Open house, open practice, slated for Saturday at KLMS

klmsCALVERT CITY – Weather permitting, racecars will take to the Kentucky Lake Motor Speedway oval on Saturday in an open house/open practice day at the 3/8-mile dirt oval.

Fans and drivers are invited to the track Saturday, with gates opening at 10 a.m. and practice getting under way at noon. Admission to the grandstands is free, and pit admission is $10 per person.

Drivers are invited to bring their cars for shakedown runs. Activities will be concluded before darkness requires the track to be illuminated.

Weekly Saturday night racing is scheduled to begin on April 11. Plans are to once again present racing in the Late Model, Modified, Crate and Stock Car divisions, with a fifth division, Pure Stock, to be added.

As was the case last year, when new owners Ronnie Jones and Jim Hale re-opened the track after several years of inactivity, wet and cold weather pushed back the intended starting date for the 2015 season. Like last year, an early major event had to be rescheduled and reinvented.

The Bluegrass Nationals have been rescheduled from the weekend of March 20-21 to April 25. The event was originally supposed to feature the World of Outlaws Late Model Series on Friday night, March 20, but wet conditions caused cancellation of that race and a companion event at I-30 Speedway in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Saturday night.

World of Outlaws officials have indicated that neither race will be rescheduled, so KLMS will produce its own event, a one-night program. Details of that program will be announced later.

Last year’s Bluegrass Nationals was originally scheduled as two nights of racing, preceded by a practice session on Thursday, in late March. The National Dirt Racing League was the sanctioning body for that event, but the series ceased to operate in July of last year. A replacement program was staged by KLMS on April 26, with Billy Moyer Jr. of Batesville, Arkansas, winning the $10,000 first-place prize in the Late Model feature.

Jones and Hale purchased the speedway at auction in June 2013 for $990,000.

Kentucky Lake Motor Speedway was built by Dwight and Keith Greer and opened in 1997. It is considered by fans and racers as one of the finest short tracks in America.