Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 11, 1993 TAG: 9307110114
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LOUDON, N.H. LENGTH: Medium
Sure enough, three miles up the freeway, the "State Safety Rest Area" and the "State Liquor Store" sit side by side.
I'll take a fifth of Jack Daniel's whiskey and a map of New Hampshire, please.
At every opportunity, the folks here have raised the freeway speed limit to 65 mph, unlike many Northern states where it's "Still 55."
But while zipping along so quickly, you are liable to miss the "Common Sense For All" highway sign informing motorists that seat belts are required - for children under 12.
So you don't have to wear a seat belt, or a motorcycle helmet, here in the "Live Free Or Die" state. If you can't go fast, with the wind whipping through your hair, unbuckled if you please, then life is just not worth living.
New England is more than quaint villages, skiers, back-to-the-earth farms and exiled Russian authors. Plenty of race fans live here, too.
Among the more than 60,000 fans who will watch the inaugural Winston Cup race at New Hampshire International Speedway today are Steve and Alice Carboni and their children, Daniel and Jessica. They live in fashionable Ridgefield, Conn., more than 250 miles south of the track.
All but a few thousand tickets for the race were sold in December to fans who had purchased tickets to previous events at the track.
So on Jan. 4, at 9 a.m., when the remaining tickets went on sale to the general public, Steve Carboni was on his telephone.
"I called at 9 a.m. on the dot, hit redial about 10 times and finally got through," he said. "There were only a few left."
Steve and his family will be sitting in Row 3.
"I'm going to get fumed out down there," he said. But he's not complaining.
The North is home to a variety of racing. They even have these big, boxy, goofy-looking Modified cars that run on the dirt in places like Syracuse, where they start about 3,000 cars and have wrecks for the first 100 laps or so to whittle down the field.
But that's largely in New York and Pennsylvania. New England is NASCAR country, sharing common roots with the Southern boys.
"We in New England have just as much background as Southern guys in stock cars and mainly Modifieds," Carboni said. "It's a lot like the South because we all went to these rural race tracks as youngsters and really became fans, too."
Back in the 1950s, NASCAR's top stars ran throughout the North, although never in New Hampshire. Richard Petty made his Winston Cup debut in Canada in 1958.
"I used to run a Modified at the Danbury [Conn.] Fair Racearena," Carboni said. "I got real enthusiastic about NASCAR when Geoff Bodine and Ronny Bouchard went south and started racing. We used to race against these guys.
"Up here, I've got friends who throw Daytona 500 parties. We're all shivering in the wintertime and we go over to somebody's house, put on our Goodyear hats and watch the 500."
New Hampshire, the 34th state to hold a Winston Cup race, has three short tracks in NASCAR's regional Winston Racing Series. That's two more tracks than Alabama and one more than Georgia.
"It's NASCAR country," Bodine said Saturday in the garage. "Back in the '70s, when I was racing Modifieds, the only thing everyone talked about up here was NASCAR. Television has made the sport what it is, but I feel good I was a part of that."
Dozens of Northerners have migrated South to join the Winston Cup series, including crew chiefs Steve Hmiel, Robin Pemberton, Ray Evernham (a former Modified driver) and Bob Johnson.
New England society isn't as steeped in NASCAR as it is in the South. Stick and ball sports still dominate newspapers' sports pages.
"But this race is waking everything up," said Val LeSieur, editor and publisher of Speedway Scene, a racing weekly. LeSieur concentrates on Northern racing, but he has a huge NASCAR section every week and employs full-time Winston Cup and Grand National beat writers.
"Big radio stations and some of the sports talk shows are bringing in racing people now," LeSieur said. "And they never did that before. And papers in the area, now they want to do racing.
"Two years ago, the business people in this area didn't want anything to do with auto racing. Now they're waking up and seeing it's a good thing for them."
Folks in New Hampshire have a thing about making money. That's the method behind the madness of having a liquor store at the freeway rest stop. New Hampshire has no liquor or sales tax, and folks from other states stop at the rest area by the thousands to buy their booze at discount prices.
And on the way to the track, one of the dozens of welcome signs along Route 106 reads: "Welcome Race Fans and $$$."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB