Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 27, 1993 TAG: 9309270160
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Long
There was:
Color - Bright Day Glo on the cars, drivers and their fans.
Pageantry - Parades of cars and trucks, the introduction of NASCAR drivers, the national anthem and Victory Lane.
And beer - lots and lots of beer of many brands, carried into the speedway in small coolers by thousands of race fans.
A few miles up the road in July, the much smaller Franklin County Speedway was raided by the county Sheriff's Office, state police and state Alcohol Beverage Control agents. Fifty-six race fans were arrested, many for drinking in public.
Whitey Taylor, who runs the Franklin County track, complained that he was being singled out. Race fans drink in public with impunity at the Martinsville Speedway, which doesn't have a beer license either, Taylor groused.
As far as that goes, Taylor is right. The Henry County sheriff and track officials do tolerate the widespread illegal public drinking that goes on at the Martinsville track.
But, they say, they won't put up with the race fans who get drunk and try to cause trouble.
As he surveyed the crowd of roughly 56,000 from the relative cool and quiet of the track's pressbox, Henry County Sheriff H.F. Cassell said he expected that before the day was over, some in the crowd would "get out of the way."
But Cassell said he would be surprised if there were more than 10 arrests made during the whole afternoon, not to say that others might not need to be arrested.
The track puts a limit on the size of coolers, but his department doesn't try to police what fans bring through the gates in them, the sheriff said.
"We don't consider we have a problem here," said Cassell, who has been attending races at the speedway for 35 years as a sheriff and state trooper.
"We have more problems with the nightclubs around here on Friday and Saturday nights than we have here with 50,000 people."
Race fans didn't go out of their way to hide their drinking around law officers.
Early in Sunday's race, at the top of the concrete grandstand overlooking Turn 2, a young man stood on top of a small plastic cooler drinking from a can of Natural Light, which was poorly disguised in a foam-rubber holder. Beer cans were scattered on the ground around the cooler and at the feet of the man's friends, who also were enjoying cool ones.
Five or six feet to the left of the beer drinkers were two state troopers and a Henry County sheriff's deputy. About 10 feet to their right were another trooper and deputy. But beer drinkers and law officers kept their attention on the track where Ernie Irvan, the race's eventual winner, was leading the pack.
A short distance away, three state policeman stood in a grandstand tunnel watching the race. They didn't seem to notice when someone in front of them heaved an empty beer can toward the fence that separates the track from the grandstands.
As the day wore on, many of the fans tossed their empties toward the tall fence that surrounds the paved oval. The cans accumulate in a deep pile in the walkway in front of the grandstands, and after a race are donated to a local group to raise funds by recycling them.
"We're not in here to police anybody," said 1st Sgt. M.E. Harris, who joined his troopers in the tunnel.
The state police were there to direct traffic, Harris said. They would, as always, be on the lookout for drunken drivers, but law enforcement at the track was in Sheriff Cassell's hands, he said.
Track officials and Cassell realize they probably couldn't stop the drinking if they wanted to.
Even if he and his 70 deputies tried to arrest everyone who was drinking illegally at the track, Cassell asked where he would jail 30,000 people.
The race is like a Virginia Tech or University of Virginia football game, where public drinking also is commonplace, Cassell said.
As long as the drinkers behaved themselves, the track had no problem with it, said Dick Thompson, the track's vice president for public relations and marketing.
This is not the first time Taylor has brought up drinking at Martinsville in defense of his Franklin County operation, speedway President Clay Campbell said.
"The way we feel about it," Campbell said, "is if you've got a nice place and nice atmosphere, people are more apt to behave themselves."
A race fan from Blacksburg, who asked his name not be used, said the crowd is different at the Franklin County races from the one attending NASCAR events in Martinsville.
Often, the people at Taylor's speedway are there to party and not to watch the race, said the man, who has attended races in both places.
Mark Dooley, a 28-year-old electrician and race fan from Newport News, said the Martinsville race wouldn't be the same if authorities stopped the drinking.
Dooley, who had a beer in one hand and a cooler in the other, said he never sees any problems caused by drinking at the many races he attends each year. "Fights - you see more of that down in the pits," he said.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB