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By Buffy Swanson
Longtime racer, promoter and former DIRTcar Series Director Mike Perrotte, Morrisonville, NY, will receive the prestigious Leonard J. Sammons Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to Auto Racing during the 2026 Hall of Fame ceremonies on Thursday, August 13. The free event will take place at the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum and Hall of Fame on the grounds of Weedsport Speedway in New York.
“I just loved cars and loved racing,” Perrotte said of his youth spent drag racing on the streets of Plattsburgh with his friends. “I had a fuel car when I was 10.”
Airborne Park Speedway was right in town so he naturally gravitated there, starting in the Limited Late Model class in 1975, eventually venturing across the border to run other pavement tracks in Canada.
When promoter C.J. Richards ripped out the Airborne asphalt in 1982, Perrotte quickly adapted to the dirt surface, taking the track’s ’86 Modified title and also finding success at Albany-Saratoga and Devil’s Bowl under Richards’ CVRA banner.
Then, at the end of ’87, Richards got out of Airborne—and Perrotte, partnered with a couple of local businessmen, got in.
“Of course, like every new promoter, we thought we knew more than C.J. Richards about running a race track!” Mike admitted. “We thought we could make it better so we bought the track from C.J. in 1988. It only lasted a year.
“I decided it wasn’t as much fun as racing,” he concluded.
American-Canadian Tour owner Tom Curley purchased Airborne and paved it again, installing it on his circuit as a sister track to Vermont’s Thunder Road.
But things didn’t go well. By 2004, Airborne “was in bad shape,” Perrotte said. “Maybe 100-200 people in the grandstands. No cars. Curley wanted to get out—I don’t think he got along very well with the locals here. So he got hold of me.”
The former champion and local hero organized two exhibition 358 Modified events in 2004; Perrotte thought so highly of their potential on the track that he and his car owners, George and Julie Huttig, leased the facility and made the 358s the headline division. Under Perrotte’s promotion, and with new progressive banking introduced in 2006, Airborne was wildly successful throughout the late 2000s and early 2010—and in 2009, it became the rare asphalt track to be sanctioned by DIRTcar.
“It took some years of work but the track became very popular locally. We had 120+ cars in the pits, the grandstands looked full. We had very good crowds, averaged 1,100-1,200 people each week. It was going very well, racing dirt Modifieds on asphalt all that time,” Mike said.
And without any bankable DIRTcar bigwigs in the lineup. “That was the key thing—it was all locals, within 50-60 miles of the track,” Perrotte pointed out. “Pat Dupree was winning in Wes Moody’s car, George Foley and Martin Roy—we had a half-dozen Quebec drivers there every week. Guys could buy an old dirt car and go racing. And run competitively.”
Until savvy racers sabotaged that game. “As time went on, guys started building cars just for the asphalt. I should’ve had a better handle on that and I didn’t,” Mike confessed. “That’s what killed it, basically.
“The car counts started to drop. People can only afford to race for so long—they max their cards out, steal from the household, the wives get after them and that’s the end of it.”
He and Huttig went back to racing—until duty called again. When DIRTcar’s acting Series Director was abruptly relieved of his position in January 2015, Perrotte stepped up without hesitation, steering all four DIRTcar Northeast Series divisions for the next four seasons—25 tracks, 1,000 racers, a 95-race schedule each year—with a steady hand that stayed the course and effectively settled the waters.
“I’d run Airborne for quite a few years so it wasn’t like I’d never done anything like that before,” said Mike, who’d raced against most of the teams on the circuit. “I could communicate well with all of them. I understood everything that was going on, from both sides.”
With his background—you didn’t want to mess with Mike. Earlier in life, he’d done time in the ring, a middleweight boxer. For seven years, he worked as a prison guard.
“The only reason I did that was so I could race more—you got a lot of time off in that job because you needed it from the high stress,” Perrotte explained. “Dealing with people in that situation, in prison, you learn to analyze everything before you jump off and act. So as Series Director, I never encountered anything that was an issue to me.”
Getting off the road in 2019, Perrotte landed back where he started: at Airborne, teaming up with Lebanon Valley’s Howard Commander to come to the track’s rescue once again.
“Airborne wasn’t doing well after I left. There were a couple different promoters in and out. Howard asked if I wanted to lease it with him and we did it for three-four years,” Perrotte reported. “We got it going again. Had decent car counts, decent crowds, making a little bit of money. And then I said I had had enough, didn’t want to do it anymore.”
But Perrotte still had a soft spot for the sport, couldn’t say no when needed. When promoter and good friend Lyle DeVore was hospitalized last summer, he quietly and competently jumped right in to handle race direction at Albany-Saratoga Speedway, ensuring the weekly program didn’t miss a beat. After DeVore lost his cancer battle in December, at track owner Howard Commander’s request Mike came back to oversee raceday operations this season.
“Howard is the man,” Perrotte stated. “I’ll always help him however I can.”
Now, he’s happy to be back home—the prodigal son returned.
“What I’m doing now is fooling around with old cars. I’ve got a ’64 Impala I’m building. That’s where it all started for me—hot rods, street stuff. I just want to get back to where I was and have some fun, and not have any pressure,” Perrotte maintained.
For the past nine years, he’s been a Councilman in his hometown—another life experience.
“I got out of promotion as far as race cars are concerned. But I became County Fair manager in 2019 or 2020, and I’m still doing that. That’s fun!” Mike determined. “It’s like having a race track—with no racers. No BS and no whining!”
