BARRE, Vt. -- A common bond connects the people populating the garages and grandstands of NASCAR's three national tours -- Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck series.

That commonality comes from short track racing, whether at one of about 100 Whelen Series race tracks operating under NASCAR sanction or the hundreds more "outlaw" tracks that make up America's motorsports landscape.

Thunder Road, a uniquely configured quarter-mile paved oval that's celebrating its 50th anniversary season featuring a full pit area and populated to overflowing with avid racing fans at a time when many racing businesses are wondering where to find customers, could teach a lot of its short track brethren lessons.

Just ask Vermont state senator Phil Scott, a former track champion who's still racing at Thunder Road and has reportedly said his racing had a lot to do with his successful election.

The track's operated both with and without a NASCAR sanction, so it's run plenty of NASCAR races, and plenty of NASCAR talent has Thunder Road stories.

But in only one visit you learn a pretty powerful lesson about what a tightly-run short track can mean, both to the local community as well as its competitors -- even if they're coming from miles, and sometimes hundreds of miles -- away.

Thunder Road makes racers. Some of them might "grow up" to be NASCAR competitors -- they might even get to NASCAR's national tours as drivers, like T-Road veterans Kevin Lepage or Ricky Craven; or Frank Stoddard and Steve Letarte, among others, as mechanics.

But they're racers, make no mistake about it. And Thunder Road helped make them that way. Jeff Gordon's crew chief and Maine native Letarte's first recollection of Thunder Road goes back to age 3, sitting on a hill watching when his dad, Don, was a noted chassis builder; but the place carries a deeper legacy.

"Thunder Road is just about racing -- there's no politics, no marketing -- it's just racing and it's always been that way," Letarte said. "It's a great track and a track that when we ran a few different late model series in New England, we'd always go to Thunder Road because it's a cool race track. I need to get back up there, because I haven't been in years."

"Atmosphere" doesn't quite do it justice

Thunder Road's Turn 4, seen from the edge of a packed "Bud Hill".

Upstate Vermont, hard by legendary Lake Champlain is a low key, physically beautiful area of New England. It's famous for a lot of things, but Thursday nights in Barre have, for decades, been known for stock car racing.

"For people up here, this is the place to be; it's a place where you can take a family for not a lot of money and get a night's worth of quality entertainment," said Barre's Kevin Scott, who grew up at Thunder Road thanks to relatives who took him to the races, later working on championship teams and now, has a part-time position during NASCAR races at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, NASCAR's New England showplace a couple hours down I-89 in Loudon, N.H.

Barre is a small town of about 10,000 people and if, as Scott says, Thunder Road "is like their movie theater or bowling alley on a Thursday night" it's been a non-stop string of Oscar winners or 300 games.

It's impossible to tell how many townspeople come to the track on a weekly basis, but on these dozens of acres adjacent to a granite quarry, stock cars tearing around a dimly-lit, variably-banked asphalt short track with only a frontstretch wall and little to nothing else keeping them contained; the town's population is nearly equaled here each time the gates open.

“

It's proof that short track racing is still alive and well and has the possibility to be bigger than it's ever been right now [even] with the economy the way it is.

”

-- TONY STEWART

On a recent Thursday in June that coincided with NASCAR's Lenox 301 weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, two-time Cup champion and multiple race team and short track owner Tony Stewart's presence meant the town's population was about equaled.

Though Stewart said he saw it, the only thing missing was people hanging out of the trees, but from the time you walked up to the ticket windows past three impressive granite -- what else -- obelisks engraved with the names of former track champions and a pair of granite benches erected thanking track operators Ken Squier and Tom Curley, you quickly noticed nearly 10,000 people there.

In the overall scheme of things, it did mean one major change from the status quo. The track's nightly 50-50 drawing earned a New Hampshire fan $4,632 for a night at the races, and not surprisingly, he said he'd be back. Another enticement was the fact that the 150 green flag laps took only 62 minutes to run, including a short red flag.

The track's landscape is true to its New England heritage. Whether you're sitting in the grandstands, on one of the hillsides or in the pit area, all around you are jagged hillsides carpeted in deep forest green.

The patrons take advantage of the terrain, and a great sense of community.

Walking toward the gate, a young man in his early 20s pulling a day-at-the-beach sized cooler on wheels stops a single man heading in the same direction, asking him "are you going in?"

The guy made a quizzical face, but answered in the affirmative, and the questioner, walking with a female companion, explained, "They have a six beer per person limit, and I've got 18 beers." The guy looked at the icebox on wheels, looked at the two people and then appeared to be counting, "six [pointing at her], six [pointing at him] and six [pointing back at himself]?"

The young guy, seeing he'd gotten his point across, laughed and said, "Yeah -- thanks." And a couple minutes later handed the guy an ice cold Coors Light before he and his companion hiked up to find a spot on "Bud Hill."

The hillside overlooking Turn 4 and the frontstretch wall, the infamous "Widow Maker," is obviously the alcohol friendly section and it's packed; because a couple hundred yards down the asphalt sidewalk is a sign that states "no alcoholic beverages beyond this point." That policy covers more than two-thirds of the track's spectator accessible areas.

And it didn't harm the enjoyment quotient one bit because nearly four hours later, when the final four-cylinder street stock main of the night was on-track, more than half the people were still in place, watching the show.

The real deal

Tony Stewart took his Thunder Road lessons from 20-year-old Joey Polewarczyk.

Stewart perhaps said it best -- though no one can predict the future -- during his first visit to Thunder Road, last month.

It's unknown if anyone taped Stewart's remarks, so paraphrasing is the best available, but Stewart praised track operators Squier and Curley and every man, woman and child in the standing room only crowd -- a stunning turnout in a troubled economy.

Stewart first addressed them during pre-race ceremonies for the Carquest Vermont Governor's Cup 150, which he competed in as a sidelight to his primary NASCAR role. He liked it as much during the evening as after he finished 16th in the Governor's Cup.

"What a cool place -- the perfect setting for a track like this -- and you people are special for coming out here and supporting it every week," Stewart said. "It's neat because you may have the Cup champion in four or five years racing here today -- and you got to see him first, because you don't just get a hall pass to be a Cup driver."

Granite obelisks honoring track owners Ken Squier and Tom Curley and former track champions front the ticket booths.

A Cup driver's elementary school comes from racing at a short track. America, meet Joey Polewarczyk Jr.

Stewart met Polewarczyk, who races for his father's team and had never had a teammate before that day, when Stewart arrived on Thursday afternoon at the unique Vermont backwoods quarter-mile.

Remember, despite already being a winning late model racer, "Joey Pole," as he's known to many in racing, is only 20. He didn't quite know what to do with the champion driver and businessman who had just walked into his trailer.

But to Polewarczyk's credit and Stewart's delight, the apparently very mature young man adjusted quickly.

"Joey, a 20-year-old kid who's half my age has been my teacher and my babysitter all day and he's done a great job getting me used to running this car and running this race track," Stewart said during pre-race. "I'm glad I only had two [practice] sessions and not three so I didn't have any more chances to screw the car up. They've got a great group of guys and they spent a lot of man hours getting this car ready for me to come drive it.

"Obviously the great thing about Joey was that he spent probably 30 minutes before I ever got in the car with me trying to help me understand what the track and what the car was going to be like and what the tires were going to be like. And then throughout the remainder of the evening probably spent another hour total with me at different points of the evening talking to me and helping out.

"He won the race and lapped me in the process, so I was real impressed. For a 20-year-old kid he has a lot of poise and composure and it wouldn't surprise me -- we'll see him here real soon, I think."

Polewarczyk laughed like only a resilient young person could when he told a first-time Thunder Road visitor that he'd destroyed, as in wiped-out, his late model race car against the frontstretch wall -- the infamous "Widow Maker," -- the first four times he came and tried to race at Thunder Road.

“

What a cool place -- the perfect setting for a track like this. It's neat because you may have the Cup champion in four or five years racing here today.

”

-- TONY STEWART

But he adjusted to Stewart like he's managed to adjust to racing a variety of cars at a variety of tracks that the American-Canadian Tour for late model stock cars presents. He's won twice there this season and qualified for a non-points ACT invitational at NHMS in September in the process. And his Governor's Cup win was his first at Thunder Road, ironically after he'd dominated a 100-lapper just a couple weeks earlier, only to have a tire go down and put him off the race track with less than 20 laps to go.

"That was just something that you dream of getting the opportunity to do," Polewarczyk said of working that closely with Stewart. "I was nervous at first, being Tony Stewart and everything, but he was just a regular guy -- a genuinely nice guy.

"It was awesome just to get a chance to work with him and to tell him just what I know from experience in these late models. It was awesome just getting to meet him. More than I could ask for, really."

And how did Stewart adjust? He had raced almost into the top 10 from his 16th starting position when he was spun, when his spotter inadvertently "cleared" him when he wasn't. Polewarczyk lapped him at Lap 96 of 150, but Stewart never fell further than about eight car lengths behind him the rest of the way and, if he had been running with the leaders, would've finished fifth.

"Yeah, I might have had a top-five car at the end, but that was how long it took me to get comfortable with the place," Stewart said the next day. "That [frontstretch] wall had me spooked. I tried to knock it down about four times earlier in the day."

Polewarczyk said Stewart figuratively left his champion's hat at the front gate and "told me a driver can't just come to a track and know how to get around it. Right before the feature we went back in the truck and talked and he said he really wanted to thank me, because 'I could have never run half this good if it wasn't for you helping me out.' He said he really appreciated it, and that was just awesome -- he was such a nice guy."

And a heckuva race car driver, based on what Polewarczyk saw.

"That's what I've been telling everyone, because everyone asked me, 'how'd he do?'" Polewarczyk said. "Sixteenth is really not good enough to say, for what he did. I was impressed for him to drive the way he did, because that is a tough little track -- it took me over a year to even stay out of the wall and he didn't hit it once, so he did an awesome job."

Short track dynamics at work

The essence of short track racing, just as it is at NASCAR's highest level, is that the sport is also entertainment; and at Thunder Road that's a fact that's very evident to track management.

For the Governor's Cup 150 program, they had a schedule that included main events for the track's regular divisions, and heats and "B Mains," or last-chance-qualifiers, for the premier American Canadian Tour late model stock car class.

It started on time, the main event ended on time and as stated before, no one was in a rush to leave. They were entertained to the end, and the law enforcement personnel on hand at the facility, which isn't accessible within seven or eight miles by major highways, emptied quickly.

The next day at NHMS, Stewart raved about the experience.

"It was cool because you hear so many neat things about it," said Stewart, who sees similar sights at his own Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, another legendary short track. "It's big. It's proof that short track racing is still alive and well and has the possibility to be bigger than it's ever been right now [even] with the economy the way it is.

"I know it sounds kind of backwards of what you would think, but it was a sold-out crowd and there were people sitting in trees watching. So it was pretty cool. It's a beautiful setting there in Vermont and a really neat race track."

Stewart echoed something that was very evident during the Governor's Cup's 150 laps -- all of which, in the interest of the show, by the way, were green flag laps. It was something that a wide range of drivers and mechanics commented on when asked about Thunder Road, and that's that drivers treat each other with respect.

"It was the first time in a long time I've ran with that courteous of a group of drivers," Stewart said. "That's one of those tracks where you have to give and take, and take care of each other. You could easily crash half the field in the first three laps if those guys weren't patient and courteous to each other, and that was probably what impressed me the most."

Even though former Camping World East regular Dale Quarterley, who capably mixed careers as a professional privateer motorcycle racer before embarking on a continuing stock car effort that saw him race at Thunder Road, said Curley's strict penalty structure forced respect on the race track, current competitors say it's a welcomed fact.

"I've traveled all over New England and Canada, and [Thunder Road is] by far the toughest race track I've ever raced on," said second-generation racer Brent Dragon, whose hall of fame father Harmon "Beaver" Dragon and uncle Bob Dragon each have prominent places in Thunder Road history.

"The best thing about racing here is it gives you a lot of respect for the track and the drivers; because you can't pinch a guy. If you pinch a guy, he's going to wreck a car, like Robbie Crouch did tonight."

Crouch, 57, who came from his native Florida to race in New England in his early 20s on the advice of Buzzie Reutimann, who told Crouch and his father they could make money by racing as much as five times a week; hit the Widow Maker early in the Governor's Cup and slid upside-down off the track and down through the pit exit road, ending up a little shaken but apparently unhurt.

"I only race here five times a year, for the big races, but I can see there's a lot of give and take," said Dragon, who contended early but slipped to 12th in the Governor's Cup. "And you don't see that when we travel to other tracks."

In his short career he's seen plenty of tracks, but Polewarczyk, whose first visit to Thunder Road came as a 7-year-old when he accompanied his racer father to the Vermont Milk Bowl, has never seen anything like it.

"It's everything about it -- the atmosphere itself is just something that you don't see at many short tracks," Polewarczyk said. "You look up at the stands, I mean, there were a lot of people there that Thursday, but there's just about that many people there every time we go there.

"And the way the track is, and how it can change in a minute, and you always have to be searching for the right line to run there, and the [inside] line I was running that night was just suiting the car."

So much so that Polewarczyk put on a clinic, running as much as 20 laps side-by-side with runner-up finisher Nick Sweet, another 20-year-old, late in the race with everything on the line.

And Lepage said, before he moved south to extend his career to the Nationwide and Cup series, the biggest lesson he learned, in winning three Vermont Milk Bowls, was "to save your equipment, because you can't win races any other way."

A short tracker's life

For some racers, "moving up" or "graduating" or "reaching the next level" are always like a carrot dangling in front of their faces, driving them forward.

But leaving the short track scene isn't necessary, either; and Joey Laquerre, 66, a Thunder Road fixture who's won a feature event there every year in each of the last five decades, is proof.

“

I've raced everywhere, but this track is No. 1 in my book, because you've got to be thinking, you can't let your mind go blank, you've got to focus every lap. This track will teach you to drive [anywhere], because just when you think you have it mastered, you ain't. This place is the best, to me.

”

-- JOEY LAQUERRE

"And next year will be six [decades]," said Laquerre, wearing a mischievous grin in the pits after his two feature races, leaving no doubt about what his future held. Ironically, he was wearing a black t-shirt carrying a NASCAR logo above his left breast, reinforcing even more his racer's creed.

"This track teaches you endurance, because it's so tight and it changes almost by the minute," Laquerre said. "That wall off of Turn 4 will just jump out and bite you. I smacked it twice tonight and I never do that. It's a tough track and not everyone can race [well] here.

"I've raced everywhere, but this track is No. 1 in my book, because you've got to be thinking, you can't let your mind go blank, you've got to focus every lap. This track will teach you to drive [anywhere], because just when you think you have it mastered, you ain't. This place is the best, to me."

"It's an awesome track. Not only is it a scenic place, but it's phenomenal and Tom Curley makes it that way, with spec motors, spec shocks and look at this, they tear 'em down -- they don't screw around," Laquerre said, gesturing to the pit area inspection zone. "He keeps the cost down and does a great job with it, and he's fair."

Laquerre, who raced both a late model stock car and a "Tiger Sportsman," the latest iteration of the track's infamous "Flying Tigers" division of stock cars that were so numerous on this night the track held a pair of 22-car features; was visited by a couple ambulance attendants more than half an hour after his last race, apparently because they heard he had an inch-and-a-half high knot on his hand.

"It came from [hitting] the roll cage," Laquerre said after submitting to a series of flexibility and strength tests and then 'promising' to go to the hospital the next morning if the hematoma didn't subside; or in true short track racer fashion, taking a needle and draining the fluid himself.

This was a guy who Stewart cited, though not by name, as having worked putting in a pier for four hours earlier in the day, with his family marine business; before he came to the track to work on his two race cars.

Brent Dragon listed Stoddard; Stewart's jack man Rick Pigeon, who was at Thunder Road the same night with his boss visiting his old friends; and Richard Childress Racing crew chief Shane Wilson, who lived only 30 miles from T-Road but was never able to race there on Thursday nights.

Short track racing's icing

Joey Polewarczyk won his event with track co-owner Ken Squier in attendance.

The most interesting aspect of Polewarczyk's Governor's Cup victory was that it resulted in a deal to race a BDI Racing Chevrolet for team principal and SPEED broadcaster Bob Dillner, an opportunity that will include outings in both a 350-horsepower late model stock car and a 600-horsepower super late model.

"I went to Thunder Road Speedbowl while in New England for the Cup Series race at New Hampshire and watched Joey win the Governor's Cup; that completely sealed the deal for me," Dillner said. "He put a whupping on the competition there that night. He's also got a great personality. We're looking forward to showing the folks from Chevy what he can do in a race car."

"BDI has one of the best teams around and to get a chance to run that kind of equipment is great," Polewarczyk said. "I'm looking forward to the exposure that this will offer me and my career. Hopefully I can impress some people. If we have a good run, it will be good for both of us."

It's the next step on a dreamlike road where harsh reality slaps you in the face on every other step.

On a Thursday night at Thunder Road, Polewarczyk shook the Vermont governor's hand in Victory Lane after winning the man's titled race; and accepted congratulations and thanks from a two-time NASCAR champion who's currently leading the race for his third stock car crown.

At 7:30 the next morning, he was at Pole's Automotive, his dad's car shop in Hudson, N.H.; doing a brake job on a customer's car. And just like Thunder Road, that's the epitome of short track racing in America.

And win or lose, for thousands up in and around Barre, Vt., it doesn't get any better. Just ask Laquerre, who a la the "Alabama Gang's" Red Farmer down in that area; is one of the faces of short track racing in the Northeast.

"This is a great place to race, it's in my heart and I just love it here," Laquerre said. "I'm at the business every day, and I don't have much help with the two race cars, but if you slow down and start babying yourself, you'll get old, and I don't want to get old."

And perhaps best of all, and proving there's no off-season for true racers, Laquerre said he'd put "about 10,000 miles" on his snowmobile last winter, including the "border-to-border" event from Massachusetts to Canada, which he and his 12-year-old grandson did on a pair of sleds, in "nine hours and 47 minutes, an average speed of 32 miles an hour, where the record was 12 hours and 45 minutes."

Only a racer would understand -- or 90 percent of the crowd at Thunder Road.