HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Oaklawn Park opens its 56-date meet Friday with some new wrinkles aimed at keeping the 108-year-old track fresh and its racing relevant. The stakes schedule is glitzier. Tweaks have been made to the wagering format. New technology enables ontrack fans to bet from their smart phones, and offtrack patrons will notice a different graphics package surrounding the simulcast signal.

But there is one change that will trump all others.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Salary Drive, whose last start came against Winter Memories in the Grade 1 Garden City, meets older horses for the first time in her career when she will be among the top contenders in Friday’s $60,000 allowance feature at Gulfstream Park, to be decided at a 1 1/16 miles on the turf.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Here was trainer John Kimmel’s reaction when he picked up the overnight and saw Lovely Lil in Friday’s $75,000 We’ll Sea Ya Stakes for New York-bred fillies and mares at Aqueduct: “Oh my God, what is she doing in there?’’ said Kimmel, who was hoping the one-mile stakes would be a good spot for his filly Mineralogist.

What Lovely Lil is doing is prepping for a likely start in next month’s Barbara Fritchie Handicap at Laurel Park. The $200,000 Barbara Fritchie will be run Feb. 18.

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. – Maggi Moss has made some cracker-jack claims through the years and one of her very best, It Happened Again, will be in action Friday at Oaklawn in the $75,000 Fifth Season. He will be seeking his third stakes win since Moss took him for $20,000.

The Fifth Season, a 1 1/16-mile race for 4-year-olds and up, opens the meet. A field of eight will go, including Twice the Appeal, who will be making his first start since finishing 10th in the Kentucky Derby, and Racing Bran, a past winner of the Essex at Oaklawn.

ARCADIA, Calif. – It was at Santa Anita one year ago when Tapizar served notice that he was one of the top 3-year-olds in the country with a victory in the Sham Stakes. An untimely injury in the spring put him on the sidelines for the Triple Crown, but after a pair of comeback races in the fall, Tapizar looks primed to be one of the major players among this track’s older horses this meet, beginning Saturday in the Grade 2, $150,000 San Fernando Stakes.

“He’s put in some very good works here, and he’s got a win over the track,” trainer Steve Asmussen said.

ARCADIA, Calif. – There’s a old rule that there’s no cheering in the press box, but for one race on Friday at Santa Anita, that will be thrown out the sixth-floor window.

Jack Disney, a member of the publicity staff, and six of his friends are the owners of Talktoomuch, who looks like one of the main players in the featured seventh race, a second-level optional $62,500 claimer for older fillies and mares at about 6 1/2 furlongs on the hillside turf course.

Steve Margolis has been thinking about giving Radiant Talent a chance at two turns. Or in a stakes race. But not both at the same time.

Turfway Park is abandoning its Saturday evening programs by reverting to running on Saturday afternoons, effective this weekend, officials at the northern Kentucky track have announced.

Turfway president Bob Elliston said in a Wednesday media release that the nearly year-long experiment with Saturday nights produced some positive results, namely reaching “a different group of customers,” but wagering handle from all sources was disappointing, resulting in the decision to revert to daytime cards on Saturdays.

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. – Union Rags, runner-up in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and among the finalists for an Eclipse Award in the 2-year-old division, breezed an easy three furlongs in 38.35 seconds at Palm Meadows on Wednesday in the first work of his 3-year-old campaign.

“It was pretty uneventful, he’s just getting started,” trainer Michael Matz said. “He went an easy three-eighths and galloped out good. He’s really grown and filled out since his last start.”

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Eight of the 10 older males in Thursday’s six-furlong feature are in for the optional $50,000 claim price, but seven of them ran in at least one stakes race last year. Indeed, the slots-fueled purse of $64,000 is virtually identical to what overnight stakes were worth here last winter, even though it carries second-level allowance conditions.

The speedy Mysticism and the late-running De Price remain eligible for the condition, and either or both could make their presence felt in race 6, the lead-off leg of the late pick four.