Author of the article: Patrick Kennedy
Publishing date: Mar 12, 2021 • March 12, 2021 • 6 minute read
Norm Davey (Z28), Kingston Speedway track champion in 1974, holds off Dave Heaslip down the front straightaway. Photo by Courtesy of Tim Hegarty /Supplied Photo
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The old Kingston Speedway may be long gone, but local fans of stock car racing haven’t forgotten it. And this year they are marking a couple of milestones. One is the birth of racing 70 years ago at the nondescript dirt oval off McAdoo’s Lane. The other commemorates a sad event that is mourned to this day — the racetrack’s 1976 passing.To local race fans, the Kingston Speedway was a special place. For a few hours each Friday night in the summer and early fall, the racetrack sped them away from their worries and woes and workaday lives and placed them front and centre in a cauldron of excitement, exhilaration and exhaust fumes. The “stocks” offered high-test racing and the best dirt-track aces around, daring drivers with ice water in their veins and leopard-like reflexes. For many fans, the weekly card of races was a can’t-miss event. There was a family feel to the place, which teemed with kindred spirits free to express their passion for racing. You weren’t apt to spot the first cellist in the Kingston Symphony, or the Queen’s University principal, or me, for that matter, in the pits on a Friday night. (I was, truth be told, in the “pits” once, although on that occasion the race cars weren’t the only things hopped up on high-test fuel.)