Nice Ed Hinton ESPN Blog entry on auto racing in Mississippi...

[Maroon Eagle]

Ed Hinton covers auto racing for espn.com. He's been reporting for many years and is a Laurel native. Some of you may recall that he's the guy who wrote "The Dixie Cup" article for Sports Illustrated in 1991.

Anyway, here's the link to the aforementioned blog entry. I enjoyed it. I remember my father mentioning seeing races at the Laurel Fairgrounds.</p>

 

[tossedoff]

but not MS.

 

[Maroon Eagle]

...if this brief snippet from Hinton's blog entry is any indication:
</p>

On summer nights as a preschooler I would lie awake in the dark with the screened windows open, listening to the iron thunder rolling across the trees from the fairgrounds a few miles away.</p>

"What is that, Mama?" I would ask.</p>

"Old stock car races," she would say.</p>

"Can we go see them?"</p>

"No, honey. Only sorry people go to those old stock car races."</p>

The matter was closed for several summers, the taboo absolute -- and tantalizing.</p>

 

[xxxWalkTheDawg]

is the cost advantage of drag racing. You can build an engine and it last for years in the local lower forms of drag racing... hell you can even take your own personal car and win money if you are good at bracket racing and your car is consistent.

It is much more cost effective to drag race and a lot of folks in MS aren't farther than an hour from a track. The closest dirt track to me is well over an hour away. I can get to three drag strips in that time.

 

[FlabLoser]

http://www.misschicken.co...g%20History%20Tracks.htm

I can remember seeing NASCAR at the Jackson International Speedway in Clinton.

Good 2006 pics of that race track: http://www.angelfire.com/ms3/corndog2/JIS.html

 

[Spotdawg]

I saw Palisini race later in his life...and it was in a full body late-model dirt car. He had to have been 55 or 60. He couldn't be beat. Still kicking it harder than the bullet-proof 20 year olds. And he'd damn sure move them out of the way.

Ival Cooper was HELL. I happened to frequent an establishment that Ival favored after work and got to know him. Not a lot of talk but you shoulda seen him on the track. By the time that I saw him, he was racing only the super-modifieds (kinds like the picture) and mostly on the circuit based out of Brazoros (sp?) Tx. Those cars could cover the 1/2 mile Jackson International track in sub 15 second laps....as uneven and bumpy as that track was. They had a dog clutch in them and you were kicking it full throttle or on the brakes. No in between. Ival had a couple of wrecks that left him a little shook and it got to the point where he had to "brace up" with a six pack before he got into the car. My memory tells me that he died in a car in time trials. Heart attack the best I remember. He usually raced in a white T shirt until they made him start wearing nomex.

Side note on the Laurel Fairgrounds track, they started racing there on Sunday nights to keep the big names coming (so they wouldn't compete with bigger tracks Sat night shows.) Bobby and Donnie Allison would pull over to Laurel and try to pick up the purse. Bobby told me that the worst wreck he ever had was at Laurel and he must have taken down 3 or 400 young pine trees when his car left the track. He didn't race for weeks after that....he hurt so bad.

 

[MagnoliaHunter]

The first words I learned to say were "Ival Cooper".

Sad fact about Cooper's son: he died racing at a Ival Cooper memorial race.

You guys should come to some of our kart races. Dirt oval in karts that will go 70mph on slick tires. That's tough even if some "experts" on here dont think racers are athletes.

 

[Center Z]

I've never seen that one before.