Lebanon Valley Speedway is about 30 miles from our house in North Bennington, Vermont — straight down Route 22 into New York, maybe 40 minutes if you don't get stuck behind a tractor.
The Track
Lebanon Valley Speedway is a half-mile, high-banked dirt oval in West Lebanon, New York, built in 1953. The complex also includes a quarter-mile dragstrip and a go-kart track, but the big oval is the main event — Saturday night car racing all summer long. The grandstands wrap around the front stretch, and the dirt surface means the cars slide, drift, and throw rooster tails of clay off the corners. It's loud, it's dusty, and it's exactly what you picture when someone says "Saturday night racing."
General admission for adults is $13. Kids 11 and under are $2. That's not a typo — two dollars. You can't take a family of six to a movie for less than the cost of one kid's ticket here. Reserved seats are $15, and there's a standing-room deck for $1 if you just want to lean on a rail and watch.
The Races
The night's program was listed as "Weekly Racing + Twin 20's" with an $8,200 handicap purse. The Twin 20s format means the Big Block Modifieds run two separate 20-lap feature races instead of one longer main — more racing, more restarts, more chances for someone to charge from the back.
The divisions on the card:
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DIRTcar Big Block Modifieds — The headliners. These are 800-horsepower, big-block V8s on a dirt oval. They run the Twin 20s, and they're the reason most people are in the stands.
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DIRTcar 358 Modifieds — A step down in displacement from the Big Blocks, but still serious race cars. Same body style, slightly smaller engines, and honestly, from the grandstands the difference in speed isn't obvious until they're side by side.
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DIRTcar Pro Stock — Full-bodied stock cars, street-legal in appearance only. These are the ones that look closest to something you'd see on a highway, which makes the contact and the cornering feel a little more relatable.
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DIRTcar Sportsman — A support division for drivers working their way up. Still fast, still loud, but you can tell the experience gap between here and the Modifieds.
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Limited Sportsman — The entry-level of the Sportsman class.
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Street Stocks — Exactly what it sounds like. Street cars turned into race cars. These are the most fun to watch in traffic because the racing is the tightest and the passes are the most creative.
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4-Cylinders — Four-cylinder compact cars, fenders buzzing, engines screaming. They sound like angry bees and they race like it too.
The heat races set the field, and then the features ran in reverse order — 4-Cylinders first, Big Block Modifieds last. By the time the Modifieds rolled out for the first Twin 20, the track had been worked in and the racing line was black and slick against the lighter clay.
The Big Block Modifieds are something else in person. You feel them before you see them — the engines are so loud that the grandstand vibrates, and when a pack of them comes off turn four side by side, the sound hits you in the chest. These cars weigh around 2,400 pounds and run on methanol, which gives off a sweet, heavy smell that hangs in the air all night. 800 horsepower on a half-mile dirt oval means they're sideways through the corners and barely straightened up before they're back on the gas for the next one.
The Twin 20s format kept things moving. Two 20-lap features for the Big Blocks meant two green-flag runs, two sets of restarts, and two chances for the field to get shaken up. The handicap system inverts part of the field based on points, so the faster cars often start further back — which means you get to watch someone drive through traffic instead of just leading from the front.
And that's exactly what played out. The Big Block Modified feature was the race of the night. Andy Bachetti — a Lebanon Valley regular who knows his way around this place — started way back in the field and spent 20 laps quietly marching forward. Up front, Mike Engwer jumped out early from the pole and looked strong, but Matt Pupello had other ideas, working the high side to take command around the halfway point. For a while it seemed like Pupello's race to lose. Then lapped traffic did what lapped traffic always does — it bunches up the leader, gives the chaser a window, and the next thing you know, Bachetti is alongside him in turns 3 and 4 on the final lap. He won it by half a second. Virgilio, Heffner, and Flach trailed them across the line.
The 358 Modified feature was more of the same story. Bachetti gridded 16th and once again carved through traffic, eventually tracking down Brett Haas in the closing laps to complete his second Modified-358 sweep of the year. At that point you almost felt bad for the rest of the field — the guy was just on another level tonight.
The support divisions had their own moments. Chris Stalker grabbed the Pro Stock win on a restart, narrowly holding off Frank Twing at the line by what had to be less than a car length. The Sportsman ran the George Marcus Memorial, and Nick Giardini controlled the second half of that one for the win. Ray Royals, Jeff Meltz Sr., and Stephen Burka took the checkers in Limited Sportsman, Street Stocks, and 4-Cylinders respectively.
Full finishing order from July 11th. These results are not from Lebanon Valley Speedway's official site — they hadn't posted results as of this writing. The recap and finishing orders below are sourced from Heatherlyn's race report, and I'm grateful for the detailed coverage.
Big Block Modifieds (30 laps): 1) Andy Bachetti, 2) Matt Pupello, 3) John Virgilio, 4) J.R. Heffner, 5) Keith Flach, 6) Kyle Armstrong, 7) Mike Engwer, 8) Chris Curtis, 9) Marc Johnson, 10) Kolby Schroder, 11) Eddie Marshall, 12) Brett Haas, 13) Brandon Lane, 14) Kyle Sheldon, 15) Alex Bell, 16) Josh Marcus, 17) Guy Sheldon, 18) Mike King, 19) Montgomery Tremont, 20) Alan Houghtaling
358 Modifieds (24 laps): 1) Andy Bachetti, 2) Brett Haas, 3) Joey Coppola, 4) Guy Sheldon, 5) Brady Cordova, 6) Brian Berger, 7) Donny Travaglin, 8) Garrett Poland, 9) Jeff Watson, 10) Mike Engwer, 11) Brian Whittemore, 12) Kyle Sheldon, 13) Brian Sandstedt, 14) Joey Bonetti, 15) Mark Pullen, 16) Harold Robitaille, 17) Nick Giardini, 18) Ray Hall Jr., 19) Alex Bell, 20) Joe Pravia, 21) Kim LaVoy, 22) Brian Peterson, 23) Montgomery Tremont, 24) Alan Houghtaling
Pro Stock (20 laps): 1) Chris Stalker, 2) Frank Twing, 3) Tom Dean, 4) Jason Casey, 5) Jason Meltz, 6) Shawn Perez, 7) Dave Stickles, 8) Jay Casey, 9) Tom O'Connor, 10) Paul LaRochelle, 11) Brian Keough, 12) Richard Spencer, 13) Shaine Dowd-Smith, 14) Frank Twing Jr., 15) Jeff Meltz Jr., 16) Shawn Perez Jr.
Sportsman — George Marcus Memorial (20 laps): 1) Nick Giardini, 2) Tim Hartman Jr., 3) Dylan Holmes, 4) Craig Wholey, 5) Nick Brundige, 6) AJ Albreada, 7) Ed Dachenhausen, 8) Anthony Maxon, 9) Cam Van Zandt, 10) Connor Prokop, 11) Karl Barnes, 12) John Agor, 13) Owen Lewis, 14) John Gibson
Limited Sportsman (15 laps): 1) Ray Royals, 2) Brian Walsh, 3) Matt Humes, 4) Dalton Gamache, 5) Dan Odell, 6) Braxton Martin, 7) Kyle Burl, 8) John Santolin, 9) Garrett Biagiarelli, 10) Doug Sterling, 11) Travis Bernard, 12) Dustin Bowen
Street Stocks (15 laps): 1) Jeff Meltz Sr., 2) Dave Streibel Jr., 3) Jay Pepin, 4) Anthony King, 5) Gary O'Brien, 6) Franklin Smith, 7) Keri VanDenburg, 8) Chris Streeter, 9) Rocco Szemplinski, 10) Dave Streibel, 11) Mike Dianda, 12) David Shepard, 13) Henry Morris, 14) Dylan Quintero, 15) Brian Remmel, 16) Peter Huntoon
4-Cylinders (12 laps): 1) Stephen Burka, 2) Prudence Peterson, 3) Morgan Houghtaling, 4) Jason Peck
The Fireworks
Before the final race, everyone took a break for an amazing fireworks display. And I have to be honest — I wasn't expecting much. This is a dirt track in rural New York, not a theme park. I figured a few Roman candles and a finale.
I was wrong.
The fireworks show at Lebanon Valley Speedway was extensive. Not a quick barrage — a full, sustained display that went on for what felt like a good 20 minutes. Shells launched from the infield, bursting directly over the grandstands. Gold willows, red peonies, crackling palms, and crossettes that split and split again. The sound echoed off the grandstand roof and rolled across the valley. The kids were transfixed. My youngest was on my shoulders and I thought he was falling asleep but he was just wide eyed and mesmerized by the show.
There was something about standing on a dirt track grandstand in the dark, smelling methanol and clay dust, watching the sky just absolutely light up, that hit different. It felt real. It felt earned, like the whole night had been building to this.
The video above doesn't do it justice — phone cameras never do with fireworks — but it gives you a sense of the scale. The bursts just kept coming, one after another, layering on top of each other until the smoke hung in the air and the next shell punched through it.
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