RACING AT 120 MPH EXCITES DRIVERS

Involved in the 2011 ASA British Columbia Late Model Tour are John Ross (front), Tom Berrow (right), Rob Angus, and Shane Berrow (background).

Photograph by: Troy Landreville, Langley Advance

A motorsports tour with strong Langley ties is revving up for a fast-paced summer on oval tracks across B.C.
The 42-year-old American Speed Association joined forces with Ross Productions Ltd. and longtime late model racer and championship crew chief Rob Angus, to sanction the ASA British Columbia Late Model Tour (BCLMT), presented by Advance Testing.ca.
“We are very excited to welcome the ASA British Columbia Late Model Tour presented by Advance Testing.ca into the ASA family,” Dennis Huth, ASA president said recently in a press release. “This is our first series in Canada and we are looking forward to working with John Ross, Rob Angus, the competitors and officials within this great series. ASA is proud to build champions not only in the United States but now to our new friends in British Columbia, Canada.”
Cars typically cover 125 laps, but will circle the oval 200 times during the Canada 200 over the Labour Day long weekend in Victoria.
The tour intends to keep all of the basic rules with only minor clarifications for the next three years to help keep exotic parts out.
BCLMT venues are spread across B.C. and include Vernon, Campbell River, Penticton, Agassiz, Williams Lake and Victoria.
Ross, owner of Advance Testing ltd, a B.C. based soil, asphalt, and concrete testing company, not only sponsors the tour, he races in it, as well.
Angus, the tour’s director of operations, said having Ross on board to sponsor the series has been a big help.
“We’re seeing car counts slowly grow,” he said.
Angus is keeping the tour in B.C., with the main emphasis on putting on, he said, “first-class events.” The size of potential audiences range from a capacity of 7,000 fans at the Motoplex Speedway & Event Park, in Vernon to Agassiz Speedway, which seats about 1,000.
“We’re trying to get the young kids and the families out, and they seem to really enjoy themselves,” Angus said.
The models involved in the series are V8 stock cars with fully fabricated chassis and fabricated Camaro front clips.
Elaborating on the types of cars involved in the tour, Ross enthusiastically went into “car-buff-speak.”
“We have a crate motor option where you’re allowed a 650 carburetor and you run a 604 Chevy GM crate motor, or you’re allowed a Ford crate motor, or a Dodge crate motor, and you’re also allowed to run a two-barrel, low-compression motor as an option,” Angus explained. “Last year, the races were won 50/50, whether you had a crate motor or you had a two-barrel, low-compression motor.”
In other words, these cars go fast.
“We get going up, say in Vernon, up to 120 mph,” Ross said. “It just depends on the size of the track. We gear the cars to whatever track we’re on.”
Racing doesn’t get more exciting than the short track genre, veteran racer Tom Berrow said: “It’s probably the most exciting form of motorsport anywhere in my mind, because you are racing on a small, oval track, door-to-door, racing on tracks that basically only have two grooves and in some cases that have only one real groove.”
Settled into the driver’s seat of a car that flirts with the 100 mph mark over more than 100 laps can be physically taxing, especially, Ross said, “for an old guy like me.”
“It’s a good workout put it that way,” Ross said. “It’s very hot. Very hot. You lose about 10 pounds per race.”
The thrill, for Ross, is basic: “speed. Just going fast. That’s about it. It’s something I always wanted to do. Unfortunately, I couldn’t to do until later in life, but I’m doing it.”
A 1976, ’77, and ’83 champion in his 1970 Chevelle at the former Langley Speedway, Berrow joins Ross as one of the veterans on the tour. Berrow proved last year he’s still got it by taking the series championship title in what was formerly known as the Katana Boat Sportsman Tour.
The two major differences between racing at the former Langley track, which entertained motorsports fans from 1965 to ’84, and the 2011 tour is time between races, and adapting to the cornucopia of racetracks.
“Our race dates are spread out and we’re all over the province,” Berrow said. “We have a different track to contend with every time you go out as opposed to going back to the same place every weekend.”
Berrow said the engines in today’s late models are “pretty close to what we ran back in the ’70s.”
For those hoping to see racing close to home, the tour comes to Agassiz Speedway on Saturday, Aug. 20.
Berrow said the races seem to be coming fast and furious, which means dozens of hours of preparation to get cars ready for the next event.
“Combined with the guys on the crew, you’ve probably got 50 to 60 hours of prep time in between races,” Berrow said. “That’s if you don’t have much damage from the previous race.”
In his fifth decade of racing, Berrow said he’s “had a lot of years to get over the nerves.”
“It usually doesn’t bother me but you definitely get the adrenaline going when you’re in the car and that’s a product of the sport.”

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