October 18, 2026 | Jim Kostinden October 17, 2026 “The LenJet 500” Wow! We had a strong turnout of 19 racers for the second race of the ECO 2026-2027 season at the fantastic Lenjet Raceway facility in Ashland, MA. With 19 racers in attendance, one of the new ECO rules voted in this year went into effect. That rule states that if we have a minimum of 19 racers, then we can add a 4th race to the event. And so, we did adding in a Nostalgia race on the Shamrock Glen track. In addition to our new racers from the last ECO event, Sam Ryer and Dave Michalczyk, we also had another new racer in attendance, Karl Knipper. Karl met Dave L. last weekend at Bob Beer’s slot car show in No. Stonington, CT. Karl decided to travel up to Lenjet and try out the racing and had a strong showing considering this was his first time racing with the group on these tracks. Welcome Karl! Please do not hesitate to reach out to any of the ECO members if you have any questions. We are all here to help. With a full schedule of 4 races, we would split the racers into two groups and race Indy on the historic Car Model track and Nostalgia on the Shamrock Glen track in the morning. After lunch, the groups would race E-Fray on the Champion track and SS Fray on the Bear track. Drivers Meeting After practice, tech, and sign-in, club president Dave L. led the drivers meeting. Dave started off the meeting by mentioning that there were 61 people signed up for the Halloween Havoc race. Dave mentioned that there were a lot of sponsors and that the goodie bags would be filled to the brim! A big thank you to all the Havoc sponsors!! Dave finished his discussion about the Havoc by mentioning that power to the tracks would be turned on at 4PM om Friday for practice and tuning. Also, Paul will be sending out an email to the club for volunteers to show up early on Friday to help set up for the Havoc. Paul’s email will provide more details (i.e. what time volunteers should show up, etc.). ECO member, Tom Gray, who is our local HOPRA representative, asked if anyone had input on making Dash Blizzard top plates legal in HOPRA classes to please provide him with any input prior to the 10/19 HOPRA senate meeting. Our club treasurer, Jimmy C., provided an update on the club finances. The club started the year with $1020 and has a current balance of $1140 going into today’s race. Finally, Dave L. mentioned that next year (season) would be the ECO’s 20th year and it was mentioned that special 20th anniversary ECO t-shirts should be made. If anyone has any input please reach out to Dave. Dave’s t-shirt maker will be at the Havoc, so it might be a good time to approach him about the idea. Reach out to Dave if you have any thoughts. Dave then called an end to the driver’s meeting so that voting for best appearing car could take place. Best Appearing Best appearing honors went to Terry A. for his beautifully finished Indy Turbine car. Terry is no stranger to this award, as his talents with designing and printing custom decals really bring his cars to the next level. In this case, Terry went with a Halloween theme on his Turbine body giving the car a base coat of black and then applying his custom Halloween decal. Congratulations and nice job Terry! BTW, not only does Terry’s car look good, it also rips (fast)! Dave presented Terry with the Best Appearing award. On to the races… Indy on the Model Car Track It’s been quite some time since Indy cars have been run on the historic Car Model track. With its large signature 180-degree banked turn leading into a short chute and then a very tight 180-degree infield turn, there was concern by some of the racers on whether the Indy cars, that are known to have minimal braking capability, would slow down in time coming off the bank turn. As it turned out, the cars had just enough braking to maneuver through this section of the track. In general, I thought the Indy cars were a good match for the Car Model track and were fun to race on this track. Also, we only raced on the 4 inner lanes of the 6-lane track, not utilizing the gutter lanes for the race. With 19 racers, there were some good battles for positions, with even a tie between 2 racers. The top 15 racers were only separated by 14 laps, so the racing was close. The battle for the overall win was decided by a single section! It was Flash taking the win turning 119 laps/ 17 sections to Dave L’s second place finish with 119 laps/16 sections! The final podium spot, third, was taken by Jim K with 114 laps. Here’s a quick review of the top half of the field with some special mentions: the battle for 4th again came down to sections with Paul R taking 4th with 113 laps/11 sections and Matt G taking 5th with 113 laps/1 section. The battle for 6th between Greg W and John Espo was close with Greg taking 6th with 111 laps/9 sections to Espo’s solid 7th place finish with 111 laps/3 sections. Terry finished a rather boring 8th (no one on the same lap as Terry) with 110 laps. Chief and Sam had a good race going on for 9th with both racers completing 108 laps, but Chief taking 9th by ONE section, 108 laps/17 sections, to Sam R’s 10th place finish with 108 laps/16 sections. While just outside the top half of the field, a 3-way battle for 11th between Peter L, Karl K (new racer!) and Joe Rinn ended in an extremely close finish with Peter taking 11th by one section over Karl and Joe who both finished in the same section and tied for 12th. Wow, talk about close racing. Great racing gentlemen! Flash had a very fast car, turning best laps in 3 of the 4 lanes while Dave L. turned fastest lap in the remaining lane. But it was Flash’s blistering 5.427 second lap in the white lane that earned fasted lap of the day on the Car Model track! Great racing by everyone! Below are the official results (lap counts and finish positions) along with best lap times for each racer in each lane. Please note that the score sheet (if you took pictures of it) had an error in the finishing order for positions 11 and 12. The race results below are the official correct finishing order. Race Results Lap Times Here are the podium finishers and their cars. Left to right: Dave L 2nd, Flash 1st, Jim K 3rd Left to Right: Flash’s Turbine 1st, Dave’s Turbine 2nd, Jim K’s Turbine 3r Note: Picture was taken on the signature 180-degree high banked turn of the historic Car Model track. Nostalgia on the Shamrock Glen While Nostalgia class cars are not an official race class of the ECO that we race during the season, racers do have these cars for the Havoc race so this race was planned to be the 4th race and would only be run if 19 racers, or more showed up. We met our quota, so on to the race! Racing was very close with only 22 laps separating the entire field of 19 racers! Taking the overall win was Dave “Skinny Tires” Lockwood with 78 laps. 2nd place went to Flash who was only a lap behind Dave with 77 laps. Matt G. took the last podium position, 3rd, with 75 laps. Great racing guys! Rounding out the top half of the field (4th thru 10th) was Jim K. (74 laps) in 4th, Greg W. (72 laps) in 5th, John Espo and Joe Rinn battling it out for 6th with Espo (71 laps/42 sections) in 6th (Nice race John!) and Joe Rinn (71 laps/7 sections) in 7th. A 3-way battle for 8th with all 3 racers completing 69 laps, it was Jimmy C (69 laps/57 sections) taking 8th, Paul R (69 laps/44 sections) in 9th, and Hal P (69 laps/1 section) in 10th. Special mention and shout out to new racer Karl K. who finished a solid 11th. Nice racing Karl! Again, great racing everyone. Below are the official results (lap counts and finish positions) along with best lap times for each racer in each lane. Unfortunately, due to a technical SNAFU, the best lap times for one of the race groups was not captured so only the best lap times for the race group that we had data on is shown below. Also, the score sheet had incorrect results for positions 18 and 19 (they were in the wrong order). The race results below show the corrected finishing order for these positions. Race Results Lap Times Here are the podium finishers and their cars. Left to Right: Dave L. 1st, Matt G. 3rd, Flash 2nd Left to Right: Dave’s Toyota, Flash’s Toyota, Matt W’s Aston Martin E-Fray on the Champion After lunch, the racers would run the remaining two races using their E-Fray and SS Fray cars. We would run E-Fray cars on the fast and flowy Champion track. Once again racing was close among the top half of the field with numerous battles for positions being determined by sections. The first battle was for the overall win, with Paul R. and Flash battling it out. Paul turned an amazing 31 laps in the white lane to squeeze out the victory by sections over Flash with Paul taking the win turning 115 laps/36 sections to Flash’s 2nd place finish with 115 laps/9 sections. Rounding out the podium positions was Greg W. in 3rd turning a solid 113 (almost 114) laps. Nice racing gentlemen! Rounding out the top half of the field was Jim K. in 4th with 110 laps, Jimmy C in 5th with 108 laps, Matt G. in 6th with 107 laps, Joe Rinn in 7th with 105 laps, and a battle between Terry and Dave L. for 8th with Terry (104 laps/52 sections) taking 8th and Dave L. in 9th with 104 laps/ 11 sections. Another 3-way battle for 10th between John Espo, Chief and Tom G resulting in all 3 racers finishing in the same lap, 101, but Espo taking 10th by 2 sections over Chief in 11th, 7 sections ahead of Tom G. in 12th. Great racing everyone! Looking at the lap times, Paul turned the fastest lap in the white lane at 5.679 seconds on his way to a 31 lap heat in that lane! The only racer to turn more than 29 laps in a heat. Nice job Paul! Below are the official results (lap counts and finish positions) along with best lap times for each racer in each lane. Race Results Lap Times Here are the podium finishers and their cars. Left to right: Greg W. 3rd, Flash 2nd, Paul R 1st Left to Right: Greg’s C8 Corvette, Flash’s Bugatti, Paul’s Lamborghini Fray Super Stock on the Bear The fourth race of the day would consist of running the ECO Super Stock Fray class on the Bear racetrack. Dave L would take the victory with 111 laps. Flash finished 2nd with 110. Joe Rinn and Paul R. would battle it out for the final podium spot, 3rd, with Joe taking the final podium spot by sections over Paul who would finish 4th. Nice race Joe Rinn! Joe also gets the long-distance award, travelling all the way from his home in Delaware. Talk about dedication to the hobby. Rounding out the top half of the field was Matt G. in 5th with 103 laps, Greg W. in 6th with 102 laps, Jim K in 7th with 99 laps, Jimmy C in 8th with 98 laps, just edging out Peter L in 9th by sections, and Terry A taking 10th with 97 laps, just beating out Jimmy Mac (who had a very fast car) by sections. Looking at the lap times, Dave L drove very consistently, taking fastest lap in 3 of the 4 lanes. But it was Flash who was able to turn the fastest lap of 5.983 seconds in the blue lane. The only sub-6 second lap time of the race! Below are the official results (lap counts and finish positions) along with best lap times for each racer in each lane. Please note that there was an error in the race sheet with regards to tabulation of total lap count for one of the racers, resulting in a correction of 3 finishing positions. The race results below are the official corrected results. Race Results Lap Times Here are the podium finishers and their cars. Left to right: JoeRinn 3rd, Flash 2nd, Dave L 1st Left to Right: Joe Rinn’s Bugatti, Flash’s McLaren, Dave’s ? Checkered Flag Wow! What a great turnout and a great day of racing! Again, it was great to see the new racers, Sam, Dave, and Karl. Great racing guys! You guys really need to sign up for the Halloween Havoc. Hope to see you there and at future ECO races. Also need to mention, that long time ECO racer, Donnie Hall, who missed most of last year, made a brief guest appearance at today’s race. Hopefully Donnie will be able to join us this year at some of our races. The ECO is off to a great start this season with a strong showing of racers at Dave’s opening event last month and today’s 19 racer strong event! Not to mention the 61 racers who have signed up for the Havoc. Hopefully we can keep this momentum going! For most of us, the Havoc will be our next race. If you have not signed up, you are missing a really great event, and I urge you to sign up by reaching out to Dave Lockwood. Next month, November 21st , we’ll be at Rick Morissette’s FB Raceway in East Hartford, CT. to race Indy with Roadster bodies on the Oval, TFX with Muscle car bodies on the Pat Dube (road course) track, and back on the Oval with Coupes. If we meet our 19 racer quota, a fourth race, an IROC race, will be held on the Pat Dube track. Happy Halloween!!! Thank you and see you next month!