Skyline Raceway Joins RUSH Late Model Program

VIRGIL, N.Y. – Skyline Raceway Motorsports Park has signed on as RUSH Late Model weekly-sanctioned track in 2022 and beyond, the series announced Sunday.

The three-eighths-mile clay bullring recently purchased by RUSH Late Model racer Brad Smith will give RUSH Late Models in central New York a Saturday night home with Fulton Speedway no longer running the class.

Skyline held its first and only RUSH Late Model sanctioned event to date on July 8, 2018, when John Waters won the $1,000 weekly series special.

This past October, Skyline hosted a pair of non-sanctioned crate late model races with RUSH member drivers Chad Homan and Alan Chapman victorious. 

Late models have a history at Skyline, running at the track from 1998 through 2008. 

“When taking over the facility I knew I was going to have to implement changes,” Smith said. “Some of those changes were going to be sanctions. I knew the RUSH family was a series that I wanted to partner with. We are happy to work with the staff at RUSH and bring great racing back to Skyline Raceway Motorsports Park- a place where Late Models cut their teeth at years ago. We want to continue to make Skyline a hotspot for 2022.”

RUSH member racers will be able to participate at Skyline on a weekly basis in 2022 and be eligible for all of the programs including the national weekly series championship, as well as the Track Pack Bonus program and the Futures Cup for those eligible racers.

While membership is not mandatory to compete in any RUSH-sanctioned event, membership also includes a $100,000 excess participant accident policy, which is over and above drivers’ health insurance and speedways’ participant accident policy. 

The Track Pack Bonus is offered to all RUSH-sanctioned speedways, and once again in 2022 will award $2,500 for the top six point finishers at each track. 

The 2022 RUSH member champion at Skyline will earn $1,000, with $500 for second, $400 for third, $300 for fourth, $200 for fifth and $100 for sixth. 

“It’s great to see RUSH continue to grow throughout New York,” RUSH Director Vicki Emig said. “This past season, eight different tracks throughout the Empire State hosted a RUSH weekly and/or touring series event. With Brad Smith taking over Skyline it was the perfect timing with Fulton no longer running the class on a weekly basis.

“We talked to several central New York and northeast Pennsylvania racers at the recent Northeast Racing Products Show in Syracuse that were hopeful RUSH would be sanctioning Skyline,” Emig added.