St. Marys' Favourite Son
For the past 20-plus years, a caravan of race fans have pulled out of St. Marys on Friday night, and motored down the road 35 minutes to Delaware Speedway. Once there, they stake claim to a plot of land at the top of the hill in turn one to cheer on one of the most popular athletes ever to come out of the town, four-time Delaware Speedway Late Model champion Scott Lindsay.
After capturing a Street Stock championship in 1991, Lindsay stepped up into the Late Model division the following season, winning the Rookie-of-the-Year title. In 1993 Scott served notice at the �-mile that he was around to stay as he hammered down his first Late Model title.
Lindsay landed some decent sponsorship and started doing double duty, competing weekly at Delaware and making starts on the CASCAR Super Series trail. Scott reflected, "At that point, the cars that we ran at Delaware were pretty much the same as the Super Series, so with a couple of minor changes we were able to do some Super Series events. We did a number of Super Series events over the next four or five years, but that was right at the start of the series costing big money to race. We had the Fram deal for a while and that was probably our best deal."
The championships continued to mount including 1997, but 2004 was a special season for Scott as it was the first year a Canadian track (along with Ste. Eustache) was sanctioned by NASCAR. Lindsay captured the championship, and in 2005 won the NASCAR championship again, but lost the Delaware championship because of a different scoring system.
Lindsay started off the 2009 season with a bang, but not a good one. After re-clipping the car during the offseason his # 20 lasted 10 laps before it had to be re-clipped again. "It took a while for us to recover from that. First off, we used a lot of our budget right off the bat, and it just set us back a bit."
The highlight of the season for Scott was June 12th as he captured his only feature of the season, leading to a fourth-place finish in the points' standings.
The biggest concern of 2009 for the 41-year old was the amount of wadded up race cars. As far as pinning down a reason, Scott explained, "I can't say it's the cars, and I can't say it's the drivers, but probably a combination. The cars are so competitive, that sometimes you have to get a little physical to pass, and have to move someone out of the way. It's just expensive to fix them."
Teams were also forced to overcome a busy schedule. "With all the triple features, it made it tough. When you're only racing one feature a week, and something doesn't work out for you on a Friday night, you can take the car home and work on it again for the next week. With running multiple features in the same night, if you miss on the setup, or if you try something that the car doesn't like, you can lose a lot of ground in a hurry"
That led to Lindsay's next comment on what he would do if he was given the keys to the Speedway, and a blank cheque to make one improvement. "I would repave the corners. The racing surface on the high side is worn out. There is no outside groove, which makes it tough to pass. I think it's great that they have done so much stuff for the fans, but I hear from a lot of people that where you start is where you finish. Maybe it's the cars being so competitive, and maybe it's just the fact that there are so many good drivers, but probably a combination of both. I think that outside lane would help the racing."
During the week, Lindsay works at St. Mary s Ford as a technician, yet has always raced a Chevy or a Pontiac. He chuckled, "I guess it gives me a little variety working on a Chevy race car, but the type of car doesn't really much matter. That being said, now Ford has a crate motor available, so we might look at that option for next season. When we first switched over to the current style car, if there was a Ford motor available we probably would have went that route, but the only crate motor was a GM, so that's what we went with. We're just trying to get some sponsorship for 2010 right now, and we might switch."
Lindsay is backed by Goco Fuels, A.W. Millwrights, Science Hill Aggregates, Kittmer Enterprises, Foreman Electric, and River Valley Golf Course. In addition to Scott's father, first generation racer Ron Lindsay, who co-owns the car, support comes from Jeremy Burgess, Jeff Vyse, Rob Robinson, Matt Brown, and Paul Noble.
As for his numerous fans that pack the hill in turn one, the 60-time feature winner tried to explain the travelling phenomenon in saying, "My Dad raced here for so many years and the people that came and watched him race are still coming to watch me race. I don't know exactly how many we get, but I've heard them before when we're out of the car. We've also had a lot of support over the years from the St. Marys Journal Argus. We seem to get half-page articles on Delaware every week and Pat Payton does a great job."
We'll see if Lindsay can get them standing in turn one again, as he takes aim at his third Delaware NASCAR championship in 2010. Will it be in the blue oval?
Story by Jamie Maudsley
Photos by Maudsley Motorsports