Rockford Speedway-Goblin 250 Enduro

10/25/2015

After battling all the weather elements during the race season, my last auto race of this year turned out to be a magnificent day. The original theme for this entry to the blog was going to be fellow photographer Mark Melchiori's return to competitive racing in the Goblin 250. Unfortunately Saturday, they were not able to get the car to run. So the plan is to race it in the Spring Enduro at Rockford Speedway. Today's festivities started with the kid's costume contest. This was the largest group for the costume contest in everyone's memory. There were some great costumes!

And the winner was... Dorothy!

After the Costume Contest it was time to judge the cars entered in the Beauty Contest. The winner of the Beauty Contest is awarded the pole position for the start of the Enduro..

And the winner is.... The No. 74.

It was then time to start racing. The Goblin Enduro 250 is run in two 125 lap segments with an intermission. The first half is run on the oval and the second makes a jog through the infield and is called the "Monza" course. With around 130 cars on a quarter mile track, you can imagine things got quite crowded.

At the intermission, all the kids were brought out onto the front stretch where they had fun participating in the Candy Scramble.

During the Scramble, the racetrack was re-configured for the "Monza" course. The race re-started and the non-stop action continued. There were a couple of stoppages to clear the track of blockages, but for the most part the racing was bump and grind.

In the end it was Schererville, Indiana's Ryan Lagestee, outlasting and outrunning the gaggle of cars to win the Goblin!

After the Goblin, the final event of the day and season was the "Big Swarm" Demo Derby. Twenty cars participated in the Derby with Rockford's Charlie Schork outlasting the others to take the win. An interesting fact was that this was Charlie's first ever event on asphalt. He is a Dirt Track racer!