First visit – 1970s.
The Las Cruces Speedway now known as the Southern New Mexico Speedway is officially listed as my 52nd lifetime racetrack to see.  This venue was the first track I ever saw in New Mexico.  I went there in the “Pre-1980” era.  Prior to 1980 I didn’t record the exact dates of when I saw each racetrack.  I also didn’t begin writing my famous Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Reports for the first 400 tracks or so.  That’s means that my comments on tracks like this are mostly from memory.

I’ll be honest I don’t remember much about this track which would have been seen in the mid to late 70s.  I do know why I was in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  It was to visit with Carol’s parents.  They had moved there from Dayton, Wyoming.  Carol’s dad, a stone mason, had built a – round – house.  Yep.  You’d have to see it to believe it.


Our son J.J. was with me at the races.  We didn’t get to Las Cruces that often.  I was never able to get Carol’s parents to come to a race. 


You might have remembrances about the Las Cruces Speedway.  If so, please feel free to share in the comments section below.  If you have any photos from back in the day, send them to me at Ranlay@yahoo.com.  I’ll try to include them here.

Reprinted from my January 25, 2003 Trackchaser Report

Greetings from Las Cruces, New Mexico,

PEOPLE/TRAVEL NEWS

Hello to everyone and welcome to the 2003 season of Trackchaser Reports.  This first report of the season is not even mine; it’s my wife, Carol’s.  We visited the Southern New Mexico Speedway in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  I had been to this track back in the 1970s with my son, J.J.  To be honest with you I had absolutely no recollection of the track whatsoever.  This happens sometimes after you reach 622 tracks and 54 years of age.  Our main racing reason for visiting this track was for Carol to add it to her lifetime list.  The SNMS was Carol’s 130^th track. 

Before I get started with the people and travel news from this event permit me to make a few comments about the purpose of these summaries.  The hobby of trackchasing requires a good deal of travel to get to the races.  Many times (probably most) the experiences I gain along the way getting to and from the track as well as the people I run into are more fun and interesting than the races.  This doesn’t mean the races are not fun; it’s just that the people/travel experiences can be very unusual.  That’s why I developed a “people/travel news” section for these writings.  Actually, this section was originally designed for the “non-racing” people on this distribution list since they may not be interested in how many modifieds raced in how many heat races for how many laps.  I try to cover the racing details in the “racing” section.  It’s sort of like your local newspaper; you can read whatever section you find most interesting.  So, on with the first trip of the 2003 season.

This trip started with me driving from our home in San Clemente to Phoenix, Arizona.  If you don’t live near the dessert, you would probably find this 400-mile drive scenic.  Since I’ve made it many times it looks desolate to me.  I would spend a few days in Phoenix visiting my brother Mark and playing golf with my good friend George Robertson, Mark and newly acquired friend Jim Hyland. 

During the Phoenix visit I had time to meet with financial planner, Charles Erickson, who lives in Phoenix.  Charles is the “outside consultant” who does all of the Procter & Gamble pre-retirement planning seminars.  These are two-day seminars for the P&G employee and their spouse.  Carol and I had our seminar in Cincinnati, Ohio back in April 2002 before I retired in June 2002.  Charles had said that if anyone was ever in Phoenix they should look him up for a private meeting at no charge.  That’s what I did and I found our two hour get together very worthwhile.  Many of you know that I have a financial/retirement planning hobby that’s as strong as or stronger than my racing fetish, I mean hobby.  They say with regard to retirement planning that “if you don’t know where you’re going you may end up there!”  Truer words were never spoken.  If you’re not saving money, a lot of money, for your “golden years” then you’re going to be forced to work for a lot longer than you want or live at a standard of living much lower than you really want or both.  One of the topics I discussed with Charles was doing financial consulting for people on a “pro bona” basis. 

I’m not interested in making money doing financial planning for several reasons.  First, I don’t need the money. Secondly, I don’t want to feel obligated to meet other people’s timetables, etc.  Finally I don’t want to spend the time getting useless education credentials that don’t really add to my financial planning knowledge.  I’m already working with 4-5 people/couples in this important area.  If you have a financial/retirement planning question send me a private e-mail.

Carol and I are in Las Cruces to visit with her parents who are full-time residents.  One of our Las Cruces activities was taking in the New Mexico State – Western Kentucky basketball game at the Pan Am Center.  It was an exciting game.  It also allowed me to purchase a NMSU t-shirt on site.  I now have about 15-20 college t-shirts from campuses visited during my racing travels. 

At the bottom of this report you will find a summary of the tracks I’ve visited and plan to visit.  The future tracks I’ve listed are firm as of now and will be supplemented with many more tracks as the race schedules of different tracks become available.  If I’m going to be in your area please call me so we can get together.  I always enjoy seeing my friends when I’m on the road.

The trip wrapped up with me running over my briefcase with my computer in it!!  More on that in the rental car section of this report.

RACING NEWS:  

The Southern New Mexico Speedway was Carol’s 130^th track.  The program was run on Saturday afternoon.  The track is a quarter mile dirt oval.  They started promptly at their 2 p.m. scheduled starting time.  The main class on the racing card was the modifieds (39).  They were supported by a couple of street stock type classes with about 15 cars in each division. 

The unique policy of this track is they just about never threw the yellow flag.  A car might spin out in the middle of the track and they would wait 2-3 laps before displaying a yellow flag and causing a program delay.  Four times out of five this approach avoided a yellow (a “full course” yellow as described by the announcer) and the resulting delay. 

The sun sat just beyond the second turn.  For a later afternoon show this was not the best engineering aspect of this track.  Although the track was dry slick from the beginning it was also very dusty.  One feature winner did some “doughnuts” in the bone-dry sandy soiled dirt infield.  This kicked up a dust cloud resembling a nuclear bomb cloud.  The announcer stated that the fans were lucky the wind was blowing in the right direction.  The dust wouldn’t go toward the seating area but would go directly toward the men’s prison located just beyond the backstretch.    The public address system was excellent.  The announcer made a very nice mention of “the trackchasers from San Clemente who went all over the country seeing races”.  There was plenty of seating for the 500 or so folks in the stands.  The show wrapped up just before 5 p.m. and was very efficiently run.

One of the unique features of the concession stand area was the “Liquor Menu”.  I don’t drink much but when I do I normally go with Jack Daniels whiskey and Seven-Up.  That’s what I spent $3 on here and it was good.  I also bought a racing t-shirt for Carol.  The shirt advertised the Southern New Mexico Speedway and was a very beautiful piece of racing wear.

I did visit two other tracks during this trip.  Neither was a new track for me.  Nevertheless, I’ll provide a one-paragraph review of the experience.

Manzanita Speedway, Phoenix, Arizona 

This event was part of the Late Model “Winter Thaw” speed week being hosted by Manzy and the Central Arizona Speedway in Casa Grande.  This race took place on a Tuesday night.  The southwest and western parts of the country rarely race during the week.  There are probably very few January mid-week shows anywhere in the USA.  Tonight’s card had just one class, the late models.  They had 45 cars.  There were very few big names in the field.  The biggest were Kenny Schrader, the NASCAR star, and Bill Frye from the UDTRA group.  Frye won the feature.  A very positive part of this program was that they did not run any time trials.  They had four heats, a couple of B features and the A main event.  My third corporate residential location was Phoenix.  We lived there during 1973-74.  I’ve been to Manzy many times.  I was first introduced to  “cheese crisps” at the track.  It’s almost identical to the Mexican quesadilla.  This night’s version was not as good as I remember them.

Central Arizona Speedway, Casa Grande, Arizona

This was my second visit ever to this track.  My first visit was “pre-1980”.  I have the exact date I’ve seen every track from 1980 on.  The track is now a 3/8 mile high-banked dirt oval.  There are no fixed walls in the turns.  The cars frequently slide off the track and over a very steep hill.  At least two cars flipped when sliding over the track’s racing surface.  Tonight about 65 late models showed up for the Thursday night show.  Kenny Schrader started on the front row but could only muster a fifth place finish.  The A main event was won by Wisconsin’s Pat Doerr.  I ran into Gary Jacob, the west’s leading race chaser.  He was in Arizona for the entire week’s racing.  My brother Mark joined me for both Arizona races.  He surprised me by telling the announcer it was my birthday.  The announcer made a nice mention of the “fellow who came all the way from San Clemente to celebrate his 54^th birthday”.  Thank you, Brother Mark.  This program was not as entertaining as the race at Manzy due to the large amount of yellow flags during the evening.

RENTAL CAR UPDATE:   This trip was handled flawlessly by my 1999 RANLAY Racing Lexus LS 400.  As I’ve mentioned previously this is a most excellent road car.  This car now has 60,000 miles on it, which is a lot for me.  No more new cars for me until we get moved into the house we’re building.  Our move in date is expected to be March 31.

Everything went smoothly with the car until one near fatal miscue in the Fairfield Inn parking lot.  Whenever I leave the hotel room I take my briefcase and computer with me.  I never want to risk having it stolen or damaged in the room.  When Carol and I approached the car to head out for the day I mentioned I’d like her to help me find my reading glasses I’d left somewhere in the interior.  I sat my briefcase down next to the front wheel (it already sounds bad doesn’t it?) and we began the reading glasses search.  It no time we found them and I was very happy.  We jumped in the car and I began to back out.  All of the sudden I hit something that felt like a curb.  I knew there was no curb where I was parked.  I next thought that maybe I had a flat tire.  I asked Carol to get out of the car and check (she didn’t seem busy at the moment!).  A Lexus LS 400 has the quietest interior of any car made.  As Carol got over to the driver’s side of the car a very frightened look came over her face and, although I couldn’t hear her words, I could read her lips.  “Briefcase! briefcase”.  These words painted a very poor word picture for me.  I lowered the window.  “Pick up the briefcase”, I said.  “I can’t it’s stuck under the tire”, Carol answered.  Of course, this painted an even worse word picture since my computer was in the briefcase.  I pulled forward slightly and Carol retrieved the case.  Fortunately, although the Hartman leather briefcase instantly aged due to its run-in with a Lexus, it survived.   I had stopped the car just before it could do major damage.  A little hand massaging returned the briefcase, almost, to its original state.  The computer was unharmed.  That was a blessing!

That’s all the news that’s fit to print from San Clemente where the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all of the children are above average.

Planned upcoming races

That’s all folks!  Official end of the RLR – Randy Lewis Racing Trackchaser Report