Pre-sale tickets for the 2nd Annual Joe Weatherly Memorial to be held at Bill Sawyer’s Virginia Motor Speedway in Jamaica, VA on July 13 – 14, 2007. The event will once again be sanctioned and sanctioned by AMA Pro Racing. It will mark the second appearance of the AMA Ford Quality Checked Grand National Motorcycle tour to the ½ mile speed plant. Last year’s event was the first time in 36 years that the national motorcycle tour had visited the State of Virginia.
This year’s edition of the Joe Weatherly Memorial will feature two night’s of racing. On Friday July 13th the speedway will have amateur and vintage motorcycle races. Saturday July 14th fans will see the Expert Twins division in action and the Joe Weatherly Memorial presented by Thurston Spring Service, Inc featuring the AMA Ford Quality Checked Grand National Motorcycle tour.
Tickets are currently on sale between the hours of 9am and 3:30pm. All tickets are general admission. Admission for Friday’s Amateur and Vintage races will be $7 with Children 6 and under free with paying adult. Gates for Friday will open at 6pm.
Admission for Saturday’s AMA Ford Quality Checked Grand National Motorcycle event will see adult tickets at $26 in advance and $30 day of show, children 7 to 12 years old will be $10 and children 6 and under free with paying adult. Mastercard and Visa are accepted. Fans can purchase tickets by calling (804) 758-1867 or by coming by the speedway’s office. Gates for Saturday will open at 4pm.
The race is named after Joe Weatherly, most will remember Weatherly as a two time NASCAR Grand National Champion (now Nextel cup) but before racing on four wheels Joe was an accomplished motorcycle racer with over 200 wins and earned three American Motorcycle Association (AMA) Championships before he started racing stock cars. Joe Weatherly was a leading AMA racer of the late 1940s and early 1950s. During his brief, five-year professional motorcycle racing career Weatherly won three AMA nationals, including the prestigious Laconia Classic 100-Mile road race in 1948 and 1949. Weatherly was from Norfolk, VA where his widow still resides.
AMA sanctions many racing series, but the oldest and most traditional is flat track, sometimes referred to as “dirt track” racing. Dating back to post World War II, flat track is the uniquely American type of motorcycle racing. Riders finesse their machines sideways through the turns, just inches apart from each other, at speeds over 100 mph. In short, motorcycle flat track racing provides one of the most thrilling spectacles in motosports.
Bill Sawyer’s Virginia Motor Speedway, an ASA Member Track affiliate, is a 1/2-mile, dirt oval. The track is located on U. S. Route 17, eight miles north of Saluda, VA and 25 miles south of Tappahannock, VA. The speedway is just a short drive from Richmond, Fredericksburg, Southern Maryland and the Hampton Roads area.
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