RTM at Orange County Saturday

[RTMPromo]

Join the Rolling Thunder Modifieds presented by Red Man this weekend at Orange County Speedway in Rougemont, NC. This track has always proven to be a popular venue with the tour's drivers and with 19 teams planning to compete it has all the makings of being one of the biggest races of the 2009 season.

Come out and join us, along with ISCARS, ASA Southeast Asphalt Series, and the East Coast Flatheads for a night of diverse and exciting racing.

And yes, Red Man will be there giving out samples to adults with valid ID.

RTM will also be sending live updates via Twitter for those who couldn't be in attendance. So be sure to become a follower of us.

All details can be found at www.rtm-racing.com (http://www.rtm-racing.com)

[RTMPromo]

Rain won the day unfortunately Saturday. The ISCARS event has been rescheduled for August 22nd, details on if the RTM tour will participate with that event will be disclosed in the near future.

[RACEFACE]

Using your own words "This track has always proven to be a popular venue" I would hope as a fan who attended OCS on the 11th to see your series (RTM) race that you will do the right thing and return on August 22. I'm sure these are not just the thoughts of myself. Just do the right thing.

[AlkyMadness]

I also hope the RTM comes back to support the reschedule. I never made it into the track last night because I was waiting outside to see if the rain would pass.

How many cars did you have and did you get any support from the mods that normally run Ace?

[RACEFACE]

If I'm not mistaken these Rolling Thunder Modifieds are a different "type" of modified that the ones that run at Ace.....they look the sames kind of......but different tire/motor rules I would guess. I don't remember the actual number of the ones there but it would have been a very good race.

[AlkyMadness]

I don't think it takes many changes for the Ace mods to run with RTM. RTM ended their season at Ace last year and I believe some of the Ace guys ran with them.

By the way, RTM will close out the season at Ace again this year.

[Rowdy]

RTM run Modifieds under the IMCA rules.

Should RTM do what you called "the right thing" and return on August 22nd that would put the teams through a hell schedule and hurt the car count since they already have races on 8/8(SoBo), 8/15(Newport), and 8/29(ECMS). I agree that they should reschedule the race but that is over the line to say that returning on the 8/22 is the "right thing."

[AlkyMadness]

I think the person who made the "right thing" comment was coming from the standpoint of the race fan. People bought tickets with the expectation of seeing three things: ASA late models, ISCAR, and the RTM mods.

It's bad enough that ASA only managed to bring 16 cars (that are now locked in to their starting order), but to cut 1/3 of the show isn't very good for them.

As far as the hell tour, please. If you want to talk about hell tours, look at the UMP Summernationals. 28 races in a month covering 5-6 states.

The current schedule has races on four consecutive Saturdays. Other than the tow, that's no different than if you ran at a Saturday night track every week. If you want to cut down on future hellishness, I'd say start out by not scheduling races at track in Tennessee (Newport). Was this race going to pick up any local TN cars? If not, why go there? I'll be curious to see how many of the RTM teams make that haul. For what it's worth, RTM isn't even listed on the Newport schedule for 8/15. All it shows is twin races for the Super Late Model and their regular support classes.

The base of operations for RTM is NC/VA. Making small budget teams tow several hours into the mountains does not make sense. Racing at a track like OCS in the heart of your territory makes sense from several aspects.

Hope to see RTM on 8/22.

[Rowdy]

Those UMP teams probably have bigger teams, bigger budgets and way better payouts then RTM has on a weekly basis. I thought the Newport race was a stretch myself, a lot of things about the tour has made me shake my head lately.

I hope RTM re-attempts this race and gives those with tickets a discount should they not race the same day as ASA since I doubt RTM had much say in the rescheduled date.

[RTMPromo]

Ace modifieds are pretty similar to RTM modifieds, just a few changes here and there can make them run in the RTM tour, we've had a few race at Ace last season, we've found in the past that it's hard to get fulltimers from other tracks (Southside, Ace, Langley) to come out and race with the RTM tour, which in the same token on our off weekends, you don't really see the RTM cars at those tracks, although one or two can be found at Langley.

Scheduling is tough, you have commitments from other promoters and other tracks that want you, unless you have the funds to lease out a facility, something RTM is not in the position to do at the moment, so you become at the mercy of track promoters to tell you which weekends you can race and when...that frusteration is compounded by a rainout when you have to reschedule a race, especially a popular venue when you have already laid out the rest of your season.

We try to run races every other week to give a bit of a turnaround at all possible, and let the teams rest, and repair their cars. The funding for these teams are not as big as other tours out there, and there are a lot of small-budget teams who compete with us. With an event like OCS where ISCARS leased out the track, our ability to commit to them when we had three other races scheduled already in August was difficult, it wasn't as if we we're able to talk to the OCS staff to find another date because it wasn't on their dime.

In the end, the right decision was made, and everyone seems to be happy with it, we just need this rain to lay off.