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| Added: 21 Jan 2014 |
Category: 2014 Oval Racing |
| Aghadowey set to re-open (again) |
Talk of Aghadowey and many people within the sport can reminisce about the “good aul days”, they’ll tell you tales of Ulster’s finest Hot Rod and stockcar drivers from days gone, how great the saloons used to be around it and how big a crowd it would pull on a bank holiday.
I’ve quite a mixed bag of memories from Aghadowey. It was the first track I drove to on my own when I got my driving licence and I got lost on the way, arrived half an hour after the proposed start time to find the meeting hadn’t started yet, later the same night I couldn’t find the gate to the car park in the dark and ended up climbing the fence to get back out. I didn’t take in a lot of meetings at Aghadowey, like Ballymena when I was growing up, they didn’t run F2’s, so I wasn’t taken unless it was something special, like Easter Monday. Most of my memories of Aghadowey to be honest come from the 98-2000 seasons when they did run F2’s and probably the era in which I took in the most meetings up North. Neil Smith performance at the 2000 Irish Grand Prix or whatever it was they raced for was one that will live in the memory for a long time, I recall standing in the shed not far from where John Wolsey took the image below when Speak came over in 98, it’s probably one of my favourite angles to watch racing, although slightly more elevated now.
Aghadowey re-opened in 2010, but restricted with not having ORCi classes, it was going to take something special to make it work. I only managed to attend three meetings at it, in which the Robins stood out as the most memorable, when they supposed their normal standard to put on a pretty good meeting in late 2011.
For the better of worse of the sport on the whole, Aghadowey re-opens in 2014, this time under the DMC Race Promotions banner and this time with a full listing of National classes, which was probably the difference between success and failure before.
There will be a lot to look forward to, the return of National Hot Rods to the North West as well as Superstox and 1300 Stock Cars adding to the contact element.
Aghadowey’s re-opening spreads the footprint of oval racing in Northern Ireland, and make it a local sport to more people, and if you are local to it, it’ll be great to have the sport on your doorstep. I’m not and for me it means more meetings, more travelling and question marks over where I can claw back some time, and while I still hope to be at Ballymena, it’s hard to see where the time is going to come from to do it all, and possibly NIF2 could be the thing that falls on the wrong side of the axe. For now though, I’ll concentrate on the positives, a track referred to by some as the greatest in the country is back on the fixture list for 2014, and that is a huge positive for the sport.
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Fond memories of watching from this angle |
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Neil Smith in Action... 2000 |
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National Bangers visit Aghadowey in 2014 |
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The Robins Provided Great action in November 2011 |
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Lightning Rods from early 2012 |
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National Hot Rods return in 2014 |
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