be lost. I think there are a couple aspects of my trackchasing hobby that people just don’t “get”. One of those is the challenge, I won’t call it a difficulty, of simply getting from my home to the location of the racetrack. The two tracks I planned to see this weekend were on average a little more than 2,000 miles from my front door. It would be hard enough to do what I do the tracks were located within a couple of hours driving time from where I live. However, when you add in the winter weather, the distance traveled, and the uncertainty of flying standby it makes for just the challenge that I love to embrace. When that first airplane canceled it turned my plan for a leisurely drive to the airport into a one and a half hour rush. Now I had to time the traffic just right in the hopes of making a plane that I hadn’t even planned on trying for. Additionally I had to wrap up my LAX parking sponsorship details before I could get on that plane. If everything went exactly as I hoped, timing wise, I would make it. If not I ran the risk of not getting to St. Louis today at all. I’m happy to report that I made the flight by the skin of my teeth. This isn’t the first time that’s happened. My teeth are getting a little thin by now. I landed in St. Louis at 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon. Normally this would be a busy time. The airport was empty. The ice storm had already closed schools. Most businesses had shut down for the day. I was the only person on the hotel shuttle bus riding over to the Sheraton Westport. Often times when my trackchasing trip begins in the Midwest or east I have to come in the day before. There is no way I can leave California in the morning and make it in time to see the evening’s races when I lose 2-3 hours in time zone changes and fly for 4-5 hours. Even though I bought my hotel on Priceline at about 50% off the very best price anyone else could get a room for I still get special privileges when I check in. Today that included an upgraded room on the executive lounge level, complementary breakfast each morning in the executive lounge, complementary Wi-Fi and free parking. I’ve got the system down pretty well. You won’t see me staying in any dives like I used to years ago. I’m happy for that. There’s a pizza chain in St. Louis called Imo’s. It’s very popular. They serve thin crust pizza with a very unusual tasting cheese. I had one delivered to my room tonight. I’m not as big a fan of this pizza as apparently most locals are. Nevertheless, there wasn’t much left of it when I was finished! I spent the evening in my room simply relaxing. With a “seven day” virus just about ending I wanted one more good night’s sleep before I went out on the ice in search of my first tracks of 2017. If I had to guess right now I would say that my production for this coming year will be much lighter than normal. There just aren’t that many good fun tracks left to see. We’ll see how I do. However I’m going to guess that I will fall far short of the normal 100 tracks I’ve been seeing each season for the last dozen years or so. Saturday. I’ll make this short and sweet. I waited until mid-afternoon to pick up my rental car. Then I made the two-hour drive down to Jackson, Missouri. The trees were covered in ice during the entire drive southward. In order to save five bucks I hung out in the Flickerwood Arena parking lot until 5 p.m. When I went inside I discovered about thirty racing classes for motorcycles, racing lawn mowers, ATVs and karts. However, the one and only class that would meet trackchasing’s stringent counting requirements had only ONE competitor. One racer does not a make a race. I was told that both the Chili Bowl weekend conflict and the bad weather had kept the caged karts away. Whatever. I would not be able to count the racing at the Flickerwood Arena. My 2017 trackchasing season was not beginning well. All I had to show for my efforts was a rental car expense and a gasoline bill. Sunday. This had not been my best ever trackchasing weekend up to now. The original plan called for me to see three new tracks on this trip. For the middle of January that would have been a fantastic result. However, sometime you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. The bear was winning so far this weekend. I had planned to leave Thursday. Then a predicted ice storm for Missouri on Friday ended up canceling the Friday opportunity. At least that did allow me to leave a day later than the original plan, Friday. Then I hung around my hotel through Saturday morning waiting for an indoor show just two hours south of St. Louis. By 6 p.m. Saturday night I discovered that the one and only “trackchasing countable” class racing had only one competitor. That meant my entire Saturday was now wasted. No new track. This brought me to Sunday morning. It was my last chance for at least salvaging something from what had once been a most promising weekend. I would need to fly from St. Louis to Washington, D.C. That seemed easy enough. However, the weather gods were continuing to conspire against me. A major rain/sleet ice storm was expected to hit St. Louis at 4 a.m. this morning. One of the two flights that would get me to D.C. had canceled 24 hours in advance. I was expecting the second flight to do the same. However, when I woke up at 5:15 a.m. Central time I could see it was raining but it didn’t look like it was freezing rain. I checked my FlightTrack app. The flight to the Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. was still scheduled. Maybe my luck was turning around. I never understand where people go when a flight gets canceled. Wouldn’t they just wait and take the next available flight. The 7:30 a.m. flight had canceled. However, on the 8:30 a.m. flight there were only 27 passengers going on a full-sized jet. I haven’t seen a passenger load that skinny in years. I hopped on. For the past several days I had been messaging King George Speedway promoter Mike Hurley. When we first started conversing the weather forecast called for a 60% chance of rain with a high temperature of 40 degrees. Folks, this was an outdoor race. That forecast didn’t look good. However, Mike was just about the most positive promoter I can remember talking too. He was going to make this race work. He said if it rained in the morning he would “blow off the water” on the asphalt oval and get the track in shape. Mike and his crew were going to do everything in their power to run this show. That’s so much different than those race promoters who “cancel on the forecast”. As we got closer and closer to race day, meaning today Sunday, the forecast got progressively better. This morning the forecast now called for a zero percent chance of rain and a high temperature of nearly fifty. That was the good news for Virginia. That improving forecast was making the potential flight cancellation in St. Louis for freezing rain all the more irritating. It would be a bummer if the Virginia weather forecast had improved so much….and I couldn’t get there from St. Louis. When I watched my plane lift off from what was now rain-plagued St. Louis I knew I would not be shut out this weekend. Once in D.C. it was a short 90-minute drive down to the track. The cool thing about landing at the Ronald Reagan National Airport is that the route to King George, Virginia took me right past the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial (above) and the Pentagon! I’ve had the King George Speedway on my trackchasing plan several times in the past. However, for one reason or another, usually weather, I had not made it until today. By the way, the tri-state area of Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina might have more karting tracks and better kart racing than any other three states in the country. I’ve got friends at the tracks in this area. I had been in contact with Stevie Minson. Stevie was going to be the track announcer today. He does lots of the big karting shows in and around this area. Stevie would be announcing his first ever asphalt kart show. He told me he had last been to the King George Speedway when he was just nine years old. KG was a dirt track some 22 years ago. THE RACING King George Speedway – King George, Virginia Finding the speedway was easy. It was located directly, and I mean directly, off the highway. When I pulled in I found a parking spot just beyond turn two. Had I wanted to I could have watched the entire day’s program there for no admission charge whatsoever. However, I wanted to tour the pits and meet the friends who had been helping me with this track visit. I paid for my $10 pit pass and had full run of the place. The race program called for just three classes of karts. I was interested the most in the “animal” senior champ karts. The word “animal” identifies the type of race motor being used. There were also going to be two flat kart racing classes. Based upon a twenty kart minimum each class would be racing for a $1,000 “winner take all” purse. If 20 karts didn’t show up the racers would race for 80% of their combined entry fees. The winner take all approach was most unusual. I’ve got to think that would actually discourage racers from attending. They might figure they can’t win so why race for no chance of any purse money? The first person I met was today’s track announcer Stevie Minson. Let’s remember that lots of kart tracks don’t have any announcer at all. If they do have an announcer often all that the person is used for is to announce to the pit area which class should be ready next. The King George Speedway has a solid P.A. system. Mr. Minson was a real pro. It’s not often anymore that you get that really solid knowledgable announcer with a good quality voice calling the action. I would put Stevie Minson easily into the top 10% of the announcers I’ve heard during my travels. Stevie just happened to be talking to Doug Johnson the head man at the Albemarle Speedway in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. I had met Doug in late 2015 when I went to see kart racing at his track. Doug has kept in touch with lots of good ideas on other tracks that might be good for me to visit. What I remember about first meeting Doug was that he truly cared that I had a good time at his track in the Tar Heel state. Next up was my opportunity to meet the track promoter himself Mike Hurley. Mike was a most upbeat guy. I sort of expected that with his “I will make it happen” approach as I asked him so many questions earlier this week. I was making a solid effort to get my butt to King George Speedway today. It was comforting to know that Mike Hurley felt the same about getting this show in the books in the middle of January. Today’s racing began with some hot laps and then multi-kart qualifying on the nearly flat asphalt oval. The pits were located beyond turns three and four. The sun would be setting over turns one and two. That meant that watching from turns one and two would be the best for picture taking. There was something just a little unusual about the track’s pit area. Remember, folks, today I was seeing my 2,293rd lifetime track. That’s two thousand with a “2”. I was seeing, actually I was hearing, something I have never ever heard in any of those previous 2,292 track visits. I’m not a hunter but I could swear those were shot gun blasts going off every few minutes in the woods that backed up to the pits. Was it the “Dreaded East Coast Trackchasers”? Who knows. Nevertheless, I hoped those gun shots were far enough away to keep everyone at the King George Speedway safe! Just eight karts started the first flat kart feature event. I believe four of them finished the 25-lap main event. The second feature of the day was for some 16 senior champ karts. That was an excellent field for that class. I didn’t stay for the third and final race. If I had stayed for that last race I would have had to overnight on the east coast and my trackchasing budget didn’t allow for that. I was told that thirteen flat karts started the final main event. The two flat kart racing divisions don’t “count” by trackchasing rules. That’s right. Trackchasing does not allow for flat kart racing. Before I hear from anybody about that let me tell you that I had ZERO to do with that ruling by trackchasing’s original founding fathers. The founding fathers didn’t think of flat kart racing as worthy I guess. As a matter of fact I disagree strongly with that way of looking at things. Here’s a short piece about this idea that I wrote when I visited Doug Johnson’s Albemarle Speedway. “A grievous error indeed. I would be less than genuine with you if I didn’t say that I feel trackchasing’s founding fathers made a grievous air in not counting go-kart (flat kart) racing. Go-karts match and exceed other forms of trackchasing countable racing in several areas. Yes go karts have an engine, four wheels and a steering wheel. They race on oval and road course configurations. Adults race go-karts. And by the way I’m using the term “go-karts” to refer to “flat” karts. Go-karts come to the race track in most cases in enclosed trailers. They have quite a bit of advanced racing technology. Tire management is important. Engine power is important. Driving skill is important. Now contrast the above with the majority of junk car events that trackchasers now attend. How do “junk cars” match up with go-kart racing in aspects one would commonly associate with serious auto racing.? Not very f#$%##g well. There is absolutely no reason that a go-kart should not be considered a full-fledged racing machine. I’ve heard some ill-informed trackchasers say that a go-kart isn’t really a “race car”. Is a 1995 Dodge Neon pulled from the local junkyard with the number applied from a spray paint can a “race car”? Please. What in the world were trackchasing’s founding fathers thinking? So what should be done NOW? The question now becomes should “go-kart tracks” be counted at this stage of the game. There are tons of such tracks that only race flat karts. I don’t really have a clear answer on that. Some would say the horse had left the barn on this idea. Would it be fair for trackchasers to begin counting go-kart tracks now after so many of the leading trackchasers have completed their careers without having that opportunity? Possibly not. However if you want to go on case precedent the group did add figure 8 tracks several years ago. A good number of trackchasers never got the opportunity to fully explore the figure 8 trackchasing opportunity. Nevertheless the group added figure 8 racing as a countable configuration and race class. They even allowed the figure 8 track visits to be counted RETROACTIVELY. In reality figure 8 racing doesn’t measure up to go-kart racing in terms of the true intent of auto racing as a genre. Here’s a main reason trackchasing numbers are way down. I think most trackchasers got into this hobby because of their love of racing in general. I am sad to report that the hobby of trackchasers has morphed into a hobby of “counting”. Trackchasers no longer have a strong interest in racing itself. It’s all about counting the track. The “racing” aspect of the hobby is a distant second. I have never stopped to count the number of “go-kart tracks” I’ve seen where the class of senior champs (or some caged kart) is the countable class. I’m going to guess that number comes in at 200 and maybe more. There is no doubt that the number of tracks seen by today’s current crop of trackchasers is WAY DOWN from trackchasing’s heyday. Maybe if go kart tracks racing flat karts were allowed people would have more opportunities to trackchase. If kart tracks with flat karts were added to the countable classes allowed by trackchasing rule I would have a decision to make. Would I want to start chasing flat kart tracks? I do know this. Going after that entire up to know forbidden auto racing genre might bankrupt me!” Know let’s get back to the main event racing at King George Speedway. Each of the three classes were running just a single 25-lap main event. Some drivers were racing in two of the three classes. There might have been a driver or two trying to run entries in all three classes. I don’t know if it was possible for one flat kart chassis to compete in both flat kart races. I don’t think so. The karts got around the good-sized track at a high rate of speed. The senior champs ran their race non-stop. I was a little surprised at the attrition rate in both of the races I saw. I didn’t know if that had anything to do with the winner take all purse structure or not. The champ kart race ended at about 4:20 p.m. I had a decision to make. If I left then I had a good chance of making a 7:20 p.m. flight from Washington’s Dulles airport back to Los Angeles. I believe my attendance at the track today was unique if nothing else. First, how many fans or racers had come to the track this morning from St. Louis, Missouri? How many would have the chance to sleep in their own bed……in San Clemente, California tonight? I figured I had better try for that airplane and try to avoid another night’s hotel and rental car expense. I had been at the track for nearly four hours. During the time I had met some key players with today’s racing. There was ample opportunity to get all the photos and video so that I can share with you for your enjoyment. AFTER THE RACES It was a 95-minute drive over to the airport. I made it with ease. I also got to enjoy a beautiful winter sunset. The flight was wide open. That’s January for you. I landed in Los Angeles at just past 10 p.m. local time. I was pulling into my driveway at about midnight. Of course that was 3 a.m. King George Speedway time. My day had begun at 3:15 a.m. California time. Yep, it was a full day. I’ll spend this coming weekend with Carol watching UCLA play the two Arizona schools at the famous Pauley Pavilion. The weekend after that I’ll begin my winter ice racing. The ice racing season seems to start later and later each year. By the end of February ice racing is finished in most places. Good afternoon from King George, Virginia. Virginia The Old Dominion state This afternoon I saw my 28th lifetime track in the Old Dominion state, yes the Old Dominion state. I’ve seen 28 or more tracks in 23 separate states. No one matches those totals. Thanks for reading about my trackchasing, Randy Lewis World’s #1 Trackchaser Peoria Old Timers Racing Club (P.O.R.C.) Hall of Fame Member Virginia sayings: The Rivah Translation: Well, clearly, it’s “river”, but “the rivah” just sounds so much more elegant. Can refer to the Potomac, the Rappahannock, the James, the New, and so on. We’ve got around 40 to choose from. And we love ‘em, live on ‘em and talk about ‘em with pride. EX: “We’re staying at the Rivah this weekend.” QUICK FACTS LIFETIME TRACKCHASER COMPARISONS The three most important trackchasing comparisons to me are: Total lifetime tracks seen Total “trackchasing countries” seen Lifetime National Geographic Diversity results Total Lifetime Tracks There are no trackchasers currently within 550 tracks of my lifetime total. Don’t blame me. Total Trackchasing Countries There are no trackchasers currently within 20 countries of my lifetime total. Current lifetime National Geographic Diversity results That’s all folks! Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report Click on the link below to see the video production from the racing action today. Click on the link below for a photo album from today’s trackchasing day. You can view the album slide by slide or click on the “slide show” icon for a self-guided tour of today’s trackchasing adventure. Struck out in Missouri; Home run in Virginia 
