The Estevan Motor Speedway is excited to have fans in the stands for the first time this season, so it will a doubleheader July 18 and 19 with fans present.
The track was originally slated to have a program July 5 with spectators in the grandstand, but the plans were scuttled when the provincial government announced on June 30 that racetracks couldn’t use grandstands until July 16. The doubleheader will occur on the first weekend after July 16.
(Editor’s note: there was an article and an advertisement in the July 1 edition of the Mercury promoting the July 5 program. This edition of the paper went to print before the provincial government’s announcement about racetracks was made).
Track president Byron Fichter said the speedway has been forced to cancel or postpone several events this year. They did have a practice session in May, and their season-opener in June was held on pay per view, without use of the grandstand.
“We wanted to kick things off with a bang,” Fichter told the Mercury.
The speedway was to open its season in early May with a doubleheader weekend.
Having a doubleheader is also a strategic move on their part. The speedway typically relies on having drivers from Minot, Williston and other North Dakota communities that are within a couple of hours of Estevan.
Those drivers won’t be able to compete in Estevan on July 18 and 19 because the Canada-U.S. border remains closed to non-essential traffic. So the speedway is reaching out to drivers from Alberta, Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan.
“We felt that if we held a doubleheader, it would provide a better opportunity for those drivers to make a weekend of it, come stay for the weekend, be able to race two times, and make it worth their travel,” said Fichter.
The tracks elsewhere race with a different sanctioning body than the speedway, he said, but the speedway has been working with those drivers from other Canadian tracks on changes those competitors would have to make, such as tires.
“There has been quite a bit of interest, and I guess time will tell how many cars we’ll be able to pull from those areas,” he said.
The expectation is the speedway’s grandstand will be able to be 30-40 per cent capacity, or have about 450-600 fans in the 1,500-seat structure. Fichter said that’s around what they would get for a regular program. Their special events would attract more than 600 fans.
The next edition of the Mercury will have more on this story.
