A broken left-rear hub dashed the chances of Anthony Tramontana winning his first heat race in the Short Track Super Series crate 602 sportsman division. The incident occurred at Selinsgrove Speedway in Pennsylvania.
While Tramontana held the lead by a comfortable margin, another racer in the back of the pack blew their engine. Tramontana encountered oil left by the car as he entered turn three.
“I turned and spun,” Tramontana, 17, of Vineland, New Jersey, said. “My left rear hooked the biggest rut in the track and ripped the hub right off.”
Tramontana had only raced the car seven times this year, beginning his season this year in Florida.
“We never saw [a left-rear hub failure] happen to anyone else and no one we knew ever had seen it happen,” said Tramontana. “We put in a lot of good maintenance time — countless hours — and we check every little part on the car. It is just a freak incident.”
Bobby Slack, of Bicknell Racing Products, which had built the hub Tramontana had used, said broken hubs rarely occur.
“Inspect your hubs after every race to make sure there are no signs of cracking around the ears,” Slack said. “If the wheel bearings are loose and the hub is playing, chances are you’ve been on a rough track and you need to take a close look at the hubs.”
Slack added that a cracked hub shows clear signs of issues.
“Look for accumulation of dirt or grease — they collect around a crack,” said Slack. “The same close inspection should be done to the wheels, too, after every race.”
Anthony Tramontana plans to regularly race at a pair of tracks in the Garden State — Bridgeport Motorsports Park and New Egypt Speedway — in 2021. He will also continue to compete in the crate 602 sportsman class of the Short Track Super Series.
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.
