Waycross Motor Speedway

 Waycross Motor Speedway

Dirt oval

Lifetime track #298

The Waycross Motor Speedway in Waycross, Georgia is officially listed as my 298th-lifetime track. Waycross was only the third track I had visited to see racing at in the Peach State.  

I did not begin writing my famous “Trackchaser Reports” until the middle of the year 2000.  My first official Trackchaser Report was written for track #425, the State Fair Speedway in Sedalia, Missouri.  I saw that track with my brother Mark on May 28, 2000. I went to the Waycross track in 1997. Therefore I don’t have an official Trackchaser Report for my visit to the Waycross Motor Speedway.

Before 1980, I never kept track of when I went to a track. I just know from memory that I had seen racing at 71 different racetracks from when I was born in 1949 through the 1979 season. This was affectionately known as the “Group of 71”. As this is written I’ve seen racing at more than 2,600 tracks.

You see when I first became a racing fan I never gave the idea of “trackchasing” a passing thought. Why? Trackchasing requires the funds to travel long distances. I grew up poor. We had no money for travel. The ONLY vacation I can ever remember taking until I was in college was a bus trip from Peoria, Illinois to Evansville, Indiana to visit my grandparents. We had absolutely no money for luxuries and travel was a luxury.

Darrell gets weighed at Hawkeye Downs (Kyle Ealy, Hawkeye Racing News, collection)

I began my racing fan “career” as a “racechaser”. How did I decide beginning in college and running through the early 80s where I would go to the races? That was easy! I simply followed my favorite drivers. I scoured the Hawkeye Racing News for advertised race dates. I followed my favorite dirt driver, Darrell Dake (above), all over his home state of Iowa and my home state of Illinois. We were big Dick Trickle fans. When he was racing at a big show we tried to make it there. Yep. I was a racechaser. I didn’t give a second thought to whether I was visiting a new track or not.

However, somewhere in the 80s, I decided I liked going to a track for the first time more so than re-visiting a track for the 10^th time. It was also about this time that Darrell Dake was slowing down his race schedule and Dick Trickle was moving from the midwestern short tracks to NASCAR. Of course, during the 60s and 70s, I was a regular at my hometown track, the Peoria Speedway. To this day the Peoria Speedway remains my all-time favorite track.

Much of what I can tell you about the Waycross Motor Speedway is from memory. I went there on Saturday night, March 1, 1997. The night before I had trackchased in Florida at the Orlando Speedworld’s asphalt oval.

At Waycross Clint Smith driving his #1 late model took the feature race. I remember that the infield race haulers blocked the view of the racing in the turns. I really hate it when that happens!

I can tell you that “The History of America’s Speedways – Past and Present” authored by Allan E. Brown has this to say about the Waycross Motor Speedway. By the way, I can’t even imagine the level of research it took to make this book. There is a listing from virtually every racetrack that ever existed in the U.S. and Canada. It truly does border on the unbelievable. Well done!

Waycross opened up as a ½-mile dirt oval for the 1951 and 1952 seasons. Then they closed before re-opening in 1959. The Waycross Motor Speedway still races to this day. The track did close temporarily during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Their 2020 race schedule has the track only racing once a month. Many tracks no longer race as frequently as they did back in their heyday.

The track has been known by a number of unique names during its existence. These were some of those names: Okefenokee Speedway, Tobacco Bowl Speedway and Ware Speedway.

You might have remembrances about this track.  If so, please feel free to share your memories of 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.