ZUBER, FL-  Surprises were the matter of business as race fans and racers hit the clay at Ocala Speedway on Friday night.  First, on a day when nary a drop of rain fell at Ocala Speedway and virtually nothing showed within 50 miles of the track on radar, a sudden downpour hit the track during hot laps that caused a major delay in the racing action and sent the staff into a quickly arranged Plan B.  But the biggest surprise came at the end of the night as the winner of the $1000 race was totally unexpected, even to the driver that won it.

The shower that hit Ocala Speedway sprang up literally out of the blue and sent everyone scattering for cover, and it dumped quite a bit of heavy rain on the clay just after the crew had finished watering the surface.  But instead of giving up, Ocala speedway's staff sprang into action and recruited the racers in an all out effort to get the surface back into shape.  After about an hour's delay, heat racing began for the Open Wheel Mods and The Amsoil V8 Thunder Stocks.  Due to the delay, the Hobby Stocks, Mini Stocks, and Gladiators were forced to forego their heats and were lined up for their features by pill draw.

The big race of the night was the 30 lap, $1000 to win, Amsoil V8 Thunder Stock feature.  And as expected, the $1000 cash carrot made racers go for broke in order to get to the front, but Jessie Corbitt took control and mostly managed to stay out front despite a couple of miscues along the way.  As usual, Jason Gamble made his way to the front and got past Corbitt, but ended up needing to pit to fix a flat, relegating him to the rear.  From there he came back toward the front yet again, but ran out of laps as the race exceeded the allotted time and was shortened to 20 laps. 

Small-town tracks are on the skids, but folks with dreams are not.
Cars line up for the main event, a late-model feature race (pictured right).

It’s race night at Ocala Speedway in Florida, and the odor of exhaust and rubber mix with the smell of boiled peanuts and beer and cotton candy and grilling hamburgers. The stands, capacity 3500, are filling.

The little racetrack has been here for a long time. There are grandparents in the stands who first came as children. Friday night without Ocala Speedway? Hard to imagine, but it almost happened. And it has already happened in so many other towns.

“There was a time when, if you could talk the county commission into letting you carve out a racetrack on your property, you were instantly rich,” says Rich Pratt, 38, a third-generation race-car driver who lives just up the road. “Those days are over.”

Ocala’s owner, Mike Peters, stands at the entrance to the pits, wearing his aviator Ray-Bans. Peters, 39, is a jet pilot who flew Boeing 737s for an airline, but he quit to buy the speedway and run it. He admits he really doesn’t know what he was thinking when he and his fiancée, Angie Clifton, a 41-year-old vice-president of a bank, bought the racetrack at the end of 2005.

But he knows what he was thinking a year later: We made a mistake.