Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 10, 1994 TAG: 9408100049
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: M.J. Dougherty
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Long
Video review was required to sort out an accident, the wife of a driver was asked to leave the track and the apparent winner was disqualified. Then, after the race, drivers and team members grumbled about anything and everything.
All this in a division that pays the winner $225 of the $1050 purse for a regular 25-lap race.
The accident involved Christiansburg's Tommy Allie, the winningest driver in the division, and Newport's Aaron Deplazes.
On the second lap of the special 50-lap race, Deplazes pulled below the white line inside turn 4 to try to pass Allie for third place. Then he started to drift up.
Allie, meanwhile, tapped the rear of the car in front of him - eventual winner Davis "Ducky" Phillips of Plum Creek - as Phillips slowed slightly coming out of the turn.
Allie went down slightly. Deplazes kept coming up. And when they met, the two ended up in the wall. Allie's Chevy Camaro broke an axle. Deplazes suffered some damage to the front of his Chevrolet.
After the race, each driver saw himself as blameless.
"Aaron put me out," said Allie.
"I was racing my line," said Deplazes.
The track officials agreed with Allie's assessment and put Deplazes out of the race for rough driving. It was the second time this season Deplazes has been so penalized.
After the race, Deplazes and track officials watched a videotape of the accident. A copy of that video is being sent to Jerry Cook, NASCAR's competition administrator in Daytona Beach, Fla., for further review.
After the accident, strange happenings continued. Chris Deplazes, Aaron's wife, was asked to leave the track by a Pulaski County sheriff's deputy. She allegedly made an obscene gesture to the control tower at the track after her husband was removed from the race. That prompted track officials to ask that she be removed from the stands.
After meeting with the deputy for a few minutes, Chris Deplazes left the facility. She was not available for comment Sunday night.
With all that sorted out, the attention turned back to racing. And Grump Wills ran away with the race, beating Phillips by more than 14 seconds.
But a post-race inspection found that the valves in Wills' engine were after-market and did not meet the specifications for the division. That took the victory away from Wills and gave it to Phillips.
In this instance, though, no one associated with the car was to blame. Car owner Don Dirico took a diagram of exactly the type of engine he needed to be built for the 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle that Wills was to drive. But the engine builder still put in the wrong type of valves.
PETITION PROBLEMS: The incident with Chris Deplazes was the latest in a feud between her and track officials.
Several weeks ago, she was in the stands before a race, gathering signatures for a petition complaining about the track. Eventually, she was told to stop.
Deplazes said she is not the person who started the petition idea, but added that she was the only person willing to be open about it. Others who supported the effort were afraid to take a public stance against the track for fear of retribution.
The petition was addressed to New River Valley Speedway and Ronnie Snoddy, the track's promoter and co-owner.
It complained about black flags being too frequent and targeted at certain drivers, about post-race inspection procedures not being the same for the top three finishers, and about a decline in the number of competitors at the track - which was blamed on decisions by track officials.
The biggest request in the petition: ALL drivers should be treated the same.
The petition closed by stating that if things didn't change, the signees would stop attending races.
"Being in the stands, that's what everybody was saying," Deplazes said when interviewed about the petition last week. "We just went and put it down in writing."
Deplazes said that several hundred signatures had been collected and that people have called her about getting a copy of the petition.
Track officials believe the complaints are not justified.
NRVS uses black flags more than some tracks. But it's to try to prevent the racing from getting out of hand - as it does at some tracks.
"We're not going to have bumping and banging," Snoddy said. "That [the bumping and banging] is when we look to use the black flag. We want clean racing. We don't want cars to be wrecked and not be able to come back the next week."
Also, drivers are warned before being shown the flag, which orders them to the pits for a consultation with officials.
For example, on Sunday, Tony Rogers bumped Phillips several times and was advised on lap 22 that any more contact would result in a black flag. When Rogers tapped Phillips on lap 38, he got the call to go see the officials in the pits.
As for post-race inspections, the petitioners are most upset with Lynn Carroll, the track's chief steward.
Carroll admits that sometimes he will order a winning car checked more thoroughly than others in the race.
"If someone has run away with the race, we try to look at them very carefully," said Carroll. "Sometimes we find something and sometimes we don't."
Track rules give Carroll wide latitude as to what he can check and which car or cars he can check. And Carroll has the reputation among people who spend time in the pits as one of the best in the business when it comes to finding a cheating car.
Starting this week, drivers may protest about any car that finishes ahead of them. Previously, drivers could protest only about the car that finished directly in front of them.
When it comes to counting cars, the number of competitors actually has increased in three of the five classes when compared to races through July of last year.
Only the Late Models and the Modified Minis are down. The Late Model numbers are down throughout the region, and NRVS still draws more than most tracks. The Modified Minis are the track's smallest class and are not run at any other track in the Mid-Atlantic Region, limiting their numbers.
The Pure Stocks, Mini Stocks and Limited Sportsmen have had their numbers increase this season.
THIS AND THAT: Calvin Davis of Bland left the Kelly Kidd racing team. Randy Ratliff of Grundy replaced Davis in the No. 49 Oldsmobile ... Gary Schwab became the second driver in as many weeks to come from New York state to NRVS. The former Busch North driver came in from Delevan, N.Y. He was running eighth when his rotor broke late in the race and ended up 15th. ... The driver who came from New York for the twin 100s was misidentified in last week's notebook. He was Brian Horn.
THIS WEEK AT THE TRACK: Saturday is the Hoechst Celanese 200. The feature is a 100-lap Late Model race. The schedule also includes a 35-lapper for the Limited Sportsman cars and 25-lappers for the Pure Stocks, Mini Stocks and Modified Minis.
Also, Kyle Petty's No. 42 show car will be on display.
Gates open at 2 p.m. Practice starts at 4. Qualifying is at 6:15. And the green flag drops at 8.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $1 for children 12 or under.
M.J. Dougherty covers racing and community sports for the Roanoke Times & World News' New River Valley bureau.
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB