{"id":21703,"date":"2017-05-15T21:20:13","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T01:20:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/?p=21703"},"modified":"2017-05-15T21:21:27","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T01:21:27","slug":"joey-pole-returning-to-honor-curley-at-act-spring-green-at-devils-bowl-speedway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/2017\/05\/joey-pole-returning-to-honor-curley-at-act-spring-green-at-devils-bowl-speedway\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cJoey Pole\u201d Returning to Honor Curley at ACT Spring Green at Devil\u2019s Bowl Speedway"},"content":{"rendered":"
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ACT photo<\/p><\/div>\n

WEST HAVEN, VT \u2013 Joey Polewarczyk Jr. will pay tribute to a stock car racing legend on Saturday<\/span><\/span> night, May 20<\/span><\/span>, when he returns to American-Canadian Tour (ACT) Late Model competition in honor of the late Tom Curley.\u00a0 Known by racing fans across the country as \u201cJoey Pole,\u201d the former champion will make his first ACT start of the 2017 season at the \u201cSpring Green 117\u201d event at Devil\u2019s Bowl Speedway in West Haven, VT.<\/p>\n

The Spring Green marks the first ACT race held since Curley \u2013 the series\u2019 innovative and award-winning founder and president \u2013 passed away on May 5 after a years-long fight with COPD.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Polewarczyk, of Hudson, NH, started his ACT career at age 14 after being granted a special age exemption by Curley; at the time he was the youngest driver in ACT history.\u00a0 Now approaching his 28th<\/sup> birthday, Polewarczyk is one of New England\u2019s most popular and accomplished drivers.\u00a0 Polewarczyk owns 19 ACT victories and the 2014 championship, as well as wins with the Pro All Stars Series (PASS) and the Granite State Pro Stock Series.\u00a0 He has also won the Oxford 250, the Vermont Milk Bowl, the ACT Invitational at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, and several other prestigious races, and often credits lessons learned from Curley as a key to his success.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tore up a lot of equipment when I was first starting out, but Tom saw something in me and never gave up on me,\u201d Polewarczyk said.\u00a0 \u201cI remember the first time that he took me on a ride around the pit area for a private talk on his golf cart.\u00a0 I crashed with somebody in a heat race and I thought I had been wronged, but Tom explained to me how it was my fault for not being patient.\u00a0 He was right, and he taught me how to be a better racer.\u00a0 Just last weekend I had an opportunity to take the lead in a PASS race, but I would have had to rough a couple of guys up.\u00a0 If it wasn\u2019t for Tom\u2019s advice years ago, I might have tried to make that move and we all probably would\u2019ve wrecked our cars.\u00a0 He was very smart and he took care of us all as racers.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just me, he helped everyone like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polewarczyk heads to Devil\u2019s Bowl on Saturday<\/span><\/span> night with only one goal in mind: Win the Spring Green and dedicate the victory to Curley.\u00a0 The track\u2019s progressively-banked, half-mile layout has been good to Polewarczyk; in six starts at the track he has finished fourth or better all but once, winning in his most recent start there in 2015.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy only intention is to go out and win that race for Tom.\u00a0 All of us drivers are there because of him, and we\u2019re all racing this race for him,\u201d Polewarczyk said.\u00a0 \u201cI love Devil\u2019s Bowl, too.\u00a0 I was there last year as a crew member and I really missed not being out there as a driver, so we\u2019re looking forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Devil\u2019s Bowl Speedway will honor Curley with a pre-race tribute and a moment of silence prior to the Spring Green on Saturday<\/span><\/span> night, May 20<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0 Fans, competitors, and officials of the American-Canadian Tour and beyond are invited to join to pay their respects to the patriarch of Late Model racing in the Northeast.<\/p>\n

The event will feature a 117-lap main event for the ACT Late Models, along with season-opening races for Devil\u2019s Bowl\u2019s Sportsman Modified, Super Stock, and Mini Stock divisions.\u00a0 General admission is $20 for adults, $18 for seniors (62+), $5 for teens (13-17), and free for kids age 12 and under.\u00a0 Kids Bicycle Races will also be held during intermission.\u00a0 The green flag waves at 6:00 p.m.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0 For more information, visit www.ACTTour.com<\/a> or call (802) 244-6963<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WEST HAVEN, VT \u2013 Joey Polewarczyk Jr. will pay tribute to a stock car racing legend on Saturday night, May 20, when he returns to American-Canadian Tour (ACT) Late Model competition in honor of the late Tom Curley.\u00a0 Known by racing fans across the country as \u201cJoey Pole,\u201d the former champion will make his first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,12,16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-act","category-devils-bowl","category-touring-series-news","category-vermont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21704,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21703\/revisions\/21704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newenglandracingnews.com\/16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}