Thunder Road Milk Bowl 50th Season Finale
Toughest Short Track Late Model Stock Car Race in America
Oct 12, 2009
The track has been racing on Thursday nights in central Vermont since it opened in 1960. Track owner Ken Squier, a member of the Oceanside Rotary Club of Daytona Beach Stock Car Racing Hall of Fame and the New England Motorsports Hall of Fame and the former voice of the Daytona 500, explains that Thursday was payday throughout the granite quarries and factories that made Barre the granite capital of the world.
Former NASCAR Sprint Cup Champion Tony Stewart
Thunder Road’s 50th season celebration has brought many celebrities to the “Nation’s Site of Excitement”. Among the visitors were NASCAR Hall-of Famers Richard Petty and Bobby Allison and two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart, who competed in the Governor’s Cup event (and finished 16th).
Milk Bowl is a Prestigious Late Model Event
The Milk Bowl is Thunder Road’s traditional season finale. It is comprised of three 50-lap segments for the track’s headline division. Since 1996, is has been a premier event for the American Canadian Tour (ACT) Late Models. The three 50-lap Milk Bowl segments are cumulatively scored. Drivers are awarded points based on their finish in each round - one point for 1st, two points for 2nd, etc. The lowest total score determines the winner. In case of a tie, the driver with the best finish in the final segment is awarded first place. All position changes throughout the field at all stages of the race can influence the final outcome. The initial starting grid is set by a combination of time trials and qualifying events. Typically, 26 positions are available. Often 40 or more teams enter in hopes of qualifying. Segments two and three are lined up by reverting the prior order of finish. The reward for winning the first segment is to start at the rear of the field the next time out.
The 2009 Chittenden Milk Bowl is the 47th held. In Milk Bowls 1-46, only three drivers, Larry Demar ’65,Dave Dion ’75 and Robbie Crouch ’86, earned a perfect score of three points by winning all three segments.
Milk Bowl tradition calls for the winner to kiss the Milk Bowl queen in victory lane before receiving their check. The queen is a dairy cow – in recent years an Ayrshire weighing an average of 1200 lbs and only mildly interested at best in being smooched by a human in a fire suit. When dairy farmer Dwayne Lanphear of Morrisville, VT won the 2001 Milk Bowl he delivered a kiss with such enthusiasm that the photo ran in newspapers across the nation, including the Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Detroit Free Press as well as the Toronto Star.
Previous winners include New England Motorsports Hall-of Famers Stub Fadden, Bobby Dragon, Harmon “Beaver” Dragon, Robbie Crouch, Dave Dion and Jean-Paul Cabana, seven-time American Canadian Tour champion Jean-Paul Cyr and five-time ACT champion Brian Hoar. Patrick Laperle of St. Denis, Quebec has won three of the last four Milk Bowls. Harold “Hard Luck” Hanaford won the inaugural Milk Bowl in 1962.
“It’s a great race for the fans,” former NASCAR Busch North champion Dave Dion said. “You can win the race without winning a segment or you can win two out of three and still finish badly in the overall. There is no such thing as a comfortable edge in that race. You give it all out until it’s over.”
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