Galletta's Karting Club

Our season opener was scheduled for Sunday, July 16th, 2023 late afternoon/early evening. There was some rain in the forecast, but light rain (either overnight or even that day) is good for the track, so it only gets rained out if it’s an extended downpour that over-saturated the surface. And it played out just right — overnight rain was led to a decent track:

Sunday, July 16th, 2023, Oswego, NY – The 28th Year of Galletta’s Greenhouse Backyard Karting has commenced, and our 1st race saw a 1st time winner! Anthony “AJ” Larkin — who races in the Small Black Supermodified division at Oswego Speedway (amongst other tracks) took the 1st of two 25-lap features in the Galletta’s Greenhouse Racing #5 kart holding off a hard-charging Matt Stevens. And in the 2nd feature, that same Matt Stevens was not to be denied, as he blasted into the lead and pulled away for an easy win in the R&C OswegoSushi.com / Galletta’s Greenhouse Racing #74.

Shout out to Steve and AJ Larkin!

Special thanks to both Steve and AJ Larkin, who helped do some of the heavy lifting to get the track ready to race!!! They helped move a few downed tree branches that fell on the track the 2022-23 off-season, mowed, weed-eated, and dragged the track. Without them, we would not have been able to start our season!

25-LAP FEATURE #1:

1st race of the year means no handicap to work with yet, so we usually make up a handicap on the fly, this one done by inverting by prior experience and previous career feature wins.

7/16 Twin 25s – Tower Angle by Rung “Aou” Stevens

(Including some Testing Footage from 7/14 – 7/15)

After some footage of testing 7/14 and 7/15, here is the mostly unedited Tower camera footage. I apologize in advance for losing my temper and dropping a few swear words when the lap counter was missing when we already started late.

FINISH 25-LAP FEATURE #1

DNF = Did Not Finish.

25-LAP FEATURE #2:

We inverted the finish of the 1st, as with no prior races, there was only 1 race and 1 winner thus far to take into consideration. The bad news: With so few competitors (and one leaving at halftime), Matt and Chris start in the 2nd row, with Matt even on the outside! More drivers needed to fill out the field and make it tougher competition overall, but we especially need to make it tougher for longtime home team racers with 28 years experience in these karts. whenever we have more drivers, it’s really simple… we also always have more winners!

7/16/2023 Twin 25s – Chris Stevens’ GoPro HelmetCam [Sponsored by OswegoSushi.com]

Here’s another angle of this week’s action, this one a helmet cam worn by yours truly. Again, I apologize in advance when I lost my temper and let some colorful words fly upon realizing that each and every one of us didn’t notice that at the moment that the green flag was about to drop… the lap counter was not there, still buried in a closet since last Fall, pushing our already delayed start time back even further. It was a long off-season, but things should settle in and start times should be better (same thing happens every year, start of the year we haven’t hit our groove yet… so by midsummer and the end of the year it all runs FAR smoother — Fall races often can start in the afternoons — but sometimes we lose drivers due to the late start times early on in the season, so despite having track and karts ready, nobody shows to race!).

FINISH 25-LAP FEATURE #2

“RETCON” MAKEUP POINTS:

7/23/2023’s Qualifier / Makeup Heat Finish
1. 8th in 7/23/2023’s Makeup Heat Race: Nicolas Olivares (Galletta’s #1)
2. 9th in 7/23/2023’s Makeup Heat Race: Bob Failmezger (Galletta’s #6)
3. 10th in 7/23/2023’s Makeup Heat Race: ® Jeremy Burton (Galletta’s #93)
4. 11th in 7/23/2023’s Makeup Heat Race: ® John Mathis (Galletta’s #33c)
5. 12th in 7/23/2023’s Makeup Heat Race: Randy Baldwin (Galletta’s #9)

7/30/2023’s Qualifier / Makeup Heat Finish
1. 13th in 7/30/2023’s Makeup Heat Race: David Hartpence (Galletta’s Greenhouse Racing #2)
2. 14th in 7/30/2023’s Makeup Heat Race (R) Nathan Powers (Galletta’s Greenhouse Racing #9)
3. 15th in 7/30/2023’s Makeup Heat Race: DNF – (R) Matt Bubenhausen (Galletta’s Greenhouse Racing #93)

7/16/2023 Twin 25s – ALL 3 CAMERAS Super-edit

I put a lot of work into the video this week (and stayed up far too late doing it) utilizing all 3 camera angles. It takes a lot of time to synch them up. It actually sounds crazy with 3 narrators in it !!! (Make sure no kids are listening to the part where I realize we had no lap counter and my dad gave us the green flag to start! I let some F-bombs fly! )

Rung “Aou” Stevens Live Feed Footage

Aou made a live Facebook video during the race, which gives us another stationary angle and some more viewers (although most of them are in her native Thailand)! Awesome! Well… wait… apparently not…

This one caused yet another earth-shattering controversy, however, when Melissa Stevens took great offense to it and cited a protest with the property owner with Aou’s commentary. Assuredly, Chris and Aou’s employers will also be called and notified of this horrific transgression by someone close in Melissa’s orbit and mindset, after all, it’s one of her favorite past-times! The offense? That apparently — through some form of translation that only Melissa’s mind can comprehend — Aou said that the races at Galletta’s seem to be cursed to start too late. Oh my God, that is so absolutely awful! That’s it! Cancel her!!!

Wait… what’s that? Oh, yes… our late (and often badly mistimed) starts are often a problem… we have lost dozens of good drivers over the years from it.. one look at our All-Time Points List shows how many of them stop racing after a while. Chris himself was swearing up a storm on the videos over the many little things that went wrong to start late (the worst being the lap counter didn’t get put up!). But, if we’re looking at losing drivers… we’ve also lost drivers from Melissa’s mom talking her usual garbled mentally ill gossip to them as well… isn’t it time she gets canceled? *Sigh*

7/16/2023 Twin 25s – ALL 3 CAMERAS Super-edit

7/16/2023 Galletta’s Points Earned

Lap by Lap Point Scoring:

Handicap for Next Race:

Due to a lack of drivers, I am altering the start rules. Returning drivers not yet in the current season’s standings will still start in front of drivers who have had at least one prior win in that season.

We will also consider single file starts and Matt and Chris dead last every race if there are fewer than 7 drivers on the starting grid (as Matt got an easy 1st lap pass for a walk-away win and Chris got two 2nds).

1. AJ Nason
2. Steve Larkin
3. Andrew Hook
4. Chris Stevens
5. Returning Vets (inverted by wins)
6. (1 WIN) AJ Larkin
7. (1 WIN) Matt Stevens
8. Newbies (inverted by weight)
9. Mel Stevens

COMING SOON — The points!

Complete Race Videos (Tower Camera and Chris Stevens GoPro Footage), race results, and point standings! Been busy, but I’m on it and it’ll be up before long! Come back soon!

News & Notes: 2022-23 Off-season & Pre-season June 2023

• June 2023 RACE DELAYS: Our season opener has again been delayed longer than anticipated. Galletta’s Greenhouse (our club’s namesake and track location), and our (Chris and Matt’s) kids’ end-of-the-school-year festivities have kept us mighty busy in May and June. But even so, we’d be ready to go for a couple of weeks now… except for so much track work needed to be done before we could start. We had a few tree limbs fall onto the track due to off-season ice, snow, and wind, not to mention that the track has yet to be dragged. And that leads us to…

• THANKS TO: SBS Driver AJ Larkin has taken the lead on helping with the tree limb debris and some mowing/weed-eating (as our riding mower needed repairs), so there is light at the end of the tunnel for our racing to begin due to a HUGE thanks to him!!! That will most certainly count towards some race expenses! Looking for more people to help! A good track drag is now the biggest holdup, as our track work vehicles are all old and in various states of disrepair. Anyone with a truck to borrow (or even a cheap one to buy — doesn’t even have to be road-worthy for this) let us know!

  

  2022 Fall

  

  2022-23 Winter

  

  2022-23 Winter

  
  

  

  2022-23 Winter

  

  Well, we debated using it to hang the lap counter and lights on!

  

  This would make the racing interesting…

  
  

  

  The track was looking a little dry and grown over in June 2023 with no way to drag the track.

  

  Finally!

  

  The Larkin Bros to the rescue!

  
  

• COMEBACKS: A veteran driver returns! And of all things it’s another AJ — Arnold ‘AJ’ Nason, who raced with us in 2010-11 but had to stop when he moved to Georgia, is back for full-time racing. Nason, who also has raced dirt stocks and late models in Central NY and Georgia, can be seen playing racing games and singing/playing covers on his various YouTube channels. AJ also chipped in with some winter greenhouse work, which will also count towards race expenses!
  
  
• HUGE ALL-TIME POINTS UPDATES: Website has been getting updated, including the All-Time Points/Wins page, which was re-tallied to include not only the 2000-2022 Galletta’s Seasons, but also now the 2006-08 Oswego Kartway Points into the overall totals, which shifted a few driver positions due to the 3 seasons worth of points previously not being added into the totals. In addition, the page itself has been updated to point to every driver profile as well. You can get to it via the menu above or just click here.
  
  
• RACE TIME?: We are tentatively looking at Sunday, July 9th for our Season Opener. However, to make this work, MATT NEEDS HELP — namely a truck that can drag the track.
  
  
• Karts? Anybody?: At least two to three drivers are looking at karts to buy, so anyone out there with a kart that we can adapt to our style of racing (1-WD Yard Karts is what we primarily use, but we’ve also adapted 2-WD racing chassis), inquire. We know a few people out there have former Galletta’s karts — bring them up, we’re always looking to buy them back.

• BONUS FOOTAGE: AJ Nason — GoPro & Kart July Testing
  

  Longtime followers and racers at Galletta’s may remember ANOTHER AJ — one AJ Nason, who raced frequently in 2010-2011, when he would make the weekly 1 hour+ drive from Cortland, NY to race (dedication like that makes it puzzling how some drivers who literally live minutes away can’t be bothered to take an hour or two out of their weekend to race?). He lived in Georgia for the better part of the last decade but moved to Oswego this past winter and couldn’t wait to get started. Here are his two GoPro videos for the weekend…

  …the first from when he tested both his GoPro and some Galletta’s Karts on 7/14 and 7/15, 2023.

  A 2nd video showed Nason’s limited action in both features, as he was unable to get a handle on the karts that he drove. He plans to test and work more bugs out and get more comfortable with the karts during the week to find the best fit. He’s quite upset with his old #35 kart, which was bought, sold, and renumbered a handful of times, but finally was stolen from someone named Scott Hill’s yard before he ever had a chance to race it. Nason would love to buy it back, so if anyone knows of it’s whereabouts, please pass word to any of us! Oh, that reminds us…

  Search for the Lost Karts

  For over two decades, we made and maintained our own karts at Galletta’s (some rebuilt yard karts, some built from scratch, and even a few old racing chassis!). But our head welder — retired 40+ year metal fabricator, Wesley ‘Ogre’ Stevens — has Parkinson’s and his ability to weld has been greatly slowed down to a crawl. That being said, we have drivers who want to buy karts… but as you read above, when karts get sold and leave the property, we sometimes never see them again — they either get stolen, driven into the ground and discarded, or sold to total strangers who never come up here to race the track that they were designed to race on. If anyone has any old and missing Galletta’s style 1-WD karts (some can be seen here, many more on many of the driver profiles in the All-Time Points list), or even some yard karts that just need some slight rebuilds to adapt to our track, please contact us. We have cash on hand for anything we can use! That reminds us…

  All-Time Points & Wins Update

  A new plugin has enabled me (your racer and website builder/editor, Chris Stevens), to easily list our All-Time Points & Wins list with driver profiles. Not every driver has a profile, but a ton was made over the last couple of decades of our races. If anyone wants one that doesn’t have one already, let me know… all I need are a few good pics of the driver and kart, at least one points race entered, and I can work from there. And remember, the list is only updated after the final race of the year, so it is 2000-2022 until the conclusion of the 2023 Season this Fall.