Vermont native Dave Moody is a veteran race broadcaster and lead turn announcer with the Motor Racing Network. Moody also hosts Sirius Speedway on Sirius NASCAR Radio channel 128, which airs weekday afternoons. Dave was kind enough to give some time to HardCoreRaceFans.com on a recent Friday morning of a Cup weekend. While in the MRN hauler chatting with Barney Hall, Moody lent his time to a phone interview. We talked of his announcing start in Vermont, some great New England drivers and speedways, current short track and Cup racing, a little Red Sox, and something each race weekend he calls “arranging day”…

Patrick Reynolds: Are you originally from Vermont or just live there now?

Dave Moody: I am a New England boy born and raised. Born and raised in Vermont. These days it is pretty much where I do my laundry and pick up my mail. I’ve been a Vermonter all my life. I grew up chasing racecars all over New England and was fortunate to fall under the tutelage of Ken Squier at a very young age, who kind of took me under his wing and taught me this business.

PR: How did you meet Ken?

DM: Ken owns a little racetrack in the town I live in. A little short track called Thunder Road. It is actually one of the best short tracks in the country. And back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when Ken started getting real busy traveling on the road with CBS Sports, he needed somebody to start filling in for him on the P.A. system for him when he was gone. And to this day I don’t know… I mean I’ve been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time looking like I didn’t have anything to do. But at some point for whatever reason, he tapped me on the shoulder and said ‘C’mere’ and little by little over the next couple of years he started teaching me a little bit… teaching me a lot, about how to do that job and that started the process. Here we are today… Ken is dear friend, my mentor in this business. I wouldn’t be in this business without him. I wouldn’t have any concept of doing what I do without him. He taught me absolutely everything I know. Every major door that has ever opened for me, he opened. If you are really lucky a person like that comes into your life one time. He is an amazing guy.

PR: I’m a New Englander myself. I grew up in Connecticut and I saw my first race at the old Danbury Racearena.

DM: You see, I never got to Danbury. I’ve been to just about every other track. I wasn’t traveling before Danbury went away.

PR: I was kind of young myself when it closed and never got to get in the pits. I always dreamed of it when I first started going. That’s where I first got hooked on the sport and the “bug” bit me. Is Thunder Road the track where you first got bitten by the “racing bug?”

DM: Absolutely. My Uncle lived in a little town in New Hampshire about ninety minutes away and every Thursday night he would drive ninety minutes each way to come to Thunder Road. We lived in the next town over and I got to be five or six years old. And it occurred to him instead of going to Thunder Road by himself, he had a perfectly good nephew right down the road. He would come over from New Hampshire and he would grab me and take me to Thunder Road. That basically turned the switch on for me… I’ve been hooked on it ever since. I figured I knew something no one else in the world knew. (From) the front ticket gate, you couldn’t see the track from there but you could hear it. And waiting in line to buy a ticket to get up in there to see the cars was like torture. It’s like dangling a carrot in front of a horse. I about knocked the fence down trying to get my first look at it… Back in the day I used to announce at Thunder Road on Thursday nights, go to Oxford, Maine on Friday night, do Lee, New Hampshire or Plattsburgh, New York on Saturday night and on Sunday I would travel to wherever the old NASCAR North tour was. Which could be anywhere from Nova Scotia to Ottawa, Ontario, south to Stafford or Thompson or Dover Delaware. I wasn’t making any money I was just doing it because I liked it. That was a lot of miles. If I added it up I barely broke even and if I counted in what I was getting paid per hour I probably would have shot myself (laughing). I didn’t do it because I wanted to make a living; I did it because I wanted to.

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