Commentary by: Langley Austin ~ [email protected] (@langleyaustin on twitter)
Altamahaw, NC(December 7, 2011) — Brad Allen doesn’t like to be in the spotlight, but when you take over a racetrack that seemed destined to fail and make something out of it that all the fans in the area can be proud of and all the tracks around you are jealous of …. you’re going to be in the spotlight. Call it timing, call it luck, call it a fluke … call it whatever you want, but Ace Speedway is back on the map and in a big way due to the leadership of Allen and his faithful staff.
Allen is the envy of nearly all the Promoters/General Managers in this region and when things seemed to unravel at Ace Speedway this fall, it certainly wasn’t his fault. Ownership in recent years has been an issue at the beautiful 3/8 mile speedplant, but under Allen’s direction the track had started to gain ground on rumors of bad checks and other issues in previous years under previous management teams. However, the ownership problems were beginning to show toward the end of the 2011 season and just before the final race of the regular season it was RACE22.com, who broke the story that Allen might be leaving and that all the hard work over the past two seasons might be heading down the drain.
However, the story didn’t end there … Allen managed to get track owner, Abraham Woidislawsky to keep things going and forge ahead with plans for a couple of end of year ‘big races’ for the fans and drivers in the area. The first of those two races, a Modified show went off with a small car count and few fans in the stands and when it came time for the Late Model Stock Car ‘big race’, Woidislawsky got cold feet. After having Late Model guys that don’t normally race there test for two weeks and keeping the race on schedule through the day before the event, rain and a somewhat chilly forecast caused Woidislawsky to back out of the event and force Allen to cancel it.
From there … rumors swirled, fans and drivers were outraged at the cancelation of the event and people were instantly saying that Ace Speedway was finished for good. Allen was upset as well as he was forced to look like the bad guy since the track owner, Woidislawsky is nowhere around for drivers to see and hasn’t visited the track, but a handful of times since purchasing it several seasons ago. Allen had to think that his time at Ace was through and rumors began to swirl about where he would end up in 2012, as tracks had to be lining up to get someone to operate their track that had done the job that he had at Ace.
In what, I would call only the second smart thing that Woidislawsky has done in his ownership at Ace Speedway, he asked Allen to fly to Philadelphia, PA to meet with him and discuss his future and the future of one of the best bullrings in racing. Allen, who wanted nothing more than to stay at Ace rather than take a job at one of the many tracks he was being rumored to be being courted by, gladly accepted. Allen and Woidislawsky met and got to know one another better, according to a post on Allen’s Facebook page and Allen will now return to Ace for his third season as General Manager, the longest anyone has held that position since Woidislawsky bought the track.
What’s next for ASA Sanctioned, Ace Speedway? With Allen returning and Woidislawsky possible ready to give him more control, we can only think that the Altamahaw, NC track will return to prominence and get past it’s last season demise.
