For Tim McCreadie, Weedsport Speedway is turning into “a small Taj Mahal.”
The Watertown racer said the old Weedsport track was a great racing venue, but he credited owner Allan Heinke and manager Jimmy Phelps with having both the racing knowledge and the financial wherewithal to make it even better.
And the three-eighths-mile clay surface has been kind to McCreadie of late: He finished third in last month’s 40-lap DIRTcar Big-Block Modified feature and recalled a top-five run the last time the World of Outlaws Late Model Series competed at Weedsport in 2007.
With McCreadie among the competitors, the late model makes its return to Weedsport for the first time in eight years with the Finger Lakes 40, slated to take place Tuesday, June 23 featuring the late model and crate sportsman races.
Pit gates open at 4 p.m. and grandstand gates open at 5 p.m., while racing is set to begin at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $29 for reserved seat and $25 for general admission, while youth ages 11 to 17 cost $5 and children age 10 and under are free.
Pole Position Raceway will be a part of the evening as well, as a partner of Weedsport Speedway for the 2015 season.
“I look forward to running there again. The modified show was really good,” McCreadie said of May’s Empire State Challenge. “I think it was a success.”
But, he said, the strong modified showing will not really give him any advantage over his late model competitors. McCreadie “might have an advantage for hot laps,” he said, but after that, his fellow racers will catch on pretty quickly.
“These guys run on so many different tracks all the time that they learn pretty quickly,” he said.
With a mix of modified and late model experience at Weedsport over the years, McCreadie said one does not translate over to the other well – when the cars run well, they do handle similarly, but “when they’re wrong, it’s a totally different animal.”
Nevertheless, he said it does help him to know what lines to run around Weedsport and how the track changes over the course of an evening.
“I look for a certain feeling,” he said, adding that he does not know how to explain it but knows what it is when he finds it. “It’s just a feeling I’m looking for.”
While McCreadie and company compete in the late model event, the crate sportsman racers get a chance to tune up their cars and get some track time during their feature ahead of next month’s second annual Sportsman Classic.
That event is slated to take place Sunday, July 5 and will include a 75-lap Upstate Sportsman Alliance Series event along with races for the TUSA ModLite Series and the 600cc Micro Sprint division.