Offseason Spotlight: St. Louis Acknowledged for Media Work with Pete Hartt Award

Barre, VT – After nearly two decades of tireless work in the racing industry, Justin St. Louis was recognized for that work this past November. The Bolton native received the Pete Hartt Memorial Media Award for his contributions to Thunder Road, the American-Canadian Tour, and the racing community as a whole.

The Pete Hartt Award was created in 2009 following the unexpected passing of its namesake while exercising on a treadmill. Pete was the authority on Central Vermont sports for nearly his entire adult life, covering auto racing, high school football, basketball, and everything in-between for numerous organizations. He was respected throughout the industry because he was more than a reporter – he was a storyteller. He knew the stories about the games, the races, and the people who lived to be part of them, win or lose. And he knew the final score wasn’t as important as knowing why it mattered to the men and women who took part and who watched from the stands.

The description also fits St. Louis to a tee – which is appropriate, as St. Louis has stated he considers Hartt one of his greatest influences. St. Louis has spent most of his life around the sport, growing up going to Thunder Road as a fan and watching his dad Ron race there. After winning multiple Street Stock features at Thunder Road and Airborne Speedway as a driver, he later worked under the American-Canadian Tour umbrella, first as an announcer and later as the media director.

Over the last 11 years, St. Louis has truly made his mark on local racing. The same year Hartt passed away, St. Louis founded Vermont Motorsports Magazine, which had a successful 10-year run under himself and later T.J. Ingerson. St. Louis also succeeded Hartt as the auto racing reporter and weekly columnist for The Times Argus, and he continues to write his Rear View Mirror column to this day. He’s also a regular on radio broadcasts of both Thunder Road and American-Canadian Tour events, and for the past nine years, he was the media director for Devil’s Bowl Speedway.

All the while, St. Louis has been working tirelessly to research the history of local racing and make sure it is accurately recorded and remembered. In doing all this and more, he has never lost track of the most important thing about racing – the people. From giving us the backstory on how drivers have gotten to where they are, to explaining the significance of major events, achievements, and racing community happenings, he has been the voice that many people turn to when they need a knowledgeable perceptive on Northeast auto racing. As such, receiving the Pete Hartt Award was much-deserved and long-overdue for the man behind the keyboard.

“When Pete Hartt dropped dead on that treadmill, I was the one who had to take over for him,” St. Louis recalled in his acceptance speech. “Pete was a cool guy, and he touched a lot of lives in a lot of different sports, in Vermont and outside of Vermont. He kind of took me under his wing and told me how bad I was as a writer without saying those words, which was the hallmark of Pete. He could tell you to go to hell and you’d thank him for it…Pete is who really set the trajectory for me. I guess it’s been 11 years now, and I’ve had his column every week in the Times Argus. I’m thankful for that, I’m thankful for Pete, I’m thankful that I knew him. I still can’t sit in the spotter’s stand, because that’s the spot where he was.”

St. Louis then recalled his days as a Street Stock racer, and how he’s still reminded of his time on the track by seeing the kids and even grandkids of the people he raced against now competing at Thunder Road.

“I realized right around lap 1 of my first heat race, when I was backwards in turn 3 and there were 20 Street Stocks coming at me, that I probably ought to have a back-up plan,” St. Louis said. “So I started writing. I got to know a lot of you in this room. A lot of you, I got to know your grandkids, because they’re racing now, and I feel old as hell. But it’s been kind of what keeps me going – it’s the fact that there are grandkids of the guys that I raced with out there right now.”

“This sport took me under its wing from a really young age,” St. Louis concluded. “My father brought me to my first race at Catamount the final year that it was open. I remember Beaver Dragon flipping down the frontstretch and thinking, ‘holy (smokes), that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.’ That’s where I’ve been. It’s a pleasure to know all of you in this room. I get to tell all your stories. It bothers me that everybody thanks me for writing what I write. You guys are the ones doing the hard work. All I have to do is talk about it. So my hat’s off to all of you.”