By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

ANDERSON, Calif.–  It was a successful end to what is expected to be a big series later down the road.

When it comes to racing, Rich Lavallee knows his stuff.  The passion for the sport, the drive (no pun intended!) for it and all of the good stuff that makes this racing mastermind who he is.

But, to put on an event like he did at Shasta Speedway Saturday October 1, was a lot for the first time planner; but he got a lot of help.

“I didn’t realize the little stuff, contracts, getting people to sign their commitment.  The stuff behind the scenes, caught me off guard a little bit,” said Lavallee. “But I rolled with the punches and I’m pretty flexible and stuff like that so  Dave the Anderson DOC and Jeff from the North State Modifieds, they helped me out (and) walk me through the whole thing and that was good.

When he saw the list, 10 Roseville All American Speedway racers and the reminder from Shasta and a variety of other areas, those names on the list took another meaning.

“When you see the list and think, ‘that’s just names on there’.  But when you see the cars on the track, and my friends.  I mean the guys, we’re a racing family and they came and all of the support,” said Lavallee.  “And everyone of them said, ‘since your putting this on, we’re going to support you’.

“And that was cool, that was cool to hear.”

Names like Mark Gardiner, Andrew Peeler, Erick Ray and Tony Latimer all made the trip up to Anderson to line up along side with Lavelle.

And though they did not win, it was a successful event as Cody Szuh, Lavallee and Jill Schmidt battled in the Top 5 area along with Peeler and Gardiner battling for the lead early in the race.

All in the process of bringing the life back into tracks like Shasta.

“It was a good experience, it’s a good experience to see.  I don’t want to see any track close, that’s what I don’t want to see.  All I’m trying to do is to get the live brought back into racing that was once fun.  You wanted to race,” said Lavallee.

The purpose of the traveling series said Lavallee is to combine people who are heavily competitive with the sport and those who have a passion for it just to help keep these tracks open.

During this process, Lavallee hopes to bridge the differences in these ‘tweener’ classes to help bring more people out as the race featured Bombers and Street Stocks racing together Saturday night.

“We have a lot of tweener classes out there,” he said. “A tweener class is in between different stuff so what I want to do is that I want to bridge that gap and if the gap is too great, then we’ll have two separate divisions.

“And we can still do it like how the Modified have the Pro-4’s and the others.  So can still do the Bombers and we can still do the Street Stock or the Hobby Stock, Super Stocks, whatever.  I still think that we can put cars out here in a good car count, have a good time and it be competitive. I don’t want to see a single-file, guy take off and leave everybody, leave the field.”

Lavallee knows that rules can help curve and help this out.

And with Shasta hosting a few races in 2016, it reached home to Lavallee about this track and why he went to the Northern California track to get his traveling series up and going.

“When my dad past away, his only time he got to come to the out-of-town race was Shasta,” said Lavallee. “And Shasta holds a place in my heart.  I love Shasta, the track’s awesome.  It’s a fun time,  we go to the Casino, we go in town and have a good time and kind of let loose on a road trip and not worry about the stuff you worry about from the daily grind.

“And Anderson had it tough go here and we’re trying to get them to have a race once or twice yearly and get back in here and bring life back to it where Anderson is a good place.”