I attended the opening night to the Montpelier Speedway last night, and boy was I pleasantly surprised. While it was not open wheel racing, Tim Tygart has the place looking the best it has looked in probably ten years. It was a very crisply run show, started on time with only a short interemission to work the track which provided a very tacky surface for great features, very professional show, half price food at feature time, and everything was checkered by 9:30.

They mentioned several times that their schedule is open book and they are willing to race whatever discipline will support the track. They mentioned the addition of sprint cars and midgets as possible classes with shows being schedules soon. Let's hope these classes will support the track. With what I seen last night, this would be a great addition to racing in central Indiana!

The door is open for the midgets. Will the midget teams keep their cars in the garage for the once a year race or will they step up to the plate? The Indiana midget scene will never go anywhere until the teams decide they want to support the races.

Don Moore

I was also pretty impressed with the first race of the season at Montpelier. Since it is my hometown track, I was hoping to see some new life out of the place with a new promotor. I was happy to see that the new promotor and his crew have invested a lot of time despite just getting the lease for the track in April. Every feature race had a close battle for the lead with some great racing in all 4 classes.

I thought they had a pretty nice crowd for opening night, when many people often take a "wait and see" approach. If they can keep up the good work and schedule some good races, the word will certainly get out. The only problem I saw all night was that the track did get rough. I think you have to expect that though considering the amount of rain they have had throughout the last several weeks. They reworked some new clay into the surface just recently, and it may take a little time for everything to settle in and dry out. One very positive thing is that they showed they are actually willing to put in some time and effort to make things better. I think that is all the racers and fans can ask for.