Oxford eliminates heats, lengthens features

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Oxford Plains Speedway owner Bill Ryan said it bothers him when his Saturday night race cards drag on and on.

So he has taken a significant step to reduce the length of the show: eliminating heat races.

“I hate it when I see people packing up at 9:30 or 10 and they don’t see the end of the [feature] race,” said Ryan. “The length of the program is a big issue. There’s a certain percentage of hard-core race fans who want to sit there for 11 hours. But that group has grown smaller and smaller.”

What Ryan has done is added the heat laps to the feature.

For example, his Pro Stock class used to have 12-lap heat races followed by a 35-lap feature.

“Now we just run a 50-lap feature,” explained Ryan.

Ryan also said he scrutinized heat races a year ago and said he didn’t feel there was enough excitement to warrant the extra hour or so it took to run them.

“You could have just as much excitement in the first three laps of any feature race,” said Ryan.

Andy Cusack, owner of Beech Ridge Motor Speedway in Scarborough, said he isn’t ready to do away with his Saturday heat races but applauded Ryan for trying it.

“It’s an interesting concept. It’ll be interesting to see how it is received by the fans and drivers,” said Cusack. “I toyed with the same idea.”

“Bill may be setting the trend of things to come in the future,” added Cusack. “But we’re not ready to do that at our place. Bless our drivers’ hearts. They are on board with what we all need to do to entertain and serve our fans. They have been very cooperative.”

He added that the drivers like to race and he is in favor of giving them an extra race, namely the heat race.

Cusack said his Saturday night drivers actually concluded their heats in “about 30 or 40 minutes” last Saturday and the features started 20 to 30 minutes earlier than previously scheduled.

The other change in the Oxford Plains schedule has been a later start to the season.

“I decided to stop fighting with April,” said Ryan. “April is February in sheep’s clothing. We opened May first and it was the best-attended opener in my six years here. We had 4,000-plus. It makes sense to start later.”

Both owners are pleased with the starts to their respective seasons and Ryan is riding on cloud nine after Kurt Busch joined 2003 NASCAR Cup points champion and Roush Racing teammate Matt Kenseth in the field for the Banknorth Oxford 250 on July 18.

Busch finished 11th in points last year but won four races.

Kenseth and Busch are currently fourth and fifth in points with three wins between them. Kenseth has two wins.

“This is a big deal. This is great for the race fans in Maine who might not otherwise get to see them race. It’ll be fun for the other drivers to match themselves against two of the best in the business,” said Ryan.

Kenseth returned to his native Wisconsin last weekend and won an American Speed Association race at Madison International Speedway.

Cusack has made an addition to his schedule with his Car Wars program beginning in July.

It will encompass six Friday nights and will be for any vehicle with a specialized “character” paint scheme.

“It’ll be like roller derby and it will be open to anybody,” said Cusack.

“We’re billing it as full-contact fun,” said Cusack. “Any other night, we train the drivers to race clean. Friday nights it will be ‘All is fair in love and war.'”

However, Cusack emphasized that unnecessarily rough driving will be penalized.

Drivers can bump and nudge all they want, but they can’t deliberately put somebody down an embankment or into a wall.

Cusack said he has had approximately 50 drivers sign up so far and indicated that he would like to land 100.

“It’ll be fun. I’ll tinker with it. We’ll see how it goes,” said Cusack. “It should provide a lot of laughs and the spectators should also enjoy the car designs.”

Ryan and Cusack will start their highly successful weekday entry-level race cards later this season.