MANSFIELD, Ohio—The sound of racing engines could be heard for miles Thursday evening as Spitzer Motor Speedway prepared for the first race of the season—the first race in five years.
The cars that will race on Sunday will reach speeds between 110 and 130 miles an hour.
Mansfield Mayor Tim Theaker and Richland County Commissioner Gary Utt enjoyed a tour of the facility with Doug Dock, general manager of K&B Promotions. Dock will be announcing the race Sunday and Mayor Theaker will wave the starting flag.
“This place is something else,” said Utt. “In the past it was, and we’re glad you guys are going to make it that way again.”
Theaker agreed.
“It’s great that you guys are going to open this back up. It will help Mansfield and Richland County and the area, and I think you’ll draw from a lot of people,” he said.
Local driver
Matt Leedy, 37, of Bellville, may be the only Richland County driver on the track Sunday. Leedy has been racing since 2000.
“My dad ran late models here when it was dirt back in the late 60s, 70s. The year he quit driving was the year before I was born. He did it; he probably passed it on. I don’t know, I’ll tell you this: Once you get out there and experience it one time, it’s an addiction,” Leedy said.
His father, Larry Leedy, ran a 37 late model.
“When Mansfield was running fulltime out here you kind of develop a racing family. I had a lot of sponsors around town; but when it closed up, the [local] sponsors didn’t have any reason to sponsor me if I was going to Indiana or Toledo and racing, so I really don’t have any sponsors,” Leedy said.
Sponsorships help with the cost of tires, fuel, entry fees, and maintenance on the car.
He credits his mother, Carol Leedy, for helping him get sponsors when the track was previously active. “She met a lot of people working at Daugherty’s and Bob Evans. She knows everybody. I drew up the proposal that explained stuff about the cars and she went around to different places. She’s a better talker than I am. And she never missed a race when I was racing,” he said.
Racing was hit and miss for him when the Mansfield track closed, but before it closed, he made a name for himself.
“I won the biggest modified race in there ever was back in 2005. They had cars here from Texas, Wisconsin, all over the Midwest,” said Leedy of the modified’s Fall Nationals in Septemer 2005.
Super Dave
Dave Agnes of Canton is someone else who will be at the track Sunday. He won’t be driving though; he’ll be in the press box. Agnes maintains Super Dave’s Midwest Supermodified Association Message Board. He promotes supermodified racing and Sandusky Speedway.
“Any race track that runs the supermodified race is a friend of mine,” he said.
“When I got on the internet, there were only 25,000 .coms in the United States. I always said I’d never have a computer, but a couple of guys I worked with back in the early 90s got them and they were talking about how neat they were, how much information you could get off them and so forth, so I thought, ‘’I’m going to try this.’”
“I haven’t missed a supermodified event at Sandusky Speedway in 38 years—that’s a lot of races. I haven’t missed a supermodified classic race in New York in 35 years. I’ve been involved in some way in racing since 1948. He was involved with Canton Motor Speedway when there was a track in Canton and hee maintains a message board with vintage pictures from that track.
New name
Spitzer Motor Speedway of Mansfield, Ohio has a website that has recently been launched and should not be confused with former sites for the track.
“I want to talk a little about the name,” said Dave Dock, “We are keeping it ‘of Mansfield, Ohio.’ I think it’s important that we do that because the community really rallies around this track. That’s how it will be announced and that’s how we’ll put it out in the press,”
The track has been closed for several years so these cars are coming out and practicing and they’re putting down a layer of rubber for traction,” said Dock as cars roared around the track.
The cars
Dock explained the track and the races that run on it.
“There are different divisions of cars. The very basic that somebody could get into is what we call front-wheel drive, hobby stock, or spectator stock. It’s a regular car that was on the street, they take all the glass out of it, put a cage in it, and they race it. That’s entry level. Then you move up to a car that’s a street stock; it’s more of a class up. It’s running on racing tires. It has more of a racing motor in it. And then from there there’s a kind of Ohio stock class and kind of resembles a NASCAR stock car but it’s a lot less horsepower. And then you move into the modifieds and then there’s supermodifieds,” he said.
There’s also sprint cars that will race on the track this summer as well as the main event.
“The main event (later this summer), that’s an outlawed body, super late model. It’s a very wide car, a lot of horsepower in it and they put on a fantastic show,” Dock said.
Practice begins Sunday at 1 p.m. and qualifications are scheduled to start at 3 p.m. Racing will start at 4:30 p.m.
