ARRA Genesis and History

Fred Voorhees - President

   I have been lax for way to long in adding this page to our website! It has been suggested numerous times and I just have not gotten around to it. I have never made it a secret of how things got rolling towards having this website and organization of over 40 dedicated auto racing historians across the country and into Canada, and now, I think its time to sit down and put it down on paper of just how this thing called Auto Racing Research Associates came to be!

To truly get to the root of how all of this began...we would have to go back all the way to 1975 actually. It was then, when I was, either in my Sophomore or Junior year in high school that I decided to see if I could possibly write a column covering the racing action at the Flemington Speedway for my local hometown newspaper….The (Lambertville, NJ) Beacon. I made an appointment with editors Lou Okenica and Joe Hazen to come and talk to them about the possibility. It was Lou Okenica that pretty much did all of the talking. Apparently, Lou had attempted to get credentials to occasionally attend Flemington to cover the racing for The Beacon. In Lou's words, “I got tired of dealing with them up there. If you can get credentials...I will give you space in The Beacon to have a column.” And I did. So it began. Though, one thing Lou stressed to me was that the column HAD to have a local flavor. Well, it just so happened that this young kid just up the road from Lambertville in Stockton, NJ was beginning his career behind the wheel and that would be great to follow his progression through the column and absolutely provide “local interest”. By the way...Frank Cozze’s Sister Maryanne worked at The Beacon and I think was the one that manually typed in my column for the papers layout. Back then, I pounded out the column on an old manual Royal typewriter.

   So it began. I guess there weren’t very many more drivers to have as a local interest because Billy went on to a career that certainly wasn’t rivaled by many. It was easy to become a Billy Pauch fan under the circumstances. Moving on over the years…..I penned that column for a total of 16 years before budgetary reasons put an end to it. But I remained a Billy Pauch fan and eventually, in the mid 90’s, I began to roll his stats around in my head and figured out that, DAMN, he is getting somewhere up near 500 career feature wins. I was never able to throw away a copy of Area Auto Racing News in the garbage. I would like to think that it was divine intervention that I kept each and every one of my racing papers because all of this ARRA stuff would never have taken place had I thrown them out. I began getting the paper in 1972 and it was my Mom that purchased the subscription for me for Christmas. It was a tradition that stuck in the family for years until my Wife Karen took over from my Mom in giving me a subscription for Christmas every year.

So, it was 1995 when I got around to digging into my collection of AARN to begin to tally up the feature wins he had accrued to that point. For the most part...just out of curiosity, but for another reason...to be able to celebrate his 500th career win when it happened. When I was done collecting all of his wins….it numbered in the 460’s.

Little did I know...there was another race fan who had already been compiling stats of local racing before I even had the idea. Bill Braga Jr. heard of my tallying Billy’s career stats and he was in the middle of doing the same thing for the late Doug Hoffman. He was doing Doug’s research because his Dad, Bill Sr. had a birthday coming up and Dad’s favorite driver was Doug Hoffman. Billy was behind in getting the project done and was worried that he was not going to get it finished in time for Sr.’s birthday. He got in touch with me to ask if I could lend a hand on the project? Of course, I was happy to and in the end...the Doug Hoffman research was wrapped up in time for Sr.’s birthday. I didn’t know it at the time, but Bill Sr. and I shared a love for woodworking.

   Billy and I decided to collaborate with each other in doing further research projects and pretty much mainly focusing on local modified drivers in our immediate area. We went along and had around a dozen drivers researched when we were asked to provide our stats for use on a racing stats website administered by a Canadian fan who did some work for one or two drivers up that way. We were thrilled to have our work out there and available for fans to check out. We were on the internet!

In a short period of time however, it became painfully obvious that the webmaster wasn’t quite steadfast on keeping his site up to date and current. It was because of this that I decided to investigate the possibility of having our own website to display our work. At this time...I would estimate it to be like 1996...maybe as late at 1997, that I contacted Billy and asked him to meet me for lunch at a deli here in Ringoes to discuss the website deal. We both loved the idea and it was decided that I would move forward with the project...still having no idea of exactly what we were getting into and the way things would turn out.

So, the website got up and rolling with plenty of learning on my part of how things are put together. It was a Google platform….something that every Google member is entitled to. It was a free service to Google members. Still is.

In doing our work in trying to track down reliable stats, we began to collect contacts that were valuable in putting together files. A few of the early contacts we made were Steve Barrick of Program Dynamics Inc which provided weekly programs for a number of tracks and was a natural stat source because of that! Bill Hanna was a pit official and scorer at the Flemington Speedway and kept meticulous records of almost everything that had to do with Flemington Speedway competition. And Bill Skinner was a natural to turn to when you were searching for stats on those drivers from back in the 50’s and 60’s! It was only natural that we asked both Bills and Steve to join us in our effort. They quickly accepted.

   We still were not considering ourselves as anything but a small group of racing fans who were willing to do the work of research on the heroes that were plying their skills on the track in front of us. However, as we became more and more serious, it became quite clear just how important the work we were doing was, and needed. We had no idea of the power we had in our hands in getting out our work by way of a website. It was a conversation between Bill Hanna and Bill Braga Jr. about what we could call our little group of historians that the moniker ARRA, Auto Racing Research Associates was brought up by Bill Braga. They both agreed it sounded exactly as what we did. The idea was presented to me for my thoughts (back then...no one was truly “in charge”) and truthfully, no one really is...I just guide the boat for the forty guys within it. I thought ARRA sounded fantastic and thus, ARRA was born.

From there, it was a matter of continuing to research drivers, a few tracks. Obviously along the way, we continued to accrue more contacts as our research branched out to so many different subjects. This has been the most common way of ARRA to obtain new historian talent. Some of the early talent we brought on board were Jon Jay Mooney, a resident of the Southern Tier area of New York whose Dad was a famous racing engine builder and crewman on teams of Don Diffendorf and Chuck Akulis. And he was a dedicated racing stat collector. John Nelson of Pesotum, Illinois...formerly of New York, joined us because he was an avid fan and stat collector of Northeast stock car racing and was always willing to help out with stats searches. Larry Jendras was another of our sources that was always reliable to contact when we were looking for information on drivers situated to our South in the Delaware and Virginia areas. Well known and talented announcer Jeff Ahlum was another avid stats keeper and he came into the mix occasionally to help out when we were searching for information on this subject or that. They all came on board as historians in our now organized group. The original five of us had sat down and hammered out our objectives and some guidelines to help us determine how to handle our research within agreed upon parameters. We were now an organized unit functioning as a legitimate source of reliable auto racing statistics.

I believe it was Steve Barrick that brought up the possibility of bringing on board Tom Schmeh. Tom had been the curator of the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum, located on the grounds of the world famous Knoxville Speedway in Knoxville, Iowa and was retiring. Tom was delighted to be asked to join us. Still, at this point...ARRA was concentrating on subjects in racing that were basically based here in the Northeast. Tom changed that! For two years or so...Tom kept hammering away at me to open up our work to a national level. Truthfully, the idea intimidated me. I knew our work was important...I knew it meant something and it was a needed commodity. However, to move it up to a national level sort of made me nervous. Well, Tom kept up his pressure and after somewhat cautiously mulling over the idea in my head….I decided to take Tom’s advice and truly open up our website contents to anything auto racing across the country.

   Things really picked up from there and with it….many more contacts and associates, many of them with specific areas of expertise, joined us and added more and more “flavor” to our site. Tom was obviously an expert on sprint car racing….Jay Mooney and John Nelson were both well versed in Northeast racing. We began to take in more and more historians. Kevin Eckert, a sprint car wealth of knowledge, Bob Mays was out in Nebraska and up on that areas racing….Steve Bubb was well versed in Pennsylania racing, Mike Monnat was and is a walking encyclopedia of racing knowledge, Allan Brown, most notable for his “bible” of finding auto racing facilities, The National Speedway Directory, had his hand on a number of publications and traveled across the country attending racing events, the team of Dennis Clapperton and Jeff Zimmerman collaborate on a website that Dennis administers and Guy Smith and Will White are part of the racing nomads who could turn up at any race track in America at any time. Justin St. Louis finally agreed to join us after I chased him for literally years. Justin is a very involved and dedicated historian up in Vermont and an excellent source of stats up in the far reaches of our country, Bobby Gardner is out there on the California front….Tim Baltz came aboard after years of helping out with stats from Canadian tracks and those US tracks that closely border our neighbors to the North. Likewise, Brian Pratt came to us via Canada. Most recently, Dino Oberto and Bob Hatcher came on board and really opened up our sources for Pennsylvania asphalt modified awareness.

I now enjoy spending weekends away from home and visiting various race tracks and racing gatherings to set up our ARRA display canopy and meeting new friends and spreading the word of our work to the masses.

 As of 2/28/25, we have a total of 713 different subjects researched and available for inspection on our website and more are always being added.