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11/17/18
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“On Sunday, November 11, Ken
Tremont Sr. entered the New England Auto Racing Hall of
Fame. (He is shown here with fellow Hall of Famer,
Bugsy Stevens who was clearly telling him a tall tale.)
It was a pleasure to make Ken’s induction
presentation.”
Photo by Steve McKnigh
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NEAR
HALL OF FAME
November 11, 2018
KEN
TREMONT SR.
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Way back in the early 1960s there was a really
famous series of races - the Sunday-night 100-lap open
competitions on the half-mile dirt banks of Lebanon Valley,
New York. They introduced New England to dirt track racing,
and lots of NEAR Hall of Famers gave it a try, including
Gene Bergin, Bobby Santos, Bugsy, Ron Narducci, and Ernie
Gahan. One of the cars to beat at the time was the legendary
black and white #115 campaigned by Ken Tremont Sr. of
Averill Park, NY.
It turns out that that Ken Tremont
is a perpetual energy source. He never stopped building
cars. He never stopped winning. How does this sound? 378
career wins as a car owner. 46 track titles at eight
different speedways, five series championships - and, of
course, Super Dirt Week in 1999.
A lot of it was in
New York, and when asked about New England, Big Ken just
smiles. "Let's put it this way," he says. "I'm point leader
with speeding tickets in Vermont." In fact, he has 11
championships at Devil's Bowl, 100 wins between the Bowl and
Canaan alone, and has run Thunder Road, Thompson, Stafford,
Monadnock, Lakeville, Claremont and Fairmont.
Big
Ken is known to be a mechanical wizard - and those guys seem
to form their own community, nationally. Ken's friends have
been guys like Eddie Flemke, who taught him to run up front
on the pavement at Monadnock with a dirt car. And Smokey
Yunick, who walked up to Ken at Syracuse while Ken changed
some gears. Smokey checked the gear lube with his finger -
not by looking at it, but by tasting it. "It's good," he
said. They became great friends.
The most remarkable
thing about Ken, though, is that his family came with him.
"Racing's no Saturday-night thing," says Ken. "It's every
night." And, wouldn't you know, of all the spectacular
drivers who have wheeled a #115 - Chuck Ely, Frankie
Schneider, Will Cagle - his most successful has been Ken
Tremont Jr. Together they have an astounding 324 victories,
the winningest in both Lebanon Valley and Devil's Bowl
histories. It is fascinating to consider that just maybe the
two could be the winningest father-son team in all of
American racing.
And, while we think that over, why
doesn't Ken Tremont come on up here to join the NEAR Hall of
Fame in perpetuity.
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© 2018 Lew
Boyd, Coastal 181 |
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