After winning the 88-lap Ted Caldwell Memorial, Martin Nesbitt and crew celebrated heartily. The victory came during the season opener at the newly revitalized Newport Speedway. Nesbitt cited three reasons to celebrate his limited late model victory.
“First of all, we were celebrating the reopening of the speedway,” Nesbitt, of Marion, North Carolina, said. “It was shut down for years and became a junkyard. The new owner, Chuck Ward, poured a ton of money into it, and it became the first speedway featured in Dale Jr.’s ‘Lost Speedways’ to make a comeback.
(For more on Newport Speedway’s reopening, read “Newport Speedway Set to Have New Owner.”)
“Secondly, it was a memorial for dear friend Ted Caldwell, who was a racer and car owner [at] Newport Speedway,” continued Nesbitt. “His son Jeff raised an additional $18,000 in bonus money for his dad’s memorial race. I won $7500, which is a huge payday in asphalt racing.
“Thirdly, but most important to me, it’s the track my daughter Taylor grew up at and raced at. She’s pregnant now with her second child, so I jumped in her car for one race and won it for her. Everyone was wondering why I was in a pink car. I had to cram myself into her car — she’s just over 5 feet and I’m over 6 feet.”
Newport Speedway means quite a bit to Nesbitt. After expenses got the best of him running in the Hooters Pro Cup Series (since reincarnated as the CARS Tour), he found a new home — Newport Speedway — in 2008.
“A friend brought me to Newport Speedway, and I got the racing bug again,” Nesbitt said. “I fell back in love with local racing.”
Nesbitt encouraged his daughter Taylor to race limited late models at age 12 in 2008.
“We ended up racing together from then on — a special time for a father and daughter,” said Nesbitt. “Newport Speedway is home to all of my memories as she grew up as a racer. She went on to race throughout the region and was a track champion at Greenville-Pickens Speedway.”
Newport Speedway reopened last Saturday, and Martin Nesbitt and his family loved seeing the revitalization of a track that has meant so much to them.
“As a driver, it was exciting to race in front of a packed house and have to compete with 23 late models to make the feature,” Nesbitt said. “Newport Speedway is back!”
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.
