Tour Of The Oaks - Wtf?
 

For those of you who planned a nice week end of racing in NC with the TotO, Dixie Classic and Carolina Cup guess what? The mayor apparently had a wild hair up his ass and cancelled the permit for the race. They are saying that it will be held at ace speedway with the same start times.

http://members.tmug.org/cchapman/toto/toto.html

I opt out and get stuck with hotel fee's. Freekin sucks. I am not going to drive 3 hours to race at ace speedway :rolleyes:

I sound bitter...I know. I am angry w/ this discision to cancel the race not w/ all the folks that worked hard to put in on. The proceeds of the race were to benifit school supplies. Nice Mayor huh?

Anyway for those with plans.....change them.

Oh yeah not to mention that BF was the only way that me and a buddy of mine even found out about this fubar. So thanks to the posters in the Carolina cup thread. -we emailed the official who gave us this email:

> Glad you wrote. We learned this morning that the Elon mayor cancelled
> our permit for the streets. We've been scrambling, & have been able to
> secure Ace Speedway for the event. The race schedule will be the same,
> only a different venue.
>
> Please help spread the word that the race will go on, but at Ace
> instead of Elon.
>
> Thanks!
>

>
>
>


>>
>> Sorry to bother you at such a busy time, but I heard a rumor that the
>> TotO might not be happening? Is that true? I sure hope not.
>>
>> Please let me know so that I don't drive down just to stay the night
>> in a hotel. Thanks!

Anyway hope to see you at the Carolina Cup...

What a CF. What's the mayor's e-mail? I'm going to be spending a week in NC and want to make sure I avoid this town.

what the christ! the same thing happened last year actually, if I remember right. but are you sure this is true? because I just looked at the website (10:45 pm Fri) and it specifically says "downtown Elon" where I don't think it even said that the first time I checked the site a couple days ago. Can anyone clarify?

just talked to chips on the phone - it is definitely going to be at ace

Bummer.

Just as well for me I guess...my legs are trash for some reason. Barely put out 1000w during a few sprints Thursday. Going to sit this weekend out, and regroup for 'cross.

well as it turns out it was all good. the 4s field was small, so me, Evan Burkhart of the tar heels, Jack Morgan of Franklin St, and Shawn Kane of NCSU lapped the field more or less from the gun. With a lot of help from Elliott of FSC, we were easily able to control any threats for the remainder of the race, and I outsprinted my break companions for the win... now I can race cat 3 today at the carolina cup!

How small is small? What size was the field? I'd almost think it would be harder to lap a small field.

Good stuff man!

The field wasn't much bigger than 20 - they did a poor job of chasing so it wasn't too hard at all to lap them.

Thanks to everybody who did come out. We (Franklin Street Cycles) didn't have quite the turnout we would have liked, but we put in a long day getting the track ready and running the races. If nothing else, the weather was great and we had a good time. Next year we're hopefully going to try to put something on in Chapel Hill or pretty much anywhere other than Elon.

Side note: Cleaning a racetrack off with a gas-powered leafblower the morning after they use it for stock car races is not a fun job.

That sucks truckin. I hope you at least broke even. So what was the deal w/ Elon anyway? Why the sudden last minute withdrawal?

We went through the Elon police and got the permits, etc., so everything was set. Apparently they didn't inform the mayor, and he found out about it Thursday night and nixed it. Why? I don't know, really. They then called us and we had to scramble Friday morning to get in touch with the folks who own Ace to find out whether they could let us use it, and they were really great about it, so we at least were able to put something on. I don't know how the money worked out yet. I'm hoping we broke even too, but I'm not expecting any more than that.

Sorry to hear that it turned out to be a goat rope man, but at least you guys were able to put something together up at Ace.

Yep. It would really have sucked to cancel it entirely. As it was, I suspect we lost 1/4 or more of the people who would have come to Elon either because they found out and decided to bail or because they went to Elon and couldn't/didn't get to Ace in time from Elon.