COMPILING THE SPEEDBOWL’S HISTORY
The statistics within our site were compiled from a variety of resources. Here’s a brief overview to show the primary resources by decade for the statistical data in our Almanac:
- 1950’s – The New London Day archives
- 1960’s – The New London Day archives; Speedbowl track programs
- 1970’s – The New London Day archives; Speedbowl track programs, Speedway Scene trade papers
- 1980’s – The New London Day archives; Speedbowl track programs, Speedway Scene trade papers
- 1990’s – The New London Day archives; Speedbowl track programs, Speedway Scene trade papers
- 2000’s – Speedbowl track programs, track press releases, Speedway Scene & Area Auto Racing News trade papers
- 2010’s – SpeedNet Direct archives, track press releases, Area Auto Racing News trade papers
- 2020’s – track press releases, Area Auto Racing News trade papers
Other print sources for information over the years include archives from the Norwich Bulletin, Hartford Courant, Hartford Times, New Haven Register, Westerly Sun, Norwalk Hour, Stock Car Racing Magazine, Speedway Illustrated, Area Auto Racing News, ProSpeed Revue and Calvacade of Racing. We’ve also referenced many websites to verify information including hometracks.nascar.com, near1.com, speedbowl.com, yankee-racer.com, racing-reference.com, mylaps.com, speednetdirect.com, racedayct.com and the Race Monitor app.
VERIFYING STATISTICS
Verifying stats can be done via several different resources to confirm results. Here’s a breakdown of how we use each of them:
TRUSTED SOURCES
Electronic Scoring System data
The data here is the most accurate available for Speedbowl results as it’s the same data the track officials use. Unfortunately, it’s only available for a small fraction of the track’s history. We used the website Speednetdirect.com (2009-2016) and the Race Monitor smartphone app (2007-present) which were both linked to the Speedbowl’s ESS.
Track programs
Racing Trade Papers (Speedway Scene, Area Auto News, etc)
Programs & trade papers are the next best resource for accurate statistics. The results and race summaries are generally provided from the Speedbowl’s public relations department and therefor are a great source of information that includes the finishing order, date, lap count, etc. They also are published several days after the event, which means if there were post-race disqualifications or changes in the results, they are usually included in these reports.
Local newspapers (The New London Day, Norwich Bulletin, etc)
Local papers can be a good source, and during the 1950′ & 1960’s they are really the only resource available to verify stats. Up until the early 2000’s, they almost always contained information written by the press who were at the track covering the event. The only potential issue with newspaper sources is that they may not include post-race disqualifications if those penalties were handed out after the newspaper deadline to print the story.
Victory Lane photos
Film/Video footage
Photos or videos can be a great resource as well – as long as they’re dated, which prior to the 1990’s wasn’t always the case. Additionally, unlike newspapers where there’s a chance post-race penalties may be included, pics or vids would only show the winner immediately after the event and prior to any post-race inspections that could have changed the finishing order, which makes them a less-preferred resource than any of the ones listed above.
UNTRUSTED SOURCES
Trophies
Trophies are used as a reference, but not as an official resource to verify winners. There are two main issues with trophies:
- At the Speedbowl, feature race winner trophies are rarely dated for which event they were awarded. Many trophies may have the calendar year, but not the specific date (month/day).
- There is typically a trophy given to the driver and the car-owner, and since they aren’t dated either, it’s too hard to decipher if any of the trophies are driver/owner duplicates. If someone provides us with a bunch of trophies from a particular year, we used that as a reason to keep looking for better resources to verify results, but until we do so, we wouldn’t not record or revise any specific information on our site simply because of an amount of trophies provided.
Undated Material
Because we provide the stats in an Almanac format, the date is crucial to verifying any result. Any resource without a date would only be used a reference, not an official resource.
BROWSING KEY TO ALMANAC
While looking through our Almanac on speedbowlhistory.com, you will see several notations & color-coded footnotes. Below is a general description for each of them:
- BOLD – results in bold indicated the event was scheduled to be longer than the standard feature length for that season
- ITALICS – results that are italicized indicate the event was shorter in distance than the standard feature length
- FOOTNOTES
- 1 – numerical footnotes in blue indicate a schedule change
- A – footnotes in red indicate results affected by officials ruling (usually as a result of post-race inspection)
- O – footnotes in green indicate additional event info (open competition, qualifier race, etc)
- X – footnotes in brown are for any other notation not categorized above
- RAIN – results in gray italics indicate the event was cancelled (rain, cold, curfew, snow, flood, power outage, competitor strike, no ambulance)
- ?? – question mark notation means we have yet to be able to verify the results – click here to see the short list of results we still need to verify.
OUR UPDATE SCHEDULE
Starting in 2016, we decided to update the Almanac on a weekly basis during the season for race results.
Points standings & win total entries for the Almanac, plus Record Book and Track Champions will then be updated accordingly at the end of each race season. The latter updates usually happen sometime between November-February of each off-season.
If you have any questions or comments in regards to our research, please feel free to contact us.