By TJ Buffenbarger
I’d like to apologize for the lack of a column the past few weeks, but I’ve been very busy with school and going to the races so I actually can see what’s going on first hand. For the past five weeks the Slideways crew has visited four racetracks, watched six races, one practice, one rain out, and have traveled well over 1,600 miles doing so. Needless to say, I’ve been very busy.
During the mini tour of Ohio I had the opportunity to be a guest on “Racing World” live from Steinle Olds Fremont, Ohio. The best part about going on for the second time was being able to talk about racing and not just about our website. I did however get to throw some pretty impressive numbers at the listeners about how many people visit the Slideways Page (more on that in a moment). Many teams were on site with us working on their cars included Chad Kenamah, John Wisbon, Scott Miller, Brian Smith, Frankie Kerr, and many others. If you are ever in the Findlay area, tune your radio to 1330 a.m. from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. est. for Racing World.
Just got word today that the Jac Haudenschild website over at http://www.racerusa.com is now ready to go, also the Frankie Kerr and Chuck Wilson Motorsports sites are also must see sites on the web. You can hit those at http://www.frankiekerr.com and http://www.tjslideways.com/wilson respectively.
I also just wanted to thank Attica Raceway Park for putting on a great weekend of racing during the Coors Nationals. Even with weather better suited for ice fishing rather than racing, the on track action was great both nights. I also would like to thank Attica track announcer Todd Tappell for the great plug during Saturday night’s show (I was in the boys room, but my Dad heard it!).
Last Saturday the Bob, Rod, Todd crew re-united at the New-96 Speedway for practice and the Crystal Raceway for the Auto Value Super Sprints. Several cars in all three divisions took to the 1/2 mile. I also got reps on the scoreboard running the timing light. Just so you know, New 96 WILL have sprint car time trials every week. I will also be posting a payoff sheet later this week for the Sprints and IMCA modifieds. Hopefully we can have a live chat from the New 96’s All Star show.
The AVSS lid liter was a pretty good show Saturday at the Crystal Raceway. The track was typical Crystal as the surface was pretty dry, but the pits were watered very nicely! I have to commend the track for not keeping us their all night. Part of that was probably helps by the Slideways lineup program. I had the heat races, semi’s, and feature lined up in less than five min. total! By next week anyone will be able to download it for free. Consider it my gift to racing to speed up the program (no pun intended).
Slideways Page lurker Brett Mann won the feature. Brett said at Attica the team was going to race at Eldora, but the forecast looked better up in Michigan. The Mann Enterprises team made the right choice as Eldora was a washout. Another driver to look out for this year is Jason Blonde! This kid has improved drastically, and now has great equipment to run up front.
New AVSS announcer Stephanie Valentine did a terrific job, as she did not fill the evening with useless chatter and bad jokes. The information she had was very useful. Stephanie will also be announcing at the Gas City Speedway on Friday nights that don’t conflict with the AVSS schedule.
As school winds down, many new features will be added to the Slideways page. Look for a large expansion on the MSPN Photo Gallery, new Wheel 2 Wheel Graphics, at least three new tracks to get results sections, expansion of our Latest News section, and a couple of new columns. One will be Andrew’s Race Report. This will be a first for Internet coverage, and that’s all I can say about it right now.
Remember I mentioned some site statistics earlier? I have a Webtrends system set up on this site now so I can track whom, when, where, and how this site is accessed. What I have discovered is the page averages around 30-40,000 hits a day from around 2,000 different users. These users hail from around 10-15 different countries (yes countries!). Also Microsoft Internet Explorer seems to be the most popular browser with the Windows 95 operating system. The most amazing this is how this average drops on Saturday when many fans are at the racetrack.
BTW, thanks to Hosehead over at http://www.epix.net/~hosehead/pagez.html for referring the most people per day to our site. The only way people find this site more often is by their own bookmarks.
Looking forward to this weekend, the Slideways crew will be playing welcome wagon again Friday (weather & school permitting) as we will be attending opening night at the Gas City Speedway. Then it’s up to our home base at the New 96 Speedway in Lake Odessa, Michigan. The week after that will be the first TJ Slideways Pre-Race BBQ of the season. If you see us partying out in the parking lot, stop by and say hi. Until then you can reach me at webmaster@tjslideways.com. Later!