April 6, 2025 | Jim Kostinden April 5, 2025 “New Hampshire Dreamin’” For the first time in 2025, the ECO racers headed to another race destination other than Lenjet. The “New Hampshire Dreamin’” ECO race, the 8th ECO race event of the 2024-2025 season, was graciously hosted by popular ECO racer, Terry Ayer, at the Ralph Spoilsport Speedway in Windham, NH. The Ralph Spoilsport Speedway is a Max Trax routed track that can be configured as a large oval or a challenging road course, with the infamous “squiggles” section. With 13 racers in attendance, the first race would be Jalopies running on the oval configuration in the morning. During lunch, the track would be reconfigured to the road course where the second race consisting of SS Fray cars and the third race, an IROC race utilizing Magnatraction cars would be run in the afternoon. Drivers Meeting After Jalopy practice on the oval, tech and sign-in were completed, Dave Lockwood kicked off the drivers meeting. Dave mentioned that he recently had a phone conversation with Peter Lentros. Dave said that Peter is in good spirits and that he is in the process of getting some treatments to help with the recovery from his medical incident. It has been almost one year since Peter’s medical incident, and while he has made some great progress, he still has aways to go. Peter has attended and participated in several HO races and 1/32 races at Lenjet/Modelville in 2025. Personally, I have been at these races that Peter has attended and every time I see him he seems to get better. The greatest thing is that Peter is still Peter, telling jokes, even some new ones, and catching up with folks on various topics. Dave mentioned that if you would like to visit Peter, reach out to Paul Crosby, who can help to provide guidance on the best times to visit. Dave will be contacting Richard Payne to determine a new date for the ECO May racing event. Updates will be provided on the ECO website schedule and Facebook page once a new date has been set. We do expect to have the Rollin ‘O at Lenjet for the May race. Dave is finalizing the order for the new T-shirts. Dave also mentioned the Bob Beers slot car show in North Stonington, CT on April 6th. I believe there is a posting on the ECO Facebook page with details about this show. Our club treasurer, Jimmy Colligan, provided the club’s financial update. A balance of $1945 was reported. It was brought up that perhaps at the ECO annual membership/rules meeting, a luncheon could be held using some of these funds as part of this meeting. Dave took this under advisement. Best Appearing For the third month in a row, yes a three-peat, the Best Appearing award went to Terry Ayer for his beautifully finished Jalopy. Terry’s neatly finished jalopy coupe with a big honkin’ chrome V8, really looks aggressive. Looks like Terry used paperclips to form the front and side bumpers. Again, really nice work Terry. Congratulations! Can anyone stop Terry from taking a fourth best appearing award in a row???? Stay tuned race fans…. On to the races… Jalopies on the Ralph Spoilsport Speedway Oval Featuring 10+ foot long straights and large sweeping 24” radius flat turns at either end, the Ralph Spoilsport oval is the longest and fastest oval the ECO club will race on this season. With those long straights and sweeping turns, this track favored Jalopies that had high horsepower and speed. Even so, only 5 of the 13 racers made it into the “200 club”, turning 200 or more laps during the race (this equates to a minimum average of 50 laps per heat for 4 heats). Quite an accomplishment! After the dust settled over the oval, it was Flash taking 1st place with 216 laps. Only a couple of laps back in 2nd place was Dave L with 214 laps. Rounding out the podium in 3rd was Greg W. with 209 laps. Flash and Dave split the honors for best lap times with Flash having the best lap times in the white and blue lanes, while Dave had the best lap times in the outside lanes, red and yellow. Their best lap times were hovering in the low 3 second range, almost breaking into the 2 second range. Very fast!! The battle for 4th position was hard fought between Terry A. and Chief, with Terry coming out on top by ONE section. Terry’s 201 laps and 7 sections, just edged out an awesome performance by Chief with 201 laps and 6 sections. Rounding out the remaining top half of the field, positions 6th and 7th were: 6th Matt G. 196 laps and 7th Brian W. 195 laps. Congratulations to the “200 club” racers: Flash, Dave, Greg, Terry and Chief. It is also great to see Chief, Matt and Brian with very strong finishes. Congratulations to all for a great race! Below are the official results (lap counts and finish positions) for the drivers and best lap times. Race Results Lap Times Super Stock on the Ralph Spoilsport Speedway Road Course Before we get into the 2nd race results, on behalf of the ECO racers in attendance, I’d like to congratulate and thank our gracious host, Terry, for the delicious lunch consisting of hamburgers with all the condiments, home made pasta salad, and for dessert, home made chocolate chip cookies! Yummy! Thank you Terry for your time and effort in preparing an outstanding lunch for a bunch of hungry racers! As the racers chowed down on the most excellent lunch prepared by chief Terry, the Ralph Spoilsport Speedway was transformed into the road course configuration, including the infamous “squiggles” in the in-field section. While the road course utilizes the large sweeping end turns and long front straight of the oval, two tight 180-degree turns are added along with the “squiggles” in-field section (very tight esses), that really places a demand on a good handling car and very good driving skills. With the track configured to the road course, a brief period of time was set aside for drivers to practice and setup their cars for the road course before the start of the 2nd race. As is typical with most ECO races, the racing was very close, with almost half the group (positions 4th thru 9th) only separated by 3 LAPS! Taking 1st place with an impressive 130 laps was Dave L. Several laps behind were Flash with 127 laps. Rounding out the podium in 3rd was our host, chef Terry, with 123 laps. Dave also had fastest lap times in all 4 lanes running in the low 5.1 to 5.2 seconds range. Rounding out the top half of the field, positions 4th thru 7th was: 4th Greg W. with 117 laps, 5th Jim K. 116 laps, 6th Brian W. 115 laps/41 sections, and 7th Jimmy C. 115 laps/30 sections. Again, great racing everyone! Below are the official results (lap counts and finish positions) for the drivers along with best lap times. Please note that a lap was manually added to Jim K’s lap total due to a breakout/lost lap caused by a “runner” in the lane Jim K. was racing in. Race Results Lap Times IROC Magnatraction on the Ralph Spoilsport Road Course Not only did our host, chef Terry, prepare a delicious lunch, but for an encore, Terry cooked up a beautiful set of IROC cars consisting of an AFX magnatraction chassis, and beautifully prepared Corvette C3 bodies. While the blue Corvette was definitely the “hero” car of the bunch (superb handling), the other 3 cars were no slouches. The final race of the day was extremely close, with 1st thru 13th position separated by only 13 laps. In addition, fastest lap times were held by 4 different racers, one for each lane! With the rumbling of the Corvette engines silenced as the race ended, taking the win was our gracious host, Terry with 118 laps. One lap behind in second, with 117 laps, was Dave L. Rounding out the podium in 3rd was Flash with 114 laps. Missing the podium position by only sections, in 4th was Hal also with 114 laps. Nice race Hal! Rounding out the remaining top half of the field, positions 5th thru 7th were: 5th Jim K. with 113 laps/57 sections, 6th JoeRinn only sections behind Jim K. with 113 laps/38 sections, and 7th Matt G. with 112 laps. Of note, rookie Brian W. was on the same lap as Matt only 10 sections behind, finishing in 8th place. Again, congratulations to everyone for some exciting, close racing! Below are the official results (lap counts and finish positions) and best lap times. Race Results Lap Times Checkered Flag Again, on behalf of all the ECO racers, I would like to thank our gracious host Terry for an outstanding event! The “Hard Luck” award goes to JoeRinn who drove up all the way from Delaware only to run into technical issues during the Jalopy race with his car. JoeRinn was a good sport and hung in there and did the best he could. Hopefully JoeRinn’s 6th place finish in IROC was a good way to finish the day. Also, a big congratulations to Terry for taking home all the hardware today, 3 plaques: best appearing, 3rd place SS Fray, and 1st place IROC! Nice work Terry! As I have mentioned in previous race reports this year, the ECO racers keep on improving, making the races more and more challenging and exciting. Chief had an awesome 5th place finish in Jalopies as the final member of the “200 club”. Rookie Brian W. had 7th, 6th, and 8th place finishes; I believe his strongest race event to date. Matt G. also had 3 good races. And the list goes on… Bottom line, the competition is getting tighter and the room for error is getting less. Exciting times at ECO!! Our next race will be at the South Shore Speedway in Hingham, MA (JoeRinn and Dave, remember to set your GPS destination correctly). The classes we will be racing are Grand National, E-Fray w/ NASCAR bodies, and Magnatraction w/ Fairgrounds bodies. Remember, this race in only 3 weeks away on April 26th! Happy Easter!