RPW Column: Jay Smalley Making The Most Of His Available Time To Get Behind The Wheel

RPW Column By: MIKE TRAVERSE / RPW – WINGDALE, NY – Since 2006, it has been a yearly routine for Jay Smalley. He gets as much racing in during April and May as he can and then park the car for almost three months as work commitments take over and he returns for the late season races.

However, even when not doing summertime racing, the affable street stock driver stays very active in the sport.

“I was off to a great start in 2019 at Accord Speedway,” Smalley said. “After an opening night 2nd place run, I won the next 3 features. But just that quickly, it was June and time to shut the racing down. We finished the season okay, but not running quite as well as the early part of the season.”

The second generation racer inherited the love of the sport from his father, Steve Smalley Sr. At the end of 2019, Steve retired from racing after 46 years as a driver.

“I first started taking laps in Dad’s Pro Stock in 1999. He was instrumental in me getting my first win in racing. All through the years, racing has been pretty much a family affair for us.”

Jay is the property manager of a large children’s camp near the New York/Connecticut border. It is a large facility consisting of 340 acres and 126 buildings. It certainly keeps him busy during the camp months, but Jay is able to stay in touch with racing through a Facebook page he created.

In 2015, Jay created the Street Stock Help Source page. It is a very popular page that at this writing, the membership has just passed the 20,000 mark.

“I had a fire in 2015 and lost everything racing related including the race car,” Smalley said. “The Street Stock racing community rallied around us, created fund raisers and I was able to get a new car. John Lombardo built me an engine for free. After all that, I felt that I wanted to give back to the sport, so I created the Help Source.”

20,000 members is an impressive number, but it is not easy to become a member of the Street Stock Help Source.

“It started with just a few hundred members. These days, we turn away more member requests than we accept,” Jay said. “We want the members of the group to be connected by either being a driver, crew, mechanics and anyone else closely connected to Street Stock racing. Scott Morris, Frank Twing and myself are the moderators. We don’t allow raffles, auctions and we try try to limit sale posts. Our main purpose is to be a place where we can share technical information, share photos and get advice from other racer’s. Absolutely no track or driver bashing is allowed. We have removed our share of members.”

Jay’s racing plans for 2020 are much the same as previous years.

“We will race as much as we can at Accord Speedway until I have my job commitments,” he said. “We will return for the end of the regular season and we will hopefully run the Street Stock Shootout Series and maybe some of the big Bethel Motor Speedway events,”

There’s one race that Smalley has on his bucket list to win.

“I really want to win the Street Stock portion of the Gobbler,” Jay said. “Accord is the place I love to race at the most and I really want to win that event.”

One thing that the Smalley’s have always done is race some very sharp looking cars. The sponsors that support Jay’s team are Putnam Propane, John Lombardo Ultimate Power Race Engines, Saverese Septic Service and Autoworks Race Chassis.

It’s a family group that makes up the crew for Jay. His crew consists of his dad Steve Sr., brother Steve Jr., his wife Kristy and daughters Autumn and Sierra.

Jay Smalley is one of those racers that is really good for the sport. Hopefully, this busy racer will enjoy all that he will have going on in 2020.