30th Consecutive Year of Enduro Racing to Kick Off at Riverhead Sun. May 3rd

When Barbara & Jim Cromarty swing open the gates to their Riverhead Raceway Sunday May 3rd to start another great season of Enduro racing it will mark the 30th consecutive season of Enduro racing at the historic quarter mile oval. A full slate of Grand, Truck, two 8-Cylinder races as well as a 4/6 Car Enduro will usher in this milestone season of “Enduromania” starting at 12:30 pm.

Memorial Day weekend of 1986 saw the first ever Enduro race presented by the Cromarty family at Riverhead and longtime PR man and announcer Bob Finan recalls it well. “It was amazing, we had anywhere between 150 and 200 cars and we had zero experience at this type of racing” Bob thought back “heck I remember Bob O’Rourke and Walt Edsall putting a bunch of cars out at once for practice that morning which didn’t turn out too well” Bob laughed.

Then it was time to have the first race and Finan has vivid memories of the start of that event. “Back then Mike Calinoff and I were calling the races and Mike had a signature call to start a race by bellowing out,’ and they are on their way’, which he did when the green waved. There was only one issue however, “the cars were lined up around the entire track and had nowhere to go. With that Mike turns to me and says, Finan they ain’t moving!” Eventually they would indeed get underway and Peter Verwys, a tested tough former Bomber driver from the Freeport Stadium would record the first ever victory.

Over the years in their heyday in the late 80’s and early 90’s some 440 drivers would compete in a single day Enduro event once a month at Riverhead Raceway and the races were so tough to get into that competitors would actually camp out overnight on a Sunday night at the track’s Copiague business office to enter the race in person Monday morning.

Today the Enduro race series continues to be a vital part of Riverhead Raceway on both an entertainment front as well as serving as a feeder system for the NASCAR Whelen All American Series. Over the years due to availability  and popularity the Enduros have gone from strictly 8-Cylinder cars to include 4/6-Cylinder machines plus the stock car type Enduro class, the Grand Enduro. That class was the brainchild of the late “Racin” Rich Johnson who along with Bill Denniston the then race director and Barbara & Jim Cromarty saw the value in such a division.

Jeff Bressler a former track announcer once dubbed Riverhead Raceway “the Enduro capital of the racing world” and those words still ring true to this day as is evidenced by the 30th consecutive season of Enduro racing that gets underway Sunday May 3rd at 12:30 pm.