Northwest auto racing

The next chapter in Northwest auto-racing history is about to unfold at Portland Speedway.

A half-mile asphalt track for more than 50 years, the speedway has been changed into a half-mile dirt track that is to be dedicated tomorrow night with a Northern Sprint Tour winged sprint-car race and an event for Pro-Four West Modifieds.

Work, which has included removal of the asphalt and the installation of about 5,000 cubic yards of clay hauled from a site near Scappoose, a few miles northwest of Portland, is expected to be on-going until the start of the race.

"We're going to be ready," General Manager Craig Armstrong said yesterday.

Armstrong said he and his partner, Ken Clapp, have invested about $250,000 in the project, an expense they believe is justified because of an apparent increased appetite for sprint-car racing on dirt.

If true, and because Portland Speedway is inside a major metropolitan area, the track's 6,000 grandstand seats could prove inadequate.

"That's obviously our hope," Armstrong said. "Because we are in a major market area and dirt-track racing is so different from asphalt racing, we might have an opportunity to do really well with it."

What helped convince Armstrong and Clapp that what they were doing made sense was the securing of dates for World of Outlaws races Sept. 25 and 26. For those, seating capacity will be increased to about 15,000 and a new lighting system will be ready.

"It's going to put us in a totally different era with a totally different type of operation with first-class lights," Armstrong said.

Meanwhile, the Northern Sprint Tour drivers are continuing to make history under the leadership of Fred Brownfield, a Snohomish businessman and former sprint-car driving champion at Skagit Speedway. The NST is growing in concert with increasing opportunities to race.

Earlier this season, Brownfield opened a new track - State Fair Raceway - on a portion of what was the Yakima Meadows horse-racing site. NST has an established home at Grays Harbor Raceway Park in Elma and a circuit that includes tracks in Lebanon, Medford, Cottage Grove and now Portland in Oregon; Billings, Mont.; and Yakima and Elma.

Brownfield also is the promoter of World of Outlaws races in Billings (Aug. 15), Elma (Aug. 18-19), Yakima (Aug. 22) and Cottage Grove (Aug. 29). He is not involved in promoting Portland's WOO races, but NST drivers are expected to be involved.

As for tomorrow's dirt-track race in Portland, Brownfield said some of the NST drivers are taking a "wait-and-see approach." He said he expects a field of 30 to 35 drivers, including points leaders Shawna Wilskey, Jay Smith and Ricky Fauver.

Racing is scheduled for 7 p.m.

Kaltschmidt back home

Ken Kaltschmidt will have the home-state advantage Saturday night when he and other NASCAR Northwest Series drivers compete at Raceway Park in Kalispell, Mont.

The track is near Kaltschmidt's hometown of Marion, from where he has emerged as the surprise series points leader, just ahead of Washingtonians Garrett Evans of Ardenvoir, Gary Lewis of Bothell and Gaylon Stewart of Everett.

Note

-- Mike Baisch of Salt Lake City became the fifth winner of the NW Sprintcar Racing Association season when he won Saturday night's feature race in Roseburg, Ore.