“We came back from Bader’s and started to think how we could do this. I had numerous conversations with (Bill) Bader and he basically gave us the template to his program and we just started to give it a try,” stated the elder New.  

Over the years, the News have tried various different class configurations and dates to get the right combination, which would be the best family-friendly event for all the racers. Eventually they hit upon a date range and an itinerary for classes and races and have stuck with it.

“We can’t really do the traditional Halloween day ‘cause in the past we have run into weather issues, and if we are too early, there really isn’t the sense of Halloween, so we hit upon this weekend and it seems to work very well for us,” said Bill New.

THE CELEBRATION

One of the things that adds to an event such as this is that the Firebird staff dresses up in costumes on Saturday.

“The costume deal started with our former pro pit coordinator Tony Van,” said Scott New, the oldest of the three New brothers who are instrumental in running the track today. “Once Tony started then as the years went on more and more staff started showing up in costume, till it got to the point where now everybody on staff wears a costume on Saturday.”

That has now started to rub off on the racers have started to take on the costume thing and run with it. There are hayrides for the kids on Saturday, followed by a kids costume contest. In the recent past, trick or treating from trailer to trailer has become a huge event. So much so that racing stops at 6 p.m. on Saturday so that the candy gathering can commence.

Pro Mod Champion Dennis Radford, who is the crew chief on his wife Judy’s top sportsman Pro Stock Dodge Dakota, put it best. “We had so many kids trick or treating we went through twelve bags of candy. They cleaned us out.”

Some of the racers started to decorate their trailers and pit areas and, racers being competitive folks, this has now evolved into decorating pit areas on a grand scale. If someone puts out a couple of lights and some spider webs on the trailer, then next year their neighbors are going to try and one up their friends. Now racers have large inflatable spiders, ghosts, dry ice machines, and even piped in music to give the pit area that seasonal flavor.

It has now escalated to racers making their hauler trailers into haunted houses with scary things inside and mazes to walk through in order to find your desired trick or treat candy.

The Halloween Classic has become a very large family and social event that interrupted by racing. This is not a bad thing, and do not think that the racing is substandard. It is far from it. The racing on track is exciting and the racers are very serious about it, however, from this reporter’s perspective, the main reason people come to the Halloween Classic to be a part of the social experience that is the event. But enough of the social sciences for one day, let us talk about the racing.