by RichD » Mon Jun 29, 2015 8:50 am
It only looked like there were two cars on the track, I guess they had not run long enough the catch up with the tail end of the field before the lights went out. I was at a race once when just the track lights got knocked out. That was at Thompson Speedway in the late '60s. The track is a high banked 5/8th mile paved oval. There was only a wall in front of the grandstand, the rest of the track only had piles of dirt around it. There was a midget track in the infield and that had lights, the main track was only used during daylight hours, but they finally installed lights for night racing. On that night two cars tangled on the backstretch and one of them went off the track and hit a light pole. There was a shower of sparks from the shattered lamps and the track went dark. The pole was not knocked over and a crew was able to get the lights repaired so racing could resume. There is an iconic picture of a car hitting one of the light poles in the infield, I was there the day that happened.