Bridgeport is a beautiful facility with great food, and a fan-friendly atmosphere. For bigger races, when the car count is higher than the weekly field, Bridgeport is one of my favorite tracks to take friends for their first race too. The facility and fans help diminish the "hillbilly" stereotype, which a lot of my friends associate racing with. The speed of the track makes even the most boring races somewhat exciting, especially to none race fans. In the past, I've gone to Bridgeport and thought the race was terrible, but a friend who'd never gone to a race before loved it because of how fast and on-the-edge the cars looked throughout the night.
My favorite place to sit is in between the flag stand and turn 1. It's just before the cars get off the gas and set up for the turn, so it's when the cars are just about at their full speed. It's also the perfect spot to watch the cars throw the cars sideways into the turn. It's amazing watching those guys run 130 mph into a turn and throw the car completely sideways to make the turn.
Bridgeport's Speedway announcer is Jeff Alum, growing up, he announced at Susquehanna Speedway, which I used to go to weekly. During the "wave lap", which is what all dirt tracks do one lap before the feature event starts where the crowd stands up and cheers and sends off the field of drivers as they get ready to go racing, Alum yells over the speakers for the crowd to wave "something blue off of you, something red off your head, something black off your back, wave it for your favorite, the modifieds are ready to rumble!" While, now, I understand why most people look at his saying as extremely corny, for me, it still takes me back to my childhood and that saying used to pump me up! Understand, I started hearing that saying when I was just 2-years old, and throughout grade school (and still today) I have an obsession with dirt racing. When Jeff would say that, I knew that it was time for the race to start, and it'd get me pumped up for the race, it raised anticipation and excitement. Back then, if I didn't hear that saying, I didn't feel like I was at the right race.
My most memorable moment at Bridgeport is one the track probably wants to forget. It was just a few years ago when there were huge floods in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. I was planning on heading to one of their bigger races, the George Wingate Classic, with a couple of guys that I always go to the races with, including my dad, and was also taking two girls with me to their first race. With the heavy rains just stopping two-days earlier, I never expected Bridgeport to race. I thought the track would have taken on too much water, and it probably did, but they ran anyway. It was a beautiful day, and with everything being rained out over the previous 4 days, a large car count of over 50 cars packed the pit area. Things started off great, with the water the track took on from the rain, the track was incredibly tacky and incredibly fast, but, as the final qualifying races finished up, the track started getting bad, and developed huge ruts around the entire track. The water caused the clay to get too soft, and where the cars would hit the gas, bumps would form. Then, from the cars hitting the bumps, the wait of the car would go off the track for a few feet and where the weight would come back down onto the track, another bump developed. This started tearing up equipment. By the time the 40 lap feature was finished, only 4 of the 30 cars that started the feature finished the race. Of those, Chic Cossaboone was one of them and he wrecked early, and came back out after noticing the attrition, which led to him being 7 laps down at the end of the race. Veteran driver Jimmy Chester ended up winning the chaotic feature. It was certainly memorable, but for the wrong reasons.
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