In 1996, Bob Potter was driving Angie Cerase’s #51 at the Waterford Speedbowl. That season, Potter was promoted as winning his 94th Speedbowl race on May 25th, tying Don Collins for the most Modified wins in Speedbowl history. His June 22nd win was celebrated as his record-breaking 95th, and his 3rd win that year on August 10, which turned out to be his last at the track, was recognized as his 96th.
But Don Collins didn’t have 94 Speedbowl wins… so what happened?
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE 1996 PROMOTION
The first thing that sticks out to us about the 1996 promotion of the Speedbowl Career Wins Leader changing hands, is that it seemed to compare Bob Potter’s overall wins to only Don Collins’ Modified wins. Back in 1974 former Speedbowl handicapper & track historian John Brouwer penned a short paperback book called An Illustrated History of the New London-Waterford Speedbowl. In that book, the legendary Don Collins is listed with 100 total wins – 94 in the Modifieds and 6 in the Non-Fords.
Bob started out in the Bomber division in the 1960’s and won 5 times. And those wins are listed in that same book from 1974, which at the time was the only documented record of any Speedbowl history (albeit only up to 1974). You have to assume the Speedbowl management understood that Collins had 100 totals wins and Potter was breaking Collins’ Modified win total only, not his overall total of 100. Why they chose to omit Collins’ 5 Non-Ford wins but not Potter’s 5 Bomber wins is confusing. With statistics, the most important thing is consistency in your categories.
Now if I showed you a picture of a Non-Ford from the 1950’s or a Bomber from the 1960’s, you would probably think they were just Modifieds from the coupe era. It would be the same for a new fan looking at a SK Modified and a SK Light and trying to know the difference. And were pretty sure Potter considered all his Speedbowl wins Modified wins, in fact he basically told us that’s how he looked at it. (Although he did win a special Late Model race in the early 1980’s)
WHAT OUR OWN RESEARCH PRODUCED FOR DATA
When we finished our research back in the late 2000’s, we came up with 94 wins: (59 Modified, (29) SK Modified, (5) Bomber, (1) Late Model). The only results we haven’t verified result for yet are from a handful of Enduro races, Powder Puff Derbies and a couple Legend Car races. We’re pretty confident Potter never competed in those divisions, meaning we’re also confident we have all his wins accounted for. Does that mean their can’t be mistakes, that we didn’t miss a race result somewhere that Potter won, or that there wasn’t a data entry error somewhere along the line? Of course not, and we’ve made countless revisions to our research due to all of those scenarios over the years to help get our research more accurate. But until we recieve something to review for Potter, he is listed with 94 career wins at the Speedbowl.
BOB POTTER’S PERSPECTIVE
We lost Potter unexpectedly back in 2019, and I’m pretty sure he still believed his Speedbowl win total was 99 when he did. And that’s 3 more than the 96 that was promoted in 1996. Where those other 3 came from seen 1996 is also confusing. Bob and I talked about his stats during both of his Speedbowl documentary interviews. Not while we were recording, but in the small talk afterwards. It was always amicable but the disparity in the data still unresolved.
OUR FRUSTRATING PERSPECTIVE
What’s unfortunate for us is that we started this project back in 2005, because there was no definitive record of Speedbowl stats since Brouwer’s book in 1974. Within that 30+ season gap was the majority of Bob Potter’s career and the entirety of Phil Rondeau’s career (the other Speedbowl legend whose career total came out different than what was publicly promoted by the Speedbowl during their careers). I’m not sure we’ll ever know if the research can match those promotions.
But what we do know is those promotions happened during an era when there wasn’t any reputable data. And all the different track operators and some of the PR people from that era confirmed that when we tried to determine if there was some sort of track archives of stats that was passed from one regime to another over those 3 decades. There wasn’t, and so any promotions by the track, or in a press release or advertisement from 1974-2005 has to be taken with a grain of salt because where their stats came from ins unverifiable.
Potter was always a blast to be around. There was never any ill will between our research efforts and Bob. But what it would take to revise his stats is specific information. Specific dates that we didn’t verify results for (meaning we got the schedule wrong and were unaware of an event), or maybe some sort of documentation confirming a result was officially changed because of a post-race penalty, etc. And no one really wants to do that work. Trust us, we know. We did it once, and it’s pain-staking at times.
So similar to Phil Rondeau’s career wins total, it really irks us that our research landed on different totals than what the Speedbowl itself promoted for Bob Potter in the 1990’s. But until new information is presented to us, we’re standing behind our research. If you think you have information on Potter’s career wins that should be reviewed, please contact us with the details.
Sincere thanks to all the fans & supporters of speedbowlhistory.com
Tom “Sid” DiMaggio