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Added: 26 Jun 2014 |
Category: Older Oval Racing |
TBT Special - The Shale Arena |
It doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, but this time five years ago all the hype and talk on the local oval racing scene was about shale and the opening of Nutts Corner Shale Arena.
Having been to several shale tracks and shale meetings down the lines, I’d high hopes for it, and I could see a lot of benefits in it, it’s a great leveller, you can compete on a lower budget than tar and it was something different that I don’t think we’d had before in NI, certainly we hadn’t had in my lifetime.
The opening meeting seen four English visitors with Shale Supremo Bert Finniken headlining them along with Bryn Tootell and Kelvyn Whalley in the Ftooz and Carlos Perez brought his F1 to do some demo laps.
The opening meeting was much hyped, including radio advertising and took place on a glorious day at the end of June, with good sized grids, a decent crowd and the sort of good and unpredictable racing that you get with any new track.
For all the lifespan the shale track had, it's first meeting for me sits up there with some of the most memorable meetings there has been over here, probably just because it was something different and the place was buzzing.
The second meeting lived off the hype of the first meeting, but by the third meeting the hype had died right down to the point there was many people (myself included) unsure it was even on until they arrived at it. A miserably wet day with a poor car turnout and and even poorer crowd to witness the brown car lead from the brown car and the brown car will be what people remember as the end of the shale track, which to me was a bit of a shame.
At the time there was lots of issues surrounding the whole thing, such as what it would do to National Bangers running at a second track? what would it do to F2 numbers, would they end up with shale drivers and tar drivers? Would it replace Nutts Corner Raceway, or how would the fixtures end up split? would the saloons ever get to race on it? was it even shale? Many a race fan could sit down and have the same debates today as to what was right and what was wrong, but at the end of the day it’s gone now and confined to the history books.
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