Susquehanna Speedway Park

Susquehanna Speedway is where I grew up, I took tons of friends to this beautiful race track, saw some edge-of-your-seat racing, some terrifying crashes, I probably have more memories at Susquehanna than any other track. Unfortunately, the track has deteriorated from being my favorite track, to a track that struggles to survive. The track that used to feature the mighty, ground pounding, earth shaking modifieds every week is now stuck to running support divisions every week. The beautiful red clay that used to produce such great and exciting racing has been used up, and while it still covers the speedway, the racing it produces isn't nearly what it used to be.

"Susky" could use some major upgrades. The weeds under the bleachers are out of control and need to be cut down immediately. The grandstands have become warped and splintered. The scoring tower, announcers booth, and basically everything else could all use some fresh paint. But, still, for one day out of the year, when the modifieds return to the speedway, thousands of loyal modified fans return to the track and add more memories to their minds. It may not be the best race track around, but for a while it was, when the modifieds are on the track at Susquehanna, it's impossible to not think back and remember all the great battles between Richie Tobias, Kenny Brightbill, Jimmy Hauer, Scott Haus, Randy Fortna, Jeff Strunk, Davey Wenger, and Elvin Felty. I guess my opinion is biased, I grew up at the place, every Saturday night for quite a few years I was in those stands.

My brother, who never liked racing to begin with, would only go to two tracks, Penn National Speedway, because he enjoyed watching from the tailgate area in turns 3 and 4, and Susquehanna Speedway, because he loved their chicken patties, snow cones, and peanut butter cups.

While Susquehanna doesn't have the best racing anymore, last year's version of the race was fairly entertaining. The track takes a lot of rubber fairly quickly, which leads to a one-lane race track. One lane race tracks lead to follow the leader racing, but there was some passing throughout the entire night the last few years. For the track's lone modified race of the season they usually get around 30 small block modifieds, and it usually consists of a diverse field of talent.

My favorite Susquehanna Speedway memory of course is a Kenny Brightbill memory. Kenny has always been my favorite driver, he was my dad's favorite driver when he was growing up, so, really, I didn't have a choice. Kenny was the master at Susquehanna, he was so incredibly smooth it'd look like he was going into the turns so much slower than everyone, yet, he'd still end up passing a few cars. I saw Kenny win a lot, but, one night that stood out was when Kenny had started in the back. It was early in the race when the top two cars got together and caused a massive pile up. Brightbill had nowhere to go and piled into the wreckage, the car tipped over and ended up on his roof. They towed Kenny's car into the pits. The long clean up effort from the massive pile up gave the Brightbill Racing Team plenty of time to try to fix the damaged modified. The crew fixed the car and got Kenny back on the track. Brightbill charged from the back of the pack, and ended up battling for the lead late in the race. Randy Fortna was leading the race and looked to be headed to an easy win, but, it was still a valiant effort from the veteran driver after flipping his car early in the night. With just a few laps to go, Fortna cut down a tire, and Brightbill took the lead and went on to pick up the amazing win. Kenny's had his fair share of big wins, and even though this was just a weekly race, it was still an incredible accomplishment.