Randy Lewis
World's #1 Ranked Trackchaser
LUCAS OIL SPEEDWAY (ROAD COURSE) - WHEATLAND, MISSOURI
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RANLAY Racing Trackchaser Report
DAY 3 – THE JUST BUILDING MY TRACK COUNT TRACKCHASING TOUR
TODAY’S HEADLINES
How many women rank in the top 40 of the worldwide trackchaser rankings?...................more in “Updated Rankings”.
Just two more days for chocolate chip cookie feedback …………..details in “And the Readers Respond”.
It takes some effort to learn new things, maybe that’s why some people never learn anything new…………..details in “The People”.
UPDATED RANKINGS!
In his role as “Trackchasing Statistician” Will White updates his web site (www.trackchaser.net) from time to time. His most recent updates based upon information he had received from trackchasers has just hit the airwaves. Some accomplishments of note:
Let me be the first to congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Guy Smith of Effort, Pennsylvania. They have moved into second place in the worldwide COUPLES trackchaser rankings with a combined total of 1,684 tracks. With that many tracks, comes a boatful of fun experiences both at and away from the track.
Some might not understand the significance of doing well in this category. Let’s look at it this way. The top 18 trackchasers in the worldwide rankings are all men. Only five of the top 40 trackchasers are women. Oddly, they rank #20, #21, #22, #23 and #27.
I suspect that trackchasing is not on the top of the list for most ladies when they are looking forward to a night out. Only six of the men in the top 20 trackchasers are even married. I don’t think that trackchasing is a hobby well suited for the married man or women in most cases. I know two different trackchasers who have experimented with Match.com related dating services. One fellow told me that he didn’t even mention trackchasing when he went out on dates. The other said, “Most of the ladies want to do things on the weekend. That sort of shoots racing in the head”.
There are only five male trackchasers in the worldwide top 40 who have also been able to bring their spouse into that same top 40 ranking. Therefore, Mr. and Mrs. Smith are well ahead of the curve when it comes to having a hobby they can both enjoy together.
Also congratulations to Mike Knappenberger of Reading, Pennsylvania who now leads the 2008 annual rankings with 55 tracks. The annual trackchasing championship is one of the most coveted categories of any in trackchasing.
As expected both Ed Esser (Wisconsin) and Roland Vanden Eynde (Belgium) have now moved into the 2008 top five trackchasers. From here on out, the struggle for me begins to attain a top three podium finish for this year. I only have to beat one of these guys (Esser, Knappenberger, or Vanden Eynde) to attain my ninth straight year of podium finishes. It will be the four of us at the top of the standings when the clock strikes twelve on 2008.
AND THE READERS RESPOND
You have just two more days to respond to my request about “double chocolate chip cookies”. I have received some interesting feedback. Recall, this is the background on this request. I know you’ve got some creative ideas on how I should deal with these cookies. Don’t be shy; send your input right now!
“I have a dilemma. I need the help of all you loyal and steadfast Trackchaser Report readers. Yes, I need your advice. What would you do in this situation?
I’m going to lay out a hypothetical collection of facts for you. I would like you to analyze the circumstances. There’s just one caveat. You can’t change the givens. Here goes:
Let’s say you really like double chocolate chip cookies. No. I mean you REALLY like double chocolate chip cookies. They are your favorite food by far. If given the chance you might eat them for every meal.
Additionally, these chocolate chip cookies cost so little that you don’t even notice the expense. If you want, you can go down to Mrs. Fields (do they still have Mrs. Fields?) and get all of the double chocolate chip cookies you want for free. You can get them at home. When you go to work, they’re waiting for you in the vending machine at a penny a piece.
Also, the chocolate chip cookies don’t have any calories at all. They have no negative effect on your overall health whatsoever. The amount of double chocolate chips cookies you eat has no effect whatsoever on you or your family.
There you have it. What would you do? Would you eat double chocolate chip cookies for every meal? How do you feel about double chocolate chip cookies under these circumstances? Please keep your responses to 270 words or less. I’ll gather feedback for a couple of days from each of you. Then I will tell you why I needed your advice.
Remember, you can’t change any of the parameters listed above.”
Click on or paste this link in your browser to see the photos from this trip.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Ranlay8/080601LucasOilSpeedwayRC
GREETINGS FROM WHEATLAND, MISSOURI.
I WOKE UP THIS MORNING IN WARRENSBURG, MISSOURI. I WENT TO SLEEP IN OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA. THIS IS WHAT TRANSPIRED TODAY.
PEOPLE/STRATEGY/TRAVEL NEWS
The Objective
My primary objective when I’m on the road trackchasing is to……well, see tracks. This was a very basic trackchasing trip for me. I planned to see four tracks in three days. It was the typical out Friday and back home Monday trip that I have perfected.
This trip is not for Carol. By the way, she’s off the trackchasing trail until the grandbabies are born. I would be driving more than 1,100 miles in 50 hours. I came here because the weather forecast was better than anywhere else that also offered four tracks in three days. I have now seen 51 tracks in 40 days of trackchasing. I’ve only had one rained out trackchasing day in all of 2008. That’s pretty good.
The Trip
This trip required a good deal of driving. There wasn’t time to see much other than the highway. I entertained the thought of driving over to Branson for some country entertainment on Sunday night. However, that would have delayed my arrival back in San Clemente for the better part of a day.
I’m fine with have local Trackchasing Tourist Attractions BETWEEN tracks during a trip. However, I rarely want to begin or extend a trip for a TTA. I prefer to be in California as much as possible.
When I’m on the road, it’s difficult to eat well or exercise. With all of the driving it takes to get to the tracks as well as the seat time at the track, there just isn’t much time left for anything else. Couple those limitations with the fact that I’m normally in a time zone that is two or three hours ahead of my own. This makes it all the more difficult to get up early in the local time zone to exercise.
However, I still do exercise whenever I can while I’m on the road. My favorite form of aerobic exercise in the power walk. My joints don’t take too running much anymore. If I work at it, I can still get my heart rate up to 120-130 B.P.M. (beats per minute) with a very fast walk. For someone of my advanced age, that’s a good aerobic workout. At home when I’m on my elliptical trainer, I go at about 140-150 B.P.M.
I see some interesting things during my power walks around the local towns where I stay. Much of the stuff I see if so much different from anything I would encounter around where I live. That’s a good thing. Isn’t that why people travel, to see things that are different from what they have at home. I’ve started taking my camera on these power walks. You might be surprised and entertained at what I think is worthy of photographing. Yep! It’s all at www.ranlayracing.com. I’m told the photo format loads much faster than the old way I used to load pictures on the website. You can access just about everything from the site’s home page or the tab “Trackchaser Reports”. I now have somewhere around 20,000 photos of my travels at www.ranlayracing.com.
The People
About a year ago, Will White who runs www.trackchaser.net came up with a new feature for the site. In case you have never visited trackchaser.net it’s the foremost site for a couple of very important items to any trackchaser. First, there are zillions (maybe just thousands) of web links to tracks all over our country and the world. Although there are competing websites that are very good, trackchaser.net is the one I always go to first for race track linking information.
Will’s site also includes all of the trackchaser rankings. Of course, many trackchasers like to see where they “stand” in any ranking that is of interest to them.
As I said, about a year Will added a new feature. For many tracks, he took the time to research their exact location via the Google Earth program. That must have taken him forever. This allowed the user to click on a link and zoom in from outer space to a sometimes crude picture of a racetrack from above.
When I first heard about this feature, frankly I thought it was a waste of Will’s time. I wasn’t using Google Earth and I didn’t think too many other trackchasers or racing fans were. At the time, I never took advantage of any of this information.
A little while later, J.J. introduced me (again) to Google Earth. I must admit that new stuff doesn’t always “take” with me, but I do constantly challenge myself to learn new things.
Soon I discovered that Google Earth was pretty cool. About that time son-in-law James told me about downloading custom information into my GPS unit. Now we were on to something. I could find the latitude and longitude information from a track’s location and plug it into my GPS unit. Wow! I mean, in my business, really wow!
So where does Will’s Google Earth mapping fit into this equation? Yes, I can find the track’s specific location and put that data into my GPS on my own, but I don’t have too because of Will’s work. For the track’s where Will has already mapped, I can simply go on www.trackchaser.net, get the L/L data I need and plug it into my GPS. This saves me a good deal of time.
So I say, good job Will! I must admit that I was ignorant of the opportunity presented to me at first. Thanks also to J.J. and James who moved me down the path. It’s important to have folks in your life that can help you when you need it. Thanks!
RACE REVIEW
LUCAS OIL SPEEDWAY (ROAD COURSE), WHEATLAND, MISSOURI
I must say I was disappointed with the program put on by the World Series Off-Road Racing (WSORR) group. They are a spinoff from what is now primarily a west coast based sanctioning body, the Championship Off-Road Racing (CORR) group. Just about everything WSORR did was a shadow of what CORR does in terms of quality.
The Lucas Oil Speedway facility is one of the very best, if not the best, independent short track facilities in the world. That statement covers a lot of territory, but that’s my opinion. However, today the crowd for the scheduled Sunday afternoon show was poor. There might have been 2,000 people there. At a CORR show the crowds have averaged 5,000-15,000.
The weather was warm at about 90, with no chance of rain. Last night’s race schedule had been rained out after just one race. I didn’t think off-road events GOT rained out. This meant that Saturday’s races would be run before the Sunday scheduled (beginning at 1 p.m.) races started. I arrived at just past noon, so I got to see as much racing as I wanted.
There were two primary racing classes: trucks and dune buggies. Each of those had off shoots based primarily upon engine size and 2/4 wheel drive capability. The road course wound itself around the oval area of the speedway as well as beyond turns one and two of the oval track. I was disappointed at how low the jumps at today’s track were. Your best bet is to take a look at the pictures posted on my website at www.ranlayracing.com to see what I’m describing.
One of the best aspects of the program was being allowed in the pit area to see the competitors’ machines up close. They must have received a lot of rain Saturday night. The mud coming from the racers was piled up on the concrete pit area in every pit.
I paid $27 to get a reserved seat. General admission was $25. I figured an extra two bucks was worth it to get a top row seat. When I got into the track I soon learned that a reserved seat wasn’t necessary as I could sit just about anywhere I wanted.
At the California off-road races, the event is promoted like a real “Event”. It’s part rock concert and part auto race. This attracts a real “20-something” crowd that really gets into it. If you haven’t been to a CORR race (Texas excepted) I recommend it. Today, the event was promoted like an auto race only. The announcer was much more low key, there wasn’t any music between races…..it was just a much more low-key (read that low-excitement) show.
I watched the races for about three hours. This allowed me to see each class race from either the original Saturday night show or Sunday’s show.
What was the very best thing about the entire program? The show ran in the day time. That meant I could either see another track tonight or get a jump start on getting back to San Clemente. There wasn’t anybody else racing between here and Oklahoma City, where I would be flying from on Monday morning. Therefore, it was a comfortable 400+ mile drive back to the airport. I had about five hours in the motel before my early morning departure took me back to sunny Southern California.
STATE RANKINGS
Missouri
This afternoon I saw my 41st lifetime track in the Show Me state. A larger than normal number of 47 trackchasers has come to the state to pursue their sport. Out of 966 official trackchasing visits in the United States in 2007, forty of those were in Missouri.
I now trail Wisconsin’s Jack Erdmann by seven Missouri tracks for second place. My third place standing here gives me a third place ranking or better in almost half the states, actually 24 of them. Ed Esser leads in big “MO” with a hefty 58 tracks.
Now you can see the entire up to date trackchaser rankings for the state. Just click on this link or paste it in your browser:
http://trackchaser.net/statregion.asp?country=USA®ion=MO
RENTAL CAR UPDATE
Oklahoma City – Friday/Monday
None of the Executive Selection cars in the National Rental Car lot had an XM satellite radio. That’s a bummer, as I will be traveling about 1,200 miles in rural country. I’ll probably end up wearing out the “seek” button on the radio before I’m finished. I did get a white Chevy Malibu with a light tan leather interior. That should serve me well in the 90+ degree temperatures forecast for the weekend.
I drove National Rental Car Racing Chevy Malibu 1,129 miles in the first 50 hours I had it during my three-day rental. That’s an average of more than 20 M.P.H. even for the hours I was sleeping! I paid an average price of $3.76 per gallon. The Malibu gave me 28.2 miles per gallon in fuel mileage at a cost of 13.3 cents (U.S.) per mile. The car cost a miniscule 4.2 cents per mile to rent, all taxes included.
Thanks for reading about my trackchasing,
Randy Lewis
Alberta’s #1 Trackchaser
I got a boat for my wife…………pretty good trade, huh. TRAVEL DETAILS
AIRPLANE
Los Angeles, CA – Oklahoma City, OK – 1,167 miles
RENTAL CAR
Will Rogers World Airport – trip begins
Elk City, OK – 115 miles
Sweet Springs, MO – 659 miles
Warrensburg, MO – 689 miles
Wheatland, MO – 779 miles
Will Rogers World Airport – 1,129 miles
AIRPLANE
Oklahoma City, OK – Los Angeles, CA – 1,167 miles
Total Air miles – 2,334 miles (2 flights)
Total auto and air miles traveled on this trip – 3,463 miles
TRACK ADMSSION PRICES:
Elk City Speedway – Free
Sweet Springs Motorsports Complex - $5
Central Missouri Speedway - $8
Lucas Oil Speedway - $27 (reserved seat)
Total racetrack admissions for the trip – $40
RANKINGS
LIFETIME TRACKCHASER STANDINGS UPDATE:
There are no trackchasers currently within 100 tracks of my lifetime total.
1. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 1,349
Full Lifetime World Rankings
http://trackchaser.net/trackchasers.asp
Other notables
These worldwide trackchasers are within 10 tracks (plus or minus or more) of Carol’s current trackchaser total.
26. Kevin Eckert, Indianapolis, Indiana – 455
27. Carol Lewis, San Clemente, California – 366
28. Ken Schrader, Concord, North Carolina – 365
2008 TRACKCHASER STANDINGS
1. Mike Knappenberger, Reading, Pennsylvania – 55
2. Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 51
3. Ed Esser, Madison, Wisconsin – 31
4. Guy Smith, Effort, Pennsylvania - 19
5. Carol Lewis, San Clemente, California – 17
5. Roland Vanden Eynde, Vilvoorde, Belgium - 17
Tracks have been reported by 32 different worldwide trackchasers this season.
Complete 2008 Trackchasing Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statyear.asp?year=2008
LIFETIME COUPLES TRACKCHASING STANDINGS
1. Randy & Carol Lewis, San Clemente, California – 1,713
2. Guy & Pam Smith, Effort, Pennsylvania – 1,684
3. Allan & Nancy Brown, Comstock Park, Michigan – 1,679
LIFETIME NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DIVERSITY STANDINGS
After the most recent updates (June 7, 2008) I have a comfortable 21 state position lead. As long as I can keep a 10 state position lead, things will be under control.
COMPLETE TRACK TYPE CATEGORY RANKINGS OF NOTE:
Dirt Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Dirt
Paved Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Paved
Ice Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Ice
Mixed Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statsurface.asp?surface=Mixed
Oval Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statoval.asp
Circuit (road course) Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statcircuit.asp
Figure 8 Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statf8.asp
Indoor Track Standings
http://trackchaser.net/statindoor.asp
Official Trackchaser Rules
http://trackchaser.net/rules.asp
Past trackchasing reports are available at:
Official trackchaser standings can be viewed at:
Some of the data in this report comes from www.trackchaser.net and my Garmin GPS aka “Dusty”
UPCOMING TRACKCHASING PLANS
After today, it’s back to sunny southern California to rest up, play some golf and get ready for next weekend.
RACETRACKS VISITED IN 2008 (** not the first time to visit this track)
1,299.
1,300. Bira Circuit, Pattaya (road course),
1,301.
1,302.
1,303.
1,304.
1,305. Ozark Empire Fairgrounds (oval),
1,306.
1,307. Brainerd International Raceway Ice Track (road course),
1,308.
1,309.
1,310. Shawano Lake Ice Track –
1,311.
1,312. Mototown USA (oval) –
1,313. Moosehead Lake Ice Track (oval) –
1,314.
1,315.
1,316.
1,317.
1,318.
1,319. Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez (road course), Mexico City, Mexico – March 16
1,320. Hartwell Motor Speedway (oval), Hartwell, Georgia – March 22
1,321. Lavonia Speedway, Lavonia (oval), Georgia – March 22
1,322. Dover Raceway (road course), Brown’s Town, St. Ann, Jamaica – March 24
1,323. Lake Country Speedway (oval), Ardmore, Oklahoma – March 29
1,324. Swainsboro Raceway (oval), Swainsboro, Georgia – April 3
1,325. Screven Motor (oval), Sylvania, Georgia – April 4
1,326. Centerville Super Speedway (oval), Centerville, Arkansas – April 5
1,327. Central Arkansas Speedway (oval), Plumerville, Arkansas – April 5
1,328. Clinton Country Speedway (oval), Alpha, Kentucky – April 6
1,329. Pleasant Valley Raceway (oval), Boise, Idaho – April 20
1,330. Bremerton Raceway (road course), Bremerton, Washington – April 26
1,331. Port Angeles Speedway (oval), Port Angeles, Washington – April 26
1,332. Evergreen Speedway (1/5-mile oval), Monroe, Washington – April 27
1,333. Virginia Motor Speedway (oval), Jamaica, Virginia – May 1
1,334. Natural Bridge Speedway (oval), Natural Bridge, Virginia – May 2
1,335. Sturup Raceway, Malmo (road course), Sweden – May 10
1,336. Ring Djursland, Tirstrup (road course), Denmark – May 11
1,337. Nisseringen, Naestved (road course), Denmark – May 12
1,338. Valentine Speedway (oval), Glenrock, Wyoming – May 17
1,339. Gillette Thunder Speedway (oval), Gillette, Wyoming – May 17
1,340. Phillips County Speedway (oval), Holyoke, Colorado – May 18
1,341. North Pole Speedway (oval), North Pole, Alaska, – May 22
1,342. Tanacross Airport (road course), Tok, Alaska, – May 24
1,343. Mitchell Raceway (oval), Fairbanks, Alaska, – May 24
1,344. North Star Speedway (oval), Wasilla, Alaska, – May 25
1,345. Capitol Speedway (oval), Willow, Alaska, – May 25
1,346. Elk City Speedway (inner oval), Elk City, Oklahoma, – May 30
1,347. Sweet Springs Motorsports Complex (oval), Sweet Springs, Missouri – May 31
1,348. Central Missouri Speedway (oval), Warrensburg, Missouri – May 31
1,349. Lucas Oil Speedway (road course), Wheatland, Missouri – June 1
