In October, 1972, dirt-track stock car racing came to the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse for a year-end championship event, and this October, the 44th annual “Super Dirt Week” will take place there. For the last time.
That is, for the last time at the New York State Fairgrounds.

Considerable uncertainty surrounds the future of the event, due to the State of New York’s plans to overhaul the Fairgrounds and eliminate the one-mile oval in the process. Immediately following the 200-mile race for big-block Modifieds on Sunday, October 11, work is to begin to tear down the 16,000-seat grandstand. This is to be followed by construction on an equestrian center and an Ice Plex on the 72-acres of the 375-acre Fairgrounds now occupied by the race track.

From that 1972 race won by Zephyr Hills Florida resident Buzzie Reutimann, father of NASCAR driver David Reutimann, “Super Dirt Week” grew quickly to be a season-ending extravaganza to which “everyone” in Northeast dirt-track racing goes. The event spans nearly a full week, from the start of tech inspection on Tuesday through the last checkered flag on Sunday. The big-block Modifieds are the headline act, but their small-block brethren are on the card as well, as are other classes including the USAC Silver Crown cars.

Super Dirt Week has had a direct impact on dirt-track stock car racing in the region, most notably for a car nicknamed the “Batmobile.” In 1980, driver Gary Balough arrived with a black car that looked nothing like the modified stock cars of the day, sporting bodywork ostensibly from a Lincoln but built to have an aerodynamic advantage on the high-speed track. Balough demolished the track record and ran off with the race, and Modifieds have used purpose-built bodies ever since.

The impending loss of the Fairgrounds track has been considered by many to be a death knell for Super Dirt Week. However, public figures ranging from the World Racing Group’s CEO Brian Carter to New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo have indicated otherwise. Carter, whose organization conducts Super Dirt Week, has said that as an incentive to keep the event in New York State the World Racing Group will receive State-sponsored promotional funds of $50,000 per year for the next five years. Cuomo has been quoted as saying that “Next year, race fans will be able to enjoy their favorite weekend of racing in a brand new facility.”

Excuse me, Governor, a brand new facility? This statement has fueled speculation that Super Dirt Week will resume in 2016 at Central New York Raceway Park, an ambitious project that as we write is only a tract of land on which trees have been cleared and dirt has been moved but no actual construction has yet begun. But Central New York Raceway Park is the brainchild of Glen Donnelly, who just happens to be the same guy who created the original Super Dirt Week in 1972.

Reportedly, Donnelly has secured a piece of State funding for his project, and Donnelly is a proven doer. Can he build a race track suitable for Super Dirt Week in one year’s time through a New York State winter?

It seems likely that Super Dirt Week will continue in some form, but what that form is to be remains unclear. More than four decades of history of the event at the New York State Fairgrounds is important to racing fans and to the racers themselves. Driver Brett Hearn, who has the greatest number of Super Dirt Week victories to his credit, has said that while Super Dirt Week can be moved somewhere else and be a success, “It won’t be the same.”