BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. — As we turn to dirt-trackers in our look back at the outstanding talents we’ve observed over the years, the going gets even tougher.
One could write volumes about the scores of drivers who have notched impressive win totals on the dirt ovals of the Northeast.
Again, we’ll proceed in no particular order, but it’s difficult not to start at the top. Some 920 scores at 48 speedways in 10 states and a pair of Canadian provinces put Brett Hearn on top of the heap.
Good anytime but especially in extra-distance events, Hearn won some 363 races that were 50 laps or longer. A substantial number were DIRTcar tour events along with a half-dozen visits to victory lane on the Syracuse mile. Weekly shows or extra-distance events, Hearn’s mounts were always impeccably prepared.
Hearn had 28 track championships between two Saturday night tracks, Orange County and Lebanon Valley, and also holds the win record at Albany-Saratoga Speedway.
But what was most impressive about Hearn was the way he worked traffic, passing cars where he caught them, running high or low as needed with no pushing or shoving. Very rarely did he get caught up in wrecks and while it’s often said that records are made to be broken, it’s extremely difficult to imagine anyone topping his win total.
Looking at Hearn’s record in a different way, he won more races than most drivers start in their entire career.
Another New Jersey-based modified superstar was Billy Pauch. While he didn’t travel as much as Hearn, Pauch was also dominant at his regular stops, especially Flemington Speedway. He notched some 744 wins over the years. He also had a second career in winged sprint cars and once told us that he was amazed when he made his first trip to the Knoxville Nationals and the sport’s biggest names not only knew him but treated him as an equal.
An equal he was, proven by his win over the Outlaws on the Syracuse mile in one of the best races we saw there over the years. He had the lead with the Zemco sprinter, lost it with the end in sight, then dug deep and took it back, much to the consternation of WoO founder Ted Johnson.
A third New Jerseyan who deserves mention is Frankie Schneider, a big winner in the coupe and coach era who raced at countless speedways and won at most of them. He was another star whose cars were a bit rustic but always handled well.
Schneider was never a regular at Lebanon Valley but acted like it, winning both the famed $1,000 to win “First Sunday of the Month” specials and the Lebanon 200 with apparent ease.
We always enjoyed watching him on red flags, as he kept an assortment of tools under his seat cushion and would surreptitiously make wedge adjustments when he thought nobody was looking.
One can’t think of Schneider without recalling Florida transplant Will Cagle, who often related how M and H tire owner Marvin Rifchin wouldn’t give him free tires until he started beating Frankie consistently. “Wiley Will” did that and more, becoming a force in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, then at Orange County in New York and finally Central New York, where he ruled the DIRT circuit until suffering a severe leg injury when a part failed.
Cagle went on to a second career as promoter at Orange County, but his lasting legacy may well be that he schooled the locals and made them better everywhere he raced, especially central New York. He even raced in Vermont for a while, dominating the Devil’s Bowl Sunday night in a car he left in promoter C.J. Richards’ barn between races. Whenever Cagle was mentioned in later years, Richards would relate that he was Cagle’s “crew chief,” tasked with prepping the car by charging the battery before each race.
No list of dirt-track heroes would be complete without close friends Bob McCreadie and Jack Johnson. “The Master of Going Faster” and “Jumpin’ Jack” scored big at both their weekly stops and DIRT big-block series events, often settling the win between them.
Numerous Saturday nights saw Bob win at Canandaigua while Jack added another score to his all-time win record at Fonda. Then, at mid-week series events, they went at it hammer and tong despite their close friendship. As Jack’s son Ronnie recalled, “Every once in a while, one of them would spin the other out, but it was always just hard racing and never intentional. They both knew the other’s turn would come on another night.”
Jack ended up with more Super DIRT Series titles than Bob, but both were big winners and, more importantly, were beloved by fans and big draws at the front gate. McCreadie was a folk hero whose obituary was carried by the New York Times, a rare occurrence for a short-track racer and a project we enjoyed having a hand in.
When Johnson was learning his craft at Fonda, one of the top dogs was Kenny Shoemaker. And while Johnson would eventually be the epitome of smooth, “The Shoe” was always brash and super-aggressive, traits that carried him to scores of wins all over the northeast.
Many of these wins came in pick-up rides, with the routine always the same as Shoemaker told the car owner “more gear and more stagger” without having turned a lap. With the changes made, Kenny would then wrestle the car to the front of the field.
Will Cagle told us once about hiring Shoemaker, then near the end of his career, to drive his “experimental” car purchased from Gerald Chamberlain’s car owner at Fonda.
“The first week, I was leading at the white flag but down in the first turn I heard a big roar and Kenny drove around me to get the win,” recalled Cagle. “I went home and worked on my car all week but didn’t touch his. I was leading the next week at the white flag and again there was a big roar as Kenny passed me.”
When asked what he did then, Cagle laughed and said: “I fired the S.O.B.!”
Equally talented as Shoemaker was his boyhood friend in Troy, N.Y., Pete Corey, winner of the National Open/Race of Champions on the treacherous Langhorne (Pa.) Speedway mile early on. Corey’s career could easily have ended when he lost part of his leg when he hit the board fence at Fonda. Amazingly, the tough as nails Corey cut the seat away with a torch so that the rescue crew could extricate him from the car.
Once fitted with a prosthetic, Corey returned to racing, and winning, as if nothing ever happened. He also sparked interest when he revealed he had a little storage area in his new leg, with rumors on what he had in there ranging from a transistor radio to a pistol. What was certain was that he loved beating Shoemaker.
We’ll continue our journey down memory lane in our next segment.
HEDGER: Great Drivers Of The Past Part I
HEDGER: Great Drivers Of The Past Part II
