Former Sharon Speedway owner takes crowd on trip through local racing history

WARREN

Ron Novak is an encyclopedia of knowledge about Sharon Speedway. His parents owned the Hartford track from 1950 till 1981, and he literally grew up breathing the engine fumes, dirt, oil and asphalt of a track that has been a sports fixture of Trumbull County since 1931.

More than 50 of his fellow racing enthusiasts turned out Saturday morning at the National Packard Museum to hear the Burghill resident recount his life at the speedway in a presentation he called “Raised on Speed”—“the cars, not the drugs,” Novak said.

His speech is one of the highlights of the museum’s current exhibit dedicated to local auto racing history, “Start Your Engines!”

Displaying numerous photos, some as old as the early 1930s, Novak took his engrossed audience on a time trip showing changes to the speedway and the evolution of the vehicles that raced on it.

Read more about the program in Sunday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.