Orange County Fair Speedway promoter Doug Dulgarian didn’t know what to expect when he answered his phone. Fortunately, it resulted in a happy surprise.
“A call came into me while I was in my office at OCFS,” Dulgarian, of Middletown, New York, said. “Someone said, ‘We got a problem out here.’ So, I ran right out to the lineup and I saw the car — a replica of my 1983 paint job wrapped on a modern day modified — and boy, did it look good. I am not one who is big being in front of the camera or the crowd, but this was cool.”
Steve Dodd owns the tribute modified and Dom Roselli Jr. drives it. The idea for the special wrap started at last fall’s Eastern States 200. Peter Reynolds, crew member for the modified legend Brett Hearn, suggested the tribute. It debuted during Nostalgia Night at Orange County Fair Speedway, which unfortunately rained out mid-show.
“I raced my car against Dom Roselli Sr., and now his son was driving a tribute to my car,” said Dulgarian. “Dom recently moved up to big block from the sportsman division. Steve [Dodd] is a former racer who won in all three modified divisions at OCFS — sportsman, 358 and big block. These things made the tribute all more special to me.”
Dulgarian grew up near OCFS. He started racing modifieds there in 1979. Dulgarian wrote the book, “The Hard Clay in Orange County II,” covering the 1970s. Prior to him, Raymond C. Martin authored “The Hard Clay in Orange County,” which chronicled the track from 1919 to 1969.
“I also recovered the plates from Ray’s book and republished it 51 years later using the same print shop,” Dulgarian said. “My plan is to chronicle each decade at OCFS — the 1980s are next. Problem is, in the ’70s and ’80s, we had so many cars that there were 14 races a night, 22 times a year.”
Last year Doug Dulgarian joined forces with Hearn to start the Big Series at OCFS after he found out the track would no longer host weekly racing. It just exemplifies his commitment to his beloved home track.
“The track’s significance to racing and the local community can’t be forgotten,” said Dulgarian. “The importance of continuing it to hold races there is our goal.”
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.
