New
Car and New Face Dominate the Big Race
19 Year-old Tom Rosati took the veterans to
school and won the 1979 Oxford 250
Pictures Below Recap
Recounted by Mark Truman using Stock
Car Racing Magazine Recap, November 1979 by Herb Dodge
NOTE: Exact quotes from the magazine will be in italics!!
July 15, 1979 and July 22, 1979 - The
1979 Oxford 250 got off to a resounding thud when it was announced that there
was no NASCAR sanction for the event.
The fear of top track officials was that many of the national and southern
stars who had made the trip north over the last few years might not see the
need to travel considering there were no national points on the line. However, Bob Bahre had a habit of turning
what looked to be a bad situation into a successful enterprise and when Dick
Bahre called the Midwest and got commitments from Junior Hanley and his
protégé, Mark Malcuit, some star power returned to the event. Surprisingly, the lack of a NASCAR sanction
didn’t really even keep the south from rising.
The resultant field was one of the best ever assembled for a short
track race in the United States. Only
one southern star of note did not show, and his absence has little to do with
the lack of a sanction. Defending
national sportsman champ Butch Lindley stayed away because the rules specified
that all cars must run the McCreary Y-3 track tire. Lindley has a lucrative Firestone deal. Virginia driver Bill Dennis, in an accent that seemed totally out
of place in Maine, commented, “The rest of
us are here. We’re not chasin’
points, we’re chasin’ MONEY!” With
$43,420 posted as the actual paid purse, there was plenty of money to be won.
The major rift, and really the
major story leading up to race, was the dispute between Bahre and NASCAR and
the effects it could have on the future of relations between Oxford Plains
Speedway and the Florida-based sanctioning body. The sanction became a sore point between Bahre and Northern
NASCAR honcho Tom Curley. Apparently,
Curley wanted the point money from the events to go into the Northern NASCAR
Point Fund. Bahre wanted it to remain
in his own Oxford Open Series point fund.
“NASCAR has been nothing but good to me, but Curley is acting like a dictator,”
Bahre states. “He just threw the rules
down. He has his way of thinking and I
have mine. Daytona is listening to
him. Curley is gonna hurt NASCAR
North. I know he thinks he doing it
right. Hell, if I shoot my wife I
think I did the right thing.”
Once race day approached all of
the talk about NASCAR subsided and the talk about Hanley and Malcuit’s radical
Camaro’s started. The two Hanley-built
machines were lightweight and had to have almost 800 lbs of lead added to the
car to make the 3200 lb minimum weight.
The sportsman type cars, conversely, had to weigh in at 3100
pounds. The Camaros are little more
than modifieds with full bodies. Hanley
claimed the added weight helped him.
“With these hard tires, we would be spinning the wheels all the way around
the track without the weight,” he commented.
Bill Dennis said, “They are going to be tought to beat – almost
impossible!” As cloudy skies and
heavy air moved in, the first heat race confirmed everyone’s fears as Hanley
came from deep in the lineup to win the pole very easily. Malcuit followed that with an easy win in
the second heat to put the two Camaros on the front row. Langis Caron from Canada took the third heat
race with Tom Rosati hot on his heels.
The final was a classic matchup of Oxford 250 returnees as Tommy Ellis
held off Dick McCabe, Morgan Shepherd and defending Oxford 250 winner Bob
Pressley. Dave Dion and Ralph Nason
took home victories in the two consolation races.
As the field lined up for the
start of the feature event a light rain began to fall and then it turned into a
steady mist. The cars took to the track
in an attempt to dry it, but with the heavy air and a persistent mist there was
just no way they would be able to race.
Thus, the race was red-flagged and postponed to the next Sunday, July 22nd. Three drivers failed to return for the rescheduled
race, but they were big ones. Hanley
totaled his Camaro in Mt. Clemens, Michigan on Thursday night. He was unable to
prepare a new one in time to return to Maine on Sunday. Bill Dennis and Morgan Shepherd were racing
down south on Saturday night. The
resulting shuffle put Malcuit on the pole, with Langis Caron outside in the
front row.
Everyone’s fears of Malcuit
dominating the event came true at the drop of the green flag. The Ohio standout simply drove away from
Caron. Caron had something amiss in his
Nova and would be an early retiree leaving the chase to Tommy Ellis and Don
Biederman. Tom Rosati, who had just
received his new Emanuel Zervakis race car a month earlier, kept his Ventura in
sight of the top three and would never fall out of the top four the rest of the
night. Early caution flags kept the
field bunched up and Malcuit could never pull to an extreme advantage. After the smoke had cleared on the early
mishaps, at lap 68 the race then went without a yellow for the next 101 laps. Malcuit was starting to worry about his fuel
supply when Don Brown spun off the second turn, bringing out the yellow on lap
169. Malcuitt pitted for fuel and a
tire check. As he pulled out, his crew
chief said, “We can go the distance now.
We’re all set.”
The new leader of the race was
Rosati, brother to 1974 Oxford 250 runner-up John Rosati and a former champion
from Stafford Motor Speedway. Rosati
had not advanced to the modified level, as many predicted, and instead decided
he’d rather run with the full-fendered, rockem’ sockem’ NASCAR Sportsman
Division. He saved his money over the
winter of 1978-79 so he could purchase the new Zervakis car and the car had
only two races under its belt before the Oxford 250. A couple of second place finishes got Rosati and his team
prepared for the biggest event in New England.
The pressure from Malcuit’s charge to the front was stalled just five
laps after the restart. Malcuit was
trying to go under Dick McCabe for second when the two cars hit. Both cars continued, but the right
suspension on Malcuit’s Camaro had been damaged. He was never again a factor in the race.
Bob Pressley, the
dominator of the 1978 event, was now in second. On the restart, Pressley jumped past Rosati to take the
lead. The young charger was not
intimidated by the older veteran, however, and eight laps later he retook the
top spot. Another yellow on lap 199
brought Rosati, Pressley and McCabe together for the restart. They went three-wide coming off turn two,
with Pressley again gaining the advantage.
Rosati regained the lead a short time later. It was thrilling, wheel-to-wheel stuff that had the crowd on its
feet for most of the final laps. Rosati
would survive a late race scare when trying to lap Pete Silva on lap 212. A spin from the contact took the lead from
Rosati, but he spun his Ventura in a “360” and kept it moving. Maine racer Harvey Sprague would gain his
lap back at that point, which had major implications on Sprague’s results at
the end of the race. It didn’t look
good for the 19-year old Rosati as the defending champ, Pressley, and the wily
northern star, McCabe were now ahead of him jostling for the lead. They ran several laps side by side. Then McCabe seemed to come down on Pressley
in turn three. The cars made contact
and both spun off the track in turn four.
It ended McCabe’s race and dropped Pressley to third in the running
order. It was learned later that McCabe
was actually a lap down during all these incidents. Rosati inherited the lead one more time and
withstood a caution period for Dave Dion’s blazing fire that needed safety
crews to extinguish. Dion was not hurt.
Rosati held the lead on the
restart and led the final thirty laps.
He took the checkers to the cheers of the 11,000 fans as it was one of
the most popular victories in Oxford Plains’ history. After a jubilant victory lane celebration, where Rosati received
a check for $10,000, he bubbled, “I can’t believe I won this! All I ever wanted to do was equal John
(Rosati). Without him, I wouldn’t be
able to do all this stuff.” Bob
Pressley was quoted as saying after the race, “The kid just plain outran
me. He ran a good race.”
CLOSING: I was surprised to see this raced described by Herb Dodge as
providing the most exciting, unusual, incredible racing in the six year
history of the event. It was probably
the most heart-stopping 80 laps the crowd ever witnessed at the 1/3 mile Maine
oval. While the 1979 event has
always been remembered for an upset victory by Rosati over the top NASCAR sportsman
drivers in the country, the quality of action described in the recap makes me
wonder why more people don’t talk about.
Say nothing about the young underdog overcoming the odds, it sounds like
there was some exciting side-by-side racing.
Of course, the impact of the Hanley cars would be felt even more in the
coming years (see the 1982 recap) and Hanley’s penchant for dramatic
appearances and exotic cars would follow him for years to come. But on this night, it was the young gun for
the 1970’s that was the best of all. Harvey
Sprague drove to a surprise second, worth $6,000. Pressley received $4,000 for third.
6th Annual Oxford 250 Pictures
Tom Rosati’s #07 gets by Langis Caron Mark Malcuit (170), Tommy Ellis,
Rosati Rosati celebrates
with his father in the press box