It has been a year of change at Parx Racing, which concludes its 2015 season Tuesday and will not reopen until Feb. 13.

The seven-week break is the result of a June agreement between Parx management and the Pennsylvania Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association that created a 32-day fall festival centered around Parx’s two $1 million races, the Grade 2 Pennsylvania Derby and the Grade 1 Cotillion. Overnight purses were doubled during the festival – which ultimately was cut short due to an equine herpesvirus quarantine – and racing dates were reduced to keep the purse fund solvent.

OLDSMAR, Fla. – Trainer Eoin Harty will be well represented in the two stakes for juveniles at Tampa Bay Downs on Saturday, but one of the 2-year-olds who is training best for him, Uncle Jerry, will stay in the barn for now.

Uncle Jerry, a son of Uncle Mo, will be kept in two-turn races and likely will start in a first-level allowance before possibly aiming for the Triple Crown prep races. On Monday, Uncle Jerry breezed a half-mile in 48.40 seconds, the second-fastest of 29 works at the distance here.

NEW ORLEANS – With the recently implemented week-distant draw system in place, the six stakes to be run this Saturday at Fair Grounds were assembled last Saturday. Some of the races are decent, but with purses of just $50,000 and $60,000, the stakes offer about the same money as a maiden race over the inner dirt track at Aqueduct right now, which puts a low ceiling on their quality.

NEW ORLEANS – On paper, it looked like only something crazy could get String King beat Saturday in the Louisiana Champions Day Turf, a race String King had won three times before and in which he was the 4-5 post-time favorite. The starting gate clanged and opened, horses and riders jousted for early position, and before a quarter-mile had been run, something crazy happened.

NEW ORLEANS – The Pickett Factor won four of his first five starts, including the $100,000 Prelude Stakes, yet his best racing still might be in front of him. After finishing fourth in the Super Derby, The Pickett Factor has run perhaps the two best races of his life, easy wins in the Gold Cup at Delta Downs last month and in the Champions Day Classic on Saturday. He backed up his 99 Beyer Speed Figure at Delta with a 96 on Saturday and handed Mobile Bay, the Super Derby winner, a 5 1/4-length defeat.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Don’t Be So Salty, who won the Display Stakes at Woodbine on Nov. 29, is among trainer Gary Contessa’s 16-horse string at the Palm Meadows training center in south Florida for the winter. But Don’t Be So Salty will be targeting Turfway Park’s series for 3-year-olds, the trainer said, because of the gelding’s 2-for-2 record over synthetic surfaces.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The last time Turco Bravo raced over Aqueduct’s inner track, he won the $98,000 Stymie Stakes as the 9-1 longest shot in a five-horse field. It’s his only win in nine starts in 2015.

On Saturday, Turco Bravo will return to Aqueduct’s inner track and likely be a longshot again in the $100,000 Queens County Stakes at 1 1/8 miles.

STICKNEY, Ill. – Dom the Bomb won the Jim Edgar Illinois Futurity last December at Hawthorne by 5 1/4 lengths with a Beyer Speed Figure of 82. On Saturday, his half-brother, Richie the Bull, won the Jim Edgar Illinois Futurity by 9 1/4 lengths with a Beyer of 80. But Richie the Bull’s connections, trainer Larry Rivelli and owners Richard Ravin and V-Leaf Stables, surely hope the two horses’ story lines diverge from here on out.

Trainer Jinks Fires on Monday morning was heading home to Oaklawn Park with Discreetness, one of his candidates for the track’s stakes series for 3-year-olds. The pair was traveling from Remington Park, where Discreetness captured the $250,000 Springboard Mile on the final card of the meet Sunday.

“I’m driving a pickup, and he’s riding behind,” Fires said. “He’s a backseat driver!”

Jockey Tyler Gaffalione was involved in a scary-looking spill in a race last week, but fortunately for the recently turned journeyman, Gaffalione escaped with only minor bruising to his knee, missed only one day of riding, and bounced back with a bang by winning four races over the weekend, including Saturday’s Grade 3 Rampart with Cali Star for trainer Marty Wolfson.