The first thing you need to know is that there’s an excellent automotive museum located in Saratoga Springs, New York. Next, realize that the Saratoga Automotive Museum is home to the permanent exhibition on the vast history of stock car racing in the Empire State. Taken together, they join up on the Saturday of each Thanksgiving weekend to present the live historical retrospective known as Lost Speedways, and hosted by our longtime friend and fellow Speed Sport contributor, Ron Hedger, himself a child of upstate New York. Lost Speedways is a daylong journey into New York’s racing past as recounted by a series of presenters, which always include the heroes of racing’s yesterdays, buttressed by a bevy of knowledgeable historians and their artifacts, which are also on display.
The photo shows the longtime Holy Grail of racing in New York, Super DIRT Week at the lamented New York State Fairgrounds mile in Syracuse. The Lost Speedways program has just added 1992 Syracuse winner Richie Tobias Jr., part of the fabled Pennsylvania racing dynasty, to the list of presenters, who will bookend with another champion of the mile, Kenny Tremont Jr., the native of Rensselaer County, New York and a prolific champion at both Albany-Saratoga and Lebanon Valley speedways. Other New York luminaries making appearances will be past Syracuse winners Rob Yetman and Rocky Warner, both still active drivers. Panel discussions will include racer interviews, a look at drag racing in the infield of Fonda Speedway (where the Top Fuel legend Shirley Muldowney, who grew up in Schenectady, got her start), and even on the evolution of the Soap Box Derby in New York, which launched its share of racing careers. Lost Speedways 2022 will take place at the museum on Saturday, November 26th. Memorabilia displays will open the event at 10:30 a.m., with presentations getting underway at 12:30 p.m. We can personally vouch for the excellence of this program.
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 