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June 13, 2010
By Kim Roberson
Kim Roberson
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In a week filled with discussion about a father and son, and a husband and wife, I have decided to take a look back not a full week, but just a few days, and tell you about a race in a small town in Ohio that raised thousands of dollars for numerous charities.
Three years ago, I extended a business trip to Ohio so I could go to the third annual Prelude to the Dream. (You can read about my visit here: Eldora Race Brought Stars and Fans Together
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Eldora is a small but well known dirt track on the west side of Ohio near the Indiana border. When Tony Stewart heard that the track was facing hard times back in 2003, he approached the man who had built the little dirt track back in 1954, Earl Baltes, and offered to buy it from him. Stewart, who grew up in Indiana, was 15 years old when he first raced a sprint car at Eldora in the USAC 4-Crown Nationals, and had been to the track as a fan for years before that.
Baltes agreed to sell the track to Smoke, and Tony became owner November of 2004. He immediately began pouring his own money into the track for upgrades: better facilities, better fencing, and better track surface. He also hired a manager to run the track day to day, and started coming up with ways to bring more people to the place where he honed his racing skills.
Every year, a race called “The Dream” is held at Eldora, where hundreds of late model dirt racers come and vie for top honors and a nice check worth up to $100,000 for the winner. Tony decided it would be cool to bring some of his racing buddies to the track, have a race mid-week before the Dream, bring a little publicity to his track, and raise money for charity. The Prelude to the Dream was born.
When I went back in 2007, it was my first ever trip to a dirt track, and I was hooked on the Prelude from the minute I arrived. Because it was only the third year, parking was easy, finding a seat was easy, and I only had to mingle with about 20,000 people. The first two running’s of the Prelude had been such a hit that people across the country wanted a chance to watch it if they couldn’t be there in person. A deal was struck with HBO to hold the event on Pay per View, the majority of the proceeds raised from the telecast went to support the Victory Junction Gang Camp in Randleman, N.C.
NASCAR on FOX broadcasters and production folks donated their time to produce the telecast and helped turn what began as a small charity dirt race into a big-time event.
“It was such a unique concept and everyone, like they are today, was just happy to be there and were thrilled to donate their time,” explained Stewart, talking about the 2007 race as he prepared for this week’s race. “What amazed me was that you’ve got Artie Kempner (director) and Pam Miller (producer) and a lot of other folks on the television side that had worked the Daytona 500, the Super Bowl, the World Series and the Stanley Cup Finals and they’re producing a charity dirt race in Rossburg, Ohio, without asking for a dime. They just did it because they wanted to be there and make the event something big.”
Back in 2007, 27 drivers from across several forms of racing participated in the event, whether they had ever raced on dirt before or not.
This year in the Gillette Fusion Pro Glide Prelude to the Dream, instead of every driver racing for himself, they broke into teams to race for different Children’s Hospitals:
The race was a team event with the field broken up into four groups, with each group representing a children's hospital:
- Team Riley was composed of team Captain Clint Bowyer, Ryan Newman, Jeff Gordon, A.J. Allmendinger, Justin Allgaier, Kenny Wallace and the NHRA’s Ron Capps.
- Team Cincinnati was made up of team Captain Kasey Kahne, Joey Logano, Tony Stewart, Bobby Labonte, Bill Elliott and NHRA star Cruz Pedregon.
- Team Levine was led by Captain Kyle Busch, Jimmie Johnson, Matt Kenseth, David Reutimann, Dave Blaney, Marcos Ambrose and Travis Pastrana.
- Team St. Jude had team Captain Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards, Ken Schrader, Aric Almirola, Ricky Carmichael, the IRL’s Tony Kanaan and former team owner Ray Evernham.
The finishing positions of the top-five drivers from each team were added together with the lowest team score winning 45 percent of the net money raised from the combined pay per view revenue and ticket sales.
Getty Images
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Johnson Wins Eldora Charity Race
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Just because the race was a team event didn’t make the racing any less competitive. There was plenty of beating and banging in the heat races, with some drivers spinning out, running over the top of each other, or hitting the wall as they worked to make their way to the front. In the main race, it seemed that the miscues were going to win over the drivers, as tires fell off of two cars, and the starting cone (which is tied to a string and used to keep the cars in a single file line at the start of the race) was run over and collected not once, but twice. (There was discussion of auctioning the cone off to raise more money with the amount of air time it received in the final race.)
Drivers Kanaan, Carmichael, and Pastrana, who had never raced on a dirt late model before, had issues keeping their cars facing the right direction (there was a side bet of a dollar between Carmichael and Pastrana on who would finish higher at the end of the night.)
Scores were tallied with points for finishing position, from 1st to 27th, and the team with the lowest overall score would win the team competition for their hospital.
In the end, Jimmie Johnson dominated the main race, leading all 30 laps. His win, coupled with a fourth place finish by teammate Kyle Busch, helped Team Levine score a victory with 45 total points. Clint Bowyer finished second, followed by Edwards, Busch, Hamlin, Stewart, Blaney, Kahne, Schrader, and Elliott.
Team St. Jude finished second with 48 points, while Team Cincinnati (49 points) and Team Riley (71 points) finished third and fourth, respectively. As a result, St. Jude will receive 25 percent of the proceeds raised, and the other three teams will each get 15 percent of the net money raised. Back in 2006, the donation check was $200,000. While no official number has been announced yet, Stewart was hoping to be able to split $1-million this year.
As for the side bet, Ricky Carmichael won the dollar, as he finished 19th and Pastrana finished 23rd. It was the only money paid out to a driver at the end of the night, because like the media covering the event, the drivers all came just because they wanted to race and have a little mid-season fun at a dirt track in the middle of no-where.
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The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.
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