‘Losing a friend’: Myrtle Beach Speedway drivers prep for one last ride around track
One to go.
That phrase has significant meaning for two Myrtle Beach Speedway drivers as they prepare for the track’s final day of racing Saturday.
“I’ve never won a race at Myrtle Beach Speedway. I hate it,” said Pawleys Island resident Samie Scarpelli Jr., who’s raced at the track for about a quarter of a century. “Everywhere else I’ve gone I’ve won, but I’ve never won a race at the speedway, so I hate that it’s the last chance.”
For Georgetown resident Eric Joyner, the farewell race day represents one more chance to run on the beloved track in a season essentially lost due to the coronavirus and back issues that have plagued him recently.
“I won’t have another chance so I’m definitely going to run this last race,” said Joyner, who’s participated as a driver only once this year while instead serving in other roles for his race team.
Those are just two of the many drivers who have heavy hearts as Myrtle Beach Speedway’s 62-year run is set to take the white flag Saturday. The track is under contract to be sold to a developer who plans to turn the iconic short track into a commercial and housing development if the third reading of a rezoning request is passed by Horry County Council — as expected — as early as Tuesday.
“It’s kind of sad. It’s almost like when you graduate high school,” said driver Keith Ferrell, a Forestbrook resident and former head instructor of the Palmetto Academy for Learning Motorsports, a local charter school that has partnered with MBS.
“You’re leaving all your elementary and your grade school days behind. You’re never gonna regain that again. It’s just gonna have to be one of those lasting memories.”
Work hard, run harder
Though Myrtle Beach Speedway is often associated with famous names like the Pettys, Earnhardts and Allisons, many of those who have graced the track over more than half a century are people who could be your neighbor.
Joyner, for example, has long been in the trucking business to make a living — and to have the money to race. The idea of racing was something he’s always been interested in and 28 years ago he took on a hobby that he’s still enjoying today.
“I couldn’t get any more speeding tickets on the highway,” Joyner quipped when explaining why he got into the sport.
Joyner credits Scarpelli Jr. for keeping him in the sport at a time when he was pondering quitting years ago. Scarpelli, at the time the more experienced racer and a water and sewer technician for the City of Myrtle Beach, took Joyner under his wing, teaching him some tactics under the hood that all grassroots drivers practice to get an edge.
That turned into a 27-year friendship.
“I’ve learned so much from so many different people,” Joyner said. “In the pits, even in the shop during the week, you call on some of these guys ‘Hey, what do you think about this or what do you think about that?’ and they’ll give you advice. You learn the people you can trust and who want to see you do well. Now, on the track, we’re competing on the track.”
Dal Wright, who’s raced at MBS for 31 years, credits Ralph Earnhardt for literally putting him in the seat when he was a youngster.
“He kind of set a little kid on fire. He put me in a seat I was too little to sit in and I stood up and looked over the dash,” said Wright, a Conway resident who’s retired from UPS and now works as a safety coordinator for Horry County Public Works.
Scarpelli, who owns a track championship in Virginia, refers to racing as a way of life.
“Worked hard, then come home and work hard at night,” he said. “Seven days a week.”
Ferrell, who’s driven and served in other roles at the track for 31 years, equates being a grassroots driver to having a second job — yet one out of desire rather than necessity.
“You were really putting in a full-time job at the track. It was almost like a second home,” said Ferrell, who owned the now-defunct AVAC retail store in Myrtle Beach and now works as a manager at SealMaster. “And we got close to a lot of people there.”
A racing brotherhood
Depending on the series they’re racing in at a given time — whether it’s Late Models, Chargers, Mini-stocks, Super Trucks, Vintage or others — drivers can be rivals and friends at the same time.
During a given week, they’ll be at each other’s homes working on cars to get ready for the weekend, when the stakes get higher.
“You put a bug in their ear to try to see what they’re doing with their cars,” Scarpelli said. “We’re all good liars. We never tell the truth. You never wanna give nothing away, you know?”
Once on they’re on the track, the friendships vanish. That is, of course, unless a brother is in need.
“You get mad at them and they get mad at you and it’s all over with,” Scarpelli said. “But the bottom line is if I broke something anybody out there would give me something. If somebody else broke something, I’d give anything to them to fix their car. That’s just the way the camaraderie is. Everybody helps everybody.”
NASCAR at its highest levels is notable for the “Let the boys be boys” motto, which includes dirty racing, harsh words and pit crew skirmishes. While grassroots tracks like MBS include some of those characterizations, it’s been different at this level as upkeeping the cars often comes straight from the drivers’ pockets rather than a big-money race team.
“Those are the kind of people that would drive and compete against you like thunder and lightning on the track,” Wright said. “But if you were to break something or tear something up they would run over there and bring the part out of their trailer, give it to you, help you put it on just so they could compete against you again. It’s that kind of family atmosphere. It’s not cutthroat.”
Hence the reason many of the drivers’ best friends are other drivers they’ve met at Myrtle Beach Speedway or other nearby S.C. grassroots tracks. Many lifelong friendships have been made as drivers have gone through the good, bad and ugly.
At times the local drivers have had to bond under tragic circumstances. Four drivers associated with MBS — Jackie Ward (natural causes inside a racecar before wrecking), Terry Evans (car crash on the way home from the track), Bob Walker (natural causes while packing up his car at the track) and Mark Hale (cancer) — died in 2017 and 2018.
“You don’t want to admit that something like that can happen,” Joyner said. “I look at it kind of like Dale [Earnhardt] Sr. passing away. We’re doing something we love doing and what better way to go out? I mean, we’re all gonna leave one day.”
Whether tragedy or triumph, the interactions specific to these drivers are something you can’t get just anywhere.
“There’s a true brotherhood amongst every one of us,” Ferrell said.
‘It’s wore out’
A flawed track in many ways, the Myrtle Beach Speedway property in the coming years will be replaced by sparkling new homes and businesses. Yet, for many the former is much more attractive than the latter.
“It’s wore out. That’s the greatest thing about it,” Scarpelli said. “The racetrack is wore out. It makes it hard and fun to drive.”
The .538-mile oval has undergone renovations through the years. Yet, it’s the imperfections that drivers point to when appreciating the difficulty of the track, which has a rich history as a place drivers such as Dale Earnhardt Jr. were sent to get prepared for the next level.
“It’s a sense of pride for me,” Joyner said of driving at such a storied track. “They say Darlington is too tough to tame, but I don’t know if those people have raced Myrtle Beach because it’s different on one end than the other. I take a lot of pride in the fact that I’ve raced so many years at a track that (those legends) raced at.”
Scarpelli still has trouble pinpointing exactly what makes MBS so special.
“It’s a big mystery to me. I love the people, I love the racetrack,” he said. “If you could win there, you could win anywhere, everybody tells me. But I can’t win there. I’ve tried.”
With hard-nosed racing comes ugly wrecks. Just ask Wright about the time he graced the local daily paper with the caption “Things go wrong for Dal Wright.”
“It was probably the most horrific-looking wreck. My mom went ballistic. She came out of the stands and was trying to get out on the track. Everybody’s like ‘He’s dead.’ You’ve seen them on TV. They look horrific,” said Wright, who was unscathed but left the track with a totaled racecar that night after his car flipped four times down the straightaway. “But honestly the difference is it’s dissipating energy because it’s not a sudden stop. You’re still in motion. So that’s not as bad as hitting a car or hitting a wall and coming to that sudden stop. That thud is what hurts.”
The drivers ultimately understand owner Bob Lutz’s business decision to sell the track to a developer. After all, the speedway’s location is essentially a gold mine of a property in Horry County. But, unlike some living near the track who have complained about the noise — leading to a midnight ordinance that has ended races early — the drivers are having a hard time believing it will soon be gone.
“I think I heard one person was complaining about the smell and everything else. I’m like ‘That sounds like heaven. Have you got any more lots back there available?’” Joyner said, noting he’d build his own grandstand in the backyard if he lived there so he could watch some racing for free.
After all, for guys like Joyner MBS has been less a place to go than a second home.
“I really don’t know what kind of emotions I’ll have. I know it ‘s going to be tough to load up and pull out of there the last time knowing I won’t be going back,” he said. “This is something that never occurred to me that it would happen. It almost feels like I’m losing a friend.”
The drivers will soon have a place to race with open arms if they are willing to travel a little farther out. Myrtle Beach Speedway General Manager Steve Zacharias recently announced that the newly formed Speedway Plus Production, LLC — owned by him, Brian Vause and Savannah Brotherton — has bought Florence Motor Speedway from the now-late owner/operator Charlie Powell.
Still, that will require some hardships that aren’t present when a speedway is in your home county.
“I know we can move on to other tracks and other locations. But for myself I’m questioning how much more do I want to race now?” said Wright, who along with Ferrell will not be racing at MBS this weekend. “There’s a lot more travel involved, a lot more time. … I think it may end some people’s careers.”
While it’s unclear how many MBS drivers will travel to places like Florence and nearby Dillon Motor Speedway to race in the future, one thing’s for sure: There’s one more chance to take a green flag at Myrtle Beach Speedway.
And Scarpelli, for one, is planning to leave it all on the track Saturday during The Sun Fun 101 as he gives it one more go at a goal that’s eluded him some 25 years.
“They told me don’t bring nothing back but the steering wheel,” he said with a laugh.
The finale
Zacharias, who has been the speedway’s general manager for the past nine years, is expecting cars from several areas of the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic to possibly push the limit of 42 cars in Saturday’s featured Sun Fun 101.
“I think there are going to be so many cars,” he said. “A lot of people are coming from all over the place to say they raced here one last time.”
There will be five races including Charger, Super Truck, Mini-cup and Mini-stock divisions, capped by the 101-lap Late Model finale.
“It’s been a good run. Unfortunately it’s coming to an end,” Zacharias said. “We’re going to do what we can to have a successful race and stay safe with everyone, and I’m sure the drivers and teams will hang around and celebrate when it’s all over, I know that.
“It’s going to be a sad day for sure but it’s kind of out of our control at this point so we’ll take it as best we can and enjoy it one last time. You’ve got one shot to enjoy it, look around and take it all in. At the end of the day you’ve got the memories, and we’ll keep them.”
The Sun News staff writer Alan Blondin contributed to this article.
This story was originally published August 14, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
