{"id":7872,"date":"2020-03-23T00:03:28","date_gmt":"2020-03-23T04:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/?p=7872"},"modified":"2020-03-23T00:03:28","modified_gmt":"2020-03-23T04:03:28","slug":"syracuse-smokey-snellbaker-and-the-oldest-race-in-the-dirtvision-vault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2020\/03\/23\/syracuse-smokey-snellbaker-and-the-oldest-race-in-the-dirtvision-vault\/","title":{"rendered":"Syracuse, Smokey Snellbaker, and the oldest race in the DirtVision Vault"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For my second story of these racing re-watch articles, I wanted to challenge myself a little bit.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted it to be an old sprint car race, but I hadn\u2019t narrowed it down quite yet on which one to choose. I checked out the DirtVision Vault \u2013 an online collection of classic races that fans can view for free \u2013 and looked to see what the oldest race available was.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Syracuse, Smokey Snellbaker, and the oldest race in the DirtVision Vault<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>It pulled up the 1979 Super Nationals from the Syracuse Mile dirt track \u2013 a track that had recently crossed my eyes on social media.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Who got to see a race at the Mile before it went away?<\/p>\n<p>We know our <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SuperDIRTcar?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@SuperDIRTcar<\/a> friends have several good memories there. The entire 1980 Syracuse Schaefer 200 is in the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/dirtvision?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@dirtvision<\/a> vault right now. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/o4b9ZrkNn9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/o4b9ZrkNn9<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; World of Outlaws (@WorldofOutlaws) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WorldofOutlaws\/status\/1240981578081284103?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 20, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>A mile-long dirt track. Talk about being unique.<\/p>\n<p>I was so psyched to see just what that long of a track had in store for sprint car racing. I was definitely alive and alert during the 2015 season \u2013 the last year that the Mile was in operation \u2013 but I had never seen a race there, much less had heard of it.<\/p>\n<p>The uniqueness didn\u2019t stop with the layout of the track, though.<\/p>\n<p>The 1979 Super Nationals finale race was home to both sprint cars and what they called super modifieds.<\/p>\n<p>The sprint cars looked at least a bit replicative of today\u2019s machines, but the wing was a bit higher from the chassis, as well as it being skinnier in width.<\/p>\n<p>The modifieds, however, dawned wide wings on the top of cars that more resembled a station wagon than anything you would see on a dirt track in the modern day.<\/p>\n<p>Seeing them race against each other was like watching an IMSA race with multiple classes going at it.<\/p>\n<p>The broadcast was set up in an odd way.<\/p>\n<p>It cut from racing action to a few interviews throughout the race, and the camera work, understandably, wasn\u2019t up to the scale of today\u2019s technology.<\/p>\n<p>One constant remained throughout the race, however.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Smokey Snellbaker <\/strong>was bad fast.<\/p>\n<p>I have no idea what spot Snellbaker started in, but I watched him go from P6 to battling for second within two laps before a caution came out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lynn Paxton <\/strong>had gotten out to nearly a straight-away lead, and it can\u2019t be understated how much of a lead that was, with the track being a mile long.<\/p>\n<p>The caution put the seemingly two best cars right next to each other on the restart and Snellbaker took advantage.<\/p>\n<p>Both cars pulled away from the pack before entering the first turn, and Snellbaker was still blowing the wheels off of Paxton.<\/p>\n<p>A few laps went by and one of the announcers thought Paxton had moved back in the field, but from what I could tell he dropped to third exiting turn 2 and got his spot back before coming back around by the flag stand and broadcast booth.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, Paxton held his second-place position, finishing there behind Snellbaker, who was the absolute class of the field.<\/p>\n<p>Smokey Snellbaker finished his career with two total World of Outlaws wins. He has since passed away, but was inducted into the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sprintcarhof.com\/pages\/hall-of-fame.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">National Sprint Car Hall of Fame<\/a><\/strong> in 2002.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not quite sure if I watched one of his pair of Outlaws victories in that Syracuse broadcast. I\u2019m not 100% sure on what I watched, and maybe I\u2019ll do a follow-up article and talk to a few people.<\/p>\n<p>What I do know is that was a cool race to watch, and the way drivers had to approach turns on a track of that scale looked crazy.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m glad I got to watch something that varies so much from the norm, and hopefully I learn more from it.<\/p>\n<p><em>For more of our Racing Re-Watch stories, readers can visit our <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonmotorsport.com\/2020\/03\/19\/racing-re-watches\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">center hub here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For my second story of these racing re-watch articles, I wanted to challenge myself a little bit. I wanted it to be an old sprint car race, but I hadn\u2019t narrowed it down quite yet on which one to choose. I checked out the DirtVision Vault \u2013 an online collection of classic races that fans [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":315,"featured_media":7874,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[1347,1346,1338,1345,1349,1348,486],"class_list":["post-7872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dirt","category-more-racing","tag-1347","tag-lynn-paxton","tag-racing-re-watches","tag-smokey-snellbaker","tag-super-nationals","tag-syracuse-mile","tag-world-of-outlaws"],"modified_by":"Connor Ferguson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}