Column By: STEPHEN DURHAM / RPW – BARRE, VT – It feels like only yesterday. It was April and 40 cars were set to do battle at New Hampshire Motor Speedway to kick off the American-Canadian Tour 2024 season.
Now, it’s November. Gabe Brown was crowned the 2024 ACT Champion. Kasey Beattie is the Rookie of the Year. The series produced 12 different winners over 13 races and four of those were first-time winners on tour.
I had the chance to ask Cale King, the Media Director for the American Canadian Tour, several questions on the successful 2024 season.
RPW: “A great season by the numbers for ACT, with amount of entries average over the year, what does that say to you and everyone operating the series?”
Cale: “It gives us a lot of confidence in what we are doing. We had 134 different drivers earn points on the American-Canadian Tour this year and we plotted out well over 250 different drivers competing in ACT Late Models on the local level across New England and Quebec. It really shows that our rules package continues to work on both a local and regional level and proof that we’re on the right page.”
RPW: “Continuing with the competition, lot of young drivers on the series, Gabe, Derek, Kasey, and Kaiden, what does that mean to you guys seeing these young guys coming up and showing how talented they are?”
Cale: “We are over the moon, especially in the case of Kasey and Kaiden who both came up through our Ladder System of divisions at Thunder Road and White Mountain. Having that buy-in and interest from the young guys obviously started a while ago for them but when you take in consideration guys like Gabe Brown, Raphael Lessard, Cam Huntress and Jeremy Sorel who came in to ACT from other tracks and series, it, again, tells us that we’re doing the right thing with a competitive program that’s also affordable and attractive to a wide range of racers.”
RPW: “How does Michaud do it all? He helps manage WMMP, Thunder Road, while also doing ACT? Its impressive, and not easy I can assume.”
Cale: “No, it certainly can get overwhelming at times, especially when you take into account our Serie ACT Quebec tour in Canada and our partnership with the Pro All Stars Series to run events at Thompson Speedway in Connecticut as well.
Cris puts a lot of stock in finding the right people for the job. While he co-owns and promotes Thunder Road, ACT and WMMP, he has managers in place at both tracks with a group of dedicated officials that work at both facilities and the Tour.
We maintain four full-time employees, myself one of them, to run the office all year and we all work diligently to find, and most importantly keep, dedicated staff who really enjoy what they do. I think that’s something our racers also notice and appreciate as a huge part of our formula for success.”
RPW: “Goals for ACT moving in 2025? I believe its been 46 years next for the series, any hints at anything new on the schedule?”
Cale: “Year 47 after starting back in ’79 with the original tour. I think our biggest goal is maintaining what we’ve already fostered on the Tour in the last several years and hopefully continue to grow it. We’re getting more and more interest from different tracks that want ACT races and while we’d love to jump on the prospect, we also want to stay at our current 12/13/14 race schedule. It seems to work best for our traveling racers and also gives them the opportunity to support their local tracks. For instance, Kaiden Fisher was able to claim the Thunder Road championship and made several trips to White Mountain, Gabe Brown earned the Wall’s Ford Platinum Series triple crown championship at White Mountain, Derek Gluchacki chased the Thompson Speedway championship along with starts at Seekonk and Waterford Speedbowl, Erick Sands made several trips to Star Speedway.
I really foresee 2025 being another growth-minded year and we have several plans in action for beyond that. We really try to look three, four, five years down the road and I think we’re building another really good launching point for growth in numbers and regional expansion in the coming years.”
The American-Canadian Tour is set to release their schedule this week for the 2025 season.
