Fred Ryland opened the season locally by winning three features in one weekend. The victories occurred at a duo of California tracks — in a sport mod on Friday at Ocean Speedway in Watsonville and Saturday in a sport mod and stock car at Antioch Speedway.
“Weekends like this are few and far between,” Ryland, 56, of Brentwood, California, said. “Winning every race in a weekend is about as good as it gets. It’s humbling, and absolutely a great feeling to offset all those bad weekends we had over the years.”
Ryland actually bent his sport mod’s chassis in Friday night’s feature. He and his crew — Clayton Davis, Janet McGreer, and Brian Zachary — spent most of the day Saturday preparing it for another night of racing.
“We have a strong work ethic, and we worked on the sport mod right up until it was time to head to the track — we got there at the last minute,” said Ryland.
Fred Ryland ranks 15th nationally in all-time IMCA sport mod wins, with 72. However, he keeps only a few trophies for himself. Typically, after victory lane ceremonies finish, he gives his trophy to a kid at the fence.
“I got a personal message from a dad on Friday night at Ocean Speedway,” Ryland said. “He thanked me for making his son’s first time at the races a special night. It is important for drivers to give racing a good reputation. I started giving my trophies away four years or five ago. As long as there is a victory lane on the infield or at the start-finish line, I can get my trophy into the hands of a kid. Today, I’m a celebrity to those kids. Hopefully, someday, some of them will be out here racing with me and kids will see them as their heroes.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
