Beautiful weather, a huge field of supers and sportsman, and a capacity crowd all worked together in making the 1975 Oswego Speedway opener an exciting affair indeed. Surviving a rash of mishaps and mechanical failures, Jim Shampine and Satch Worley each emerged winners in their respective divisions and earned a profitable paycheck of $2,000 for their successful runs.
Upwards of 90 machines graced the speedway on the weekend with many drivers taking advantage of the Saturday warm-ups to ready their machines for racing. During this period, Oswego's Dan Dennie lost control of his supermodified entering the first turn and smacked the outside wall at a terrific clip severely damaging his attractive roadster. Dan was admitted to the Oswego Hospital and later released this past week suffering rib injuries.
Warm-ups also took their toll on Sunday just prior to the racing. Baldy Baker had a torsion bar break on his car 6 which ruptured a tire and sent him into the first turn wall. The front end on the 6 was wiped out but Baldy was not injured. Then Eddie Bell in the 05 and Armond Holley in the 3 came together in turn three and each inflicted heavy damage to their machines. Both drivers escaped personal injury.
The modified heats were run off with Maynard Troyer, Richie Evans, Jerry Cook and Jim Shampine coming off with victories. The consi went to Jim Rudolph and Geoff Bodine.
At the start of modified feature 75, Evans was off and running. Troyer was running a close second when he blew the engine on lap 6 going into turn one putting him out for the day. Cook came charging on after Evans and started to close the gap making a bid for the number one positions. On lap 30 Evans, still with a good 20 car length lead, blew a tire coming out of turn four and hit the outside wall. This put Cook in front with his rapid number 38. Jerry was doing a great job holding on to the first spot and was actually expanding his lead over second place Satch Worley in the 76 when his tire blew going into turn three on lap 62.
Worley took over the lead and maintained his safe cushion over the final 13 circuits to get the win. It was the first Oswego victory ever for the 26 year old Virginia veteran who was greatly impressed with the Oswego oval. Second place went to Connecticut ace Gene Bergin in the Judkins Pinto car 2. Rounding out the top five were: Jim Rudolph 72, Ron Bouchard 17 and Jerry Cook came back to get a fifth place finish.
Other feature finishers included: Dale Merz 48, Don Diffendorf 40, Don MacLaren 30, Ray Miller 9, Dean Hoag 7, Bob Park 19, Gary lulg 56, Ollie Silva 0, Jim Shampine 69, Bob Vee 73, Geoff Bodine 1, Richie Evans 61, Don Kroft 31, Dick Fowler 11, George Kent 26, Roger Griffith 18, Jim Winks 21, Maynard Troyer 6 and Don Whalen 05.
In the supermodified qualifiers it was Don MacLaren, Jim Cheney, Bob Stelter and Johnny Spencer getting the wins. The consolation races were taken by Jim Winks and Dennie Lichty.
The supermodified feature looked mighty impressive with a beautiful field of cars going to Norm Bacon's green flag. Big Don MacLaren jumped off with the early lead in the number 1. However on came hard charging Gary Allbritain in his 75 roadster. Gary easily took the lead and began opening a good space between he and all competition. On the move also was Jimmy Shampine and after he broke traffic, started closing in on Allbritain. Jim caught Gary on lap 24 but couldn't make it by until the 31 st circuit. Then the big battle was for third as both Den Wheeler in the 96 and Nolan Swift in the 10 pins had been consistently working their way through the pack. They ran side by side for several laps really showing some mighty fine racing. However, they came up on a lapped car while racing down the front chute into turn one. Denny went to the inside with Swifty taking the outside route around the lapped car and they ran out of racing room. Wheeler got airborne, came back to the track where he hit the Swift machine that was trying to round the first turn. Swift and Wheeler both smacked the first turn wall at a terrific rate of speed with the Wheeler machine rebounding and hitting the wall again. Denny was rushed to the Oswego Hospital with serious injuries. An early Wednesday; report revealed Wheeler to be improving but will be confined for several more days in the hospital with a broken collar bone and 3 broken ribs. Swift received minor back injuries in the incident. Both cars were virtually wiped out.
When racing resumed, Shampine just walked away with little problems. Allbritain was running a strong second but overheating problems slowed his pace allowing Kemp Dates to move into second. But Dates was unable to close in on the 8 ball and the laps were just running out. Shampine, for the fifth straight year, won our Oswego opener with his 8 ball. Dates took second in the 28, while Don MacLaren brought the Lindblat mount home third. Eddie Bellinger took fourth in his all-new car 02 with Gary Reichert's remodeled car 78 fifth.
Other feature finishers included: Jim Cheney 93, Larry Lehnert 91, Chuck Ciprich 15, Red Barnhart 16, Bob Stelter 36, Gary Allbritain 75, Ron Wallace 76, Joe Paeno 06, John Spencer 07, Scott Wilson 27, John Logan 35, Den Wheeler 96, Nolan Swift 10, Fred Graves 38, Jim Winks 59, Dennie Lichty 48, Warren Coniam 04, Mike Rizzo 34, and Norm Mackereth 5.