Maybe next week, next year, next century at the historic family track
By Paul KandarianGlobe Correspondent / May 29, 2011
SEEKONK — Speeding cars jockeyed for position, bumper to bumper, no one giving an inch. Seeing a glint of open space, a driver would hit the gas and swerve inside, barely missing the car he had cut off. The goal was to get ahead, and fast, to be the first in the mass of moving metal running in one thunderous, mechanized growl.
This was not the Southeast Expressway at rush hour but a typical Saturday night at Seekonk Speedway near the Rhode Island border. Said to be the longest continually operated track in the country, the speedway is a family-run stock-car racing facility that has been going strong since 1946, when the Venditti family started it.
“It’s a place families come, have some fun, get away from the real world for a while,’’ said Francis Venditti, 69, son of the late founder, D. Anthony Venditti. Francis runs it now with his nephew David. “Americans still have a love of the automobile,’’ Venditti said.
On any Saturday night of the 26-week season up to two dozen vehicles scream around the track, racing in various categories. Upward of 5,000 spectators line the metal bleachers that surround a one-third-mile oval track that has not changed much since the place opened.
And neither has one financial fact: No one is getting rich racing. These are part-time racers, from all walks of life, engaging in an obsession that racer Gerry DeGasparre said, “is not a hobby, it’s a small monster.’’ Read More
Maybe next week, next year, next century at the historic family track By Paul KandarianGlobe Correspondent / May 29, 2011 SEEKONK — Speeding cars jockeyed for position, bumper to bumper, no one giving an inch. Seeing a glint of open space, a driver would hit the gas and swerve inside, barely missing the car he had cut off….
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