By Lou Modestino
At the recent NASCAR weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, we had an interesting interview with Ken Squier. He’s now the retired CBS NASCAR booth anchor who helped to NASCAR from a cult sport into main stream from 1978 until he retired not that long ago. Though he still gets a TV gig, now and then, from Fox and the Speed Channel. He’s now in his late 70’s.
Along with his long time partner Tom Curley, they still operate the renowned Thunder Road International Speedway in Barre, VT as well as the American Canadian Tour in the northeastern USA and American Canadian tour in eastern Canada. Not to mention his numerous radio station holdings know as “Radio Vermont”.
On NHMS “We’ve been here with our series for four years. This year we got a lot more Canadian drivers and their fans.” On Thunder
Road, “We’re doing OK not great, though. It’s due to the economy compounded by the rainouts,” he said. This year T’ Road’s marquee race The Milk Bowl also got hit with two rainouts and the track is going to announce a rescheduled date later this week.
On the Milk Bowl. “We think that the future of racing, long and short tracks, needs to change. Long distance races are a thing of the past. But, we also feel that the great traditional races will always be there(like the Daytona 500, Charlotte, Talladega, etc;). Generally, we need a new format that the public wants-like shorter races,” said Squire.
He went on, “The Milk Bowl format was invented 50 years ago. It’s three segments. In the second and third segments the field is in- verted each time. With one payoff based in the combined low score of the three segments. It’s a point system for the perfect score. The winner has to get the right amount of points. It takes out the boredom of the long distance races. It was created for a Sunday afternoon and the fans can also score it. If you win the first and second segments then you have to come up from the back of the pack.
That means that there’s excitement going on all of the time. Every position counts on every lap. The drivers have to focus right from the start and that’s when you see the best drivers coming up through the traffic. The drivers can’t back off. Because if they do they’ll lose,” revealed Squier.
“Things really get tense especially in the third segment. It makes everyone do what they do best. In order to win you can’t tired out. Only three drivers have won all three segments like Dave Dion, Robbie Crouch and Larry Demar. Therefore getting the magic score of 3. We time trial for the front row. In the event of a tie, the best finish in the third and final race determines the winner. Several times it’s demanded the tie breaker. The result is a hard run in all of the segments. There’s no way you can “sandbag” in one of the segments and win it.”
This year’s Milk Bowl the second and third segments have been extended to 75 laps to give the drivers in the rear a better shot at a perfect score. Because it’s the 50th Anniversary of the Milk Bowl there’s a $50,000 bonus if you can win all three segments.
We thought about watching all of long distance races on both short and super-speedways. When we applied Ken Squier and Tom Curley’s Milk Bowl formula it has a lot of potential. For someone who has a short attention span, like most sport fans, the Milk Bowl format appears to fit the bill.