Randy Lewis

SPORTS & LEISURE MAGAZINE

Buffalo, New York

August, 2002

By Dave Sully

 

Trackchasing – the ultimate auto race fan’s dream

 

For those of you who consider yourselves die hard race fans, ask yourselves how many different tracks have you been to in your lifetime?  15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100?  Not many of us can claim the latter numbers in the list.  I think I have been to 50 or so and I travel a lot.

 

Well, for your enlightenment, the who is in 10^th place in the country in the national Organization known at Trackchasers, has been to 584 different tracks around the world.  He is a member of an elite group of race fans whose expressed goal is to see races at as many tracks as they can and to move up in the world rankings.

 

The man I referred to is Randy Lewis from San Clemente, California, the number one trackchaser living west of the Mississippi.  I ran into Randy a couple of years ago at Gasport Speedway in Pt. Colborne and struck up a conversation.  I learned something about the loosely knit group that charts the progress of the membership as to the number of tracks visited.  I also had him put me on his e-mail list, which goes out after each track or group of tracks he visits, in which he summarizes his activities on the way to the track, at the track and sometimes afterward, depending upon what happens.

 

His is an interesting story, and when he made a visit to our area recently , I arranged to meet him at Merrittville Speedway in Thorold, Ontario (near Niagara Falls), where I could interview him about his most unusual hobby.  In the course of the evening, he was invited up to the scoring tower and interviewed by track announcer Gordie Wilson.  He left right after the races, because he had to drive to Hartford, Connecticut, by the next afternoon to fly home.

 

Several days later I received Randy’s email account of the visit and he made some very nice comments about his visit to Merrittville.  He was also impressed with his interview in the scoring tower, saying, “The announcer interviewed me for a few minutes about my hobby.  I’ve had several interviews like this, but this was one of the better ones because the announcer, Gordie, was a veteran and seemed to have a real interest in asking the questions.”

 

Ironically, our meeting was on the first official day of his retirement, after a thirty-year career with Procter & Gamble, much of it in the capacity of sales manager.  Randy’s racing background began in Illinois where he grew up.

 

He noted, “On my street there was 10 houses.  Three of the houses had stock cars, and Saturday morning was sort of like gasoline alley, but I didn’t see my second track until I was in high school, and didn’t see my third and fourth tracks until I was in college.  I heard about trackchasing from Guy Smith, who writes for the Area Auto Racing News.  The last 5 or 6 years I’ve been averaging about 60 or 70 new track a year.

 

I’m very close this year to seeing a hundred tracks over the last 12 months.  If I could do that it would be fun, but I think I’m going to miss it by a track or two.  The uniqueness about my trackchasing is that I’m really the only one who flies to races.  The rest of the guys live in the Midwest or Northeast.

 

There are a lot of tracks in those areas, so they can drive everywhere.  I would say in California, within 200 miles of me there are only five or ten tracks.  (Compare that to Western New York and Southern Ontario, where there are 20 tracks in a relatively tight circle.  In addition, they only race on Saturday for the most part, so to get any place, because we’re geographically remote, you’ve got to fly.”

 

I asked Randy how you get to be a member of the organization.  He explained.  “There is a website operated by Will White called trackchaser.com, and anybody who has 200 tracks or more gets listed on the site, but in order to be ranked you have to have about 420 tracks or more.

 

Just going to a track and buying a ticket does not credit a trackchaser as having officially been there.  Randy explains what is required to have the track count.  “They have to race cars or trucks, as opposed to motorcycles, school buses or go-karts.  The drivers to be adults, sixteen years or older.  There have to be more than two car racing, so we’re not talking about drag races or anything like that.  It has to be competitive racing, so it’s not vintage racing where the cars are old, and the just drive around in a parade for the fans.  They’re really racing each other.  I think that’s the jist of it.

 

We actually have on the website a list of rules for all of this.  We have an e-mail group that anybody is welcome to join.  There are probably fifty people that are members of that.  Well pass along scheduling tips if someone hears if such and such is happening.  We’ll debate the rules and how we might want to change them.  We just added figure eight tracks this year.”

 

One additional bit of information regarding what constitutes a track counting in the total is that the attendee must be present for at least one feature during the evening’s program, so if the races are rained out after the heats, it doesn’t count.  Randy has had a number of occasions where that has happened and worst yet rained out entirely.  Through it all he has maintained his sprit for the chase and harnessed his frustration.  Being an avid golfer, as well as a trackchaser, he can satiate two appetites when he is out on the road.

 

Randy has had numerous interesting experiences, too many to mention here, but there are some highlights, including  one involving a trip to England.  He explains, "That's was a lot of fun.  Normally for the last few years when I go to a track, I have a little hand out, and I just pass it along to the announcer, and a lot of times they’ll read it.  Sometimes, they’ll invite me up and we’ll talk about it over the PA system.  It was an afternoon track at what  they call grass racing.  It really isn’t on grass.  It’s an oval track and this one happened to be out in the country.

 

They had a ton of cars there.  They must have had two hundred.  The announcer said, “Have you ever raced?  I said, “No,” and he said, “Would you like to?”  I said, "Yea, that would be great.”  He said, “I think I can arrange that.”  “I had a guy video tape it, and the video is a prized possession.  I had a lot of fun.”

 

Besides his trip to England, Randy has been to some other out of the country locations.  He added.  I’ve been to tracks in Australia, Canada, the Isle of Mann, which is its own separate country off the coast of England, a lot in England, about fifteen of them, and one in Scotland.”

 

One of his best experiences occurred right in the good old “US of A,” one with a spectacular result.  Randy describes what happened.  "My wife and I went to the Long Beach (California) Grand Prix one time.  I think it was about 1987.

 

We were guests of American Airlines.  (Randy was a guest of American Airlines because he flies a lot on American.  He said that he has over 6 million miles in American’s Frequent Flyer Program.)  That was nice enough in itself because they provided a nice dinner, caps and that sort of thing, but they had a prize for the person who could accurately guess the winning average speed.  So I went out and bought a program and looked at the last 10 years, which were very consistent. Most of the other people who were guests there didn’t know too much about racing.  They were all over the ball park.  We picked kind of a range, my wife’s number and my number.  We ended up winning first prize.  First prize happened to be two air tickets to Zurich, Switzerland, and a week’s hotel!”

 

Another memorable occurrence was on his trip to Scotland and his visit to Cowdenbeath Raceway.  He describes what happened.  “I had written ahead and the flagman (starter) corresponded with me.  When the races ended he invited Carol and I over to his house.  This is like 11:30 at night.  His wife gave us coffee and he showed us his video tapes.  We met his son and saw his house.  That was a fun thing to do.

 

I asked Randy about his ultimate goal as a trackchaser and if he could ever be number one.  He replied, “I don’t think so.  I got a late start in this.  When my kids were smaller, I was tied into Little League and soccer, and all the things that go along with that.  I would have only needed to average, for the ten years I was sort of out of it, about thirty tracks a year, which isn’t very much.  I’ve got thirty-five tracks this season, and we’re only midway through.”

 

One would think that with this unique hobby he would get into a lot of tracks for free.  He explains how often that happens, “Virtually never.  A long time ago I used to write ahead and tell them I was coming, but that made me feel obligated that I had to come there, and if something in my plans changed  thought that was inconvenient for everybody, so I stopped doing it that way.

 

Randy’s wife Carol doesn’t go with him that often.  She does have 115 tracks, but that’s nowhere near his total.  I’m sure some of you are curious as to how the relationship can survive with him away so much chasing racing.  Randy explains how that has actually been a plus.  The thing that makes that worthwhile in our marriage is when I’m home, my office has been in the house, so I see her from seven in the morning until we go to bed at night.  We talk probably every hour as she walks by my desk.  Even though I travel 60 or 70 nights a year doing this, I may see her more that the average person who goes to work every day and leaves at 7:00 and gets home at five or six at night.”

 

With Randy Lewis now officially retired as of July 1, 2002, he can really start to get serious about trackchasing, as if he hasn’t before.  Judging from the extend to which he has gone to races in all parts of the world, and because there are still hundreds that he hasn’t seen, I expect to keep reading his e-mails with great interest and envying this fascinating hobby.