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By Buffy Swanson
The husband-and-wife promotional team of Charlie and Joyce Cathell, who played a huge part in keeping racing alive and well in the State of Delaware for more than 60 years, will be receiving the 2025 Leonard J. Sammons Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to Auto Racing. That honor will be bestowed during the 33rd annual Hall of Fame inductions on Thursday, July 24, at the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum on the grounds of Weedsport Speedway in New York.
The Delaware International Speedway complex began as a drag strip in 1963, built by Charlie’s parents, Bill and Juanita, on 97 acres off Route 13 in Delmar. An oval dirt track was added in 1965, then was moved and reconfigured twice to create the current half-mile in 1976. The property now also features a Go-Kart facility and an off-road truck course.
Charlie and Joyce, married the spring after the first timed run down the dragstrip, have been there since the track’s rocky start.
“When we finally got it open in August of 1963, it had rained and flooded the place Thursday, Friday and Saturday. All the parking lots were brand-new, never been used. People were stuck in the mud. The PA system broke. The place was packed and everybody was stuck,” Cathell remembered. “When we got done that day my father said, ‘I never saw a car go down the race track—all I saw was my old Ford tractor with a chain pulling people out of the mud.’”
Absolutely nothing came easy: construction blunders, lawsuits, overextended finances, driver boycotts—they were hit with it all in the early years.
While the Cathells ran the dragstrip, the dirt oval was initially leased to a group of stock car owners who had formed a racing association, running Friday nights against nearby Little Lincoln Speedway. “That didn’t make any sense to us, but we were just the leaseholders,” Charlie said.
At the end of ’69, Bill Cathell tried to convince the club to move to Saturdays, but they refused. “So Dad said to me, ‘What’re we gonna do now? Do you think we could run it ourselves?’” Charlie related.
“We put our heads together and got it open in 1970. I think maybe we had 10 or 11 cars on opening night. Of course, the racing association wasn’t helping the situation—they were boycotting us! But as the weeks progressed, the car counts started picking up. A club member called Dad and said, ‘I think we made a mistake.’ And Dad told him, ‘You sure did.’”
NASCAR pioneer and Dover Speedway owner Melvin Joseph gave the Cathells a big boost by supporting a benefit race at Delmar to raise money for the State Police-sponsored Camp Barnes for disadvantaged youth, one of Joseph’s pet charities. With troopers spreading the word and selling tickets, that first benefit in 1972 put them on the map, becoming a well-publicized annual event for the next 49 years.
But on regular Saturday nights, the Cathells were trying to do the impossible: race two premier classes, both Modifieds and Super Late Models, every week. They couldn’t afford to pay purses comparable to tracks with a single headlining division. So Charlie built his fields by concentrating on superior track conditions and tire wear.
“When we blew the track back out to a half-mile in 1976, we put a little more banking in it. And that’s when we started really working the race track—cutting it open, putting water inside the surface itself rather than keeping it smooth and putting water on top of it,” Cathell detailed. “It was a lot more work—but we felt the racing changed then. It gave a driver two lanes, sometimes three lanes, to go racing. Reading was doing that way earlier than we were. That’s where we got the idea.
“We had good clay and with that kind of track prep, you protect the pocketbook of every racer who doesn’t burn up a set of tires each night. What is it—$800 for a set of tires? If you can put that savings to every race car—that’s a heck of a savings.”
The word got out: Pennsy’s Reading Fairgrounds was running on Fridays and Sundays in the 1970s; soon many of Reading’s big stars were calling Delmar home on Saturdays.
“Dave Kelly, John Kozak, both Brightbills—all the top dogs at Reading were here on Saturday night,” Cathell proclaimed. “Donnie Kreitz started down here in a Modified when he was 15 or 16. Sixty percent of the top runners at Reading were here on Saturdays! And we had some good racers of our own—Bunting, Browning, Breeding, Wilkins, Jarvis. We had 12 or 15 really good locals, and when the Reading guys would fall in on Saturday night it was a Who’s Who of Modified racers.”
With little in the way of rules, it was a hell of a show. Big-blocks with no cubic inch limit running fuel injection, alcohol and drag rubber! In the outermost reaches of Modified territory! On nights when URC Sprints were added to the card, the place was busting at the seams.
Their efforts didn’t go unnoticed: Charlie was recognized as a Regional Promoter of the Year eight times before Racing Promotion Monthly named him to overall national honors in 1999. He was also inducted into the NHRA Hall of Fame. In 2019, the State of Delaware designated the speedway a historical site, erecting a marker at the entrance.
Over the years, Charlie suffered two major setbacks: a stroke in 1996 and serious burns in a 2017 track accident. He battled back both times.
“I’m pretty proud of the fact that until I had my stroke, I never missed a weekend of working at the track,” Cathell said of the forced furlough. “I was in a local hospital for 11 days, and it took a while to get back—I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t use my right arm. It took a lot of rehab to get me back. Roughly two months before I could get back on the grader.”
And even though the elder Cathells officially retired following the 2021 season, handing the promotional reins over to son Mark and his wife Denise—you just can’t keep Charlie away.
At age 82, he’s still up on the grader, taking pains to provide a track surface to be proud of.
“I know there are promoters out there who are a lot better than I am!” Cathell pronounced. “But I don’t know anybody who worked any harder than we did. It was a family operation.”
My family and I were involved with the first car team that came from Reading Fairgrounds. The “PB”. The team was owned by Jake Paulson and the car was piloted by his brother Ronnie Paulson. After a while my father and the rest of our family befriended and became close with the Cathells. In fact my Dad was the one who suggested to Charlie to add a pace car to the mix. Which my Father Charles “CW” Hibbs piloted for several years.