Let's Go Back "To The Year 2000".....

With my 2008 season wrap up column hitting the mailbox of Hawkeye Racing News subscribers this weekend, I thought that it would be fun to pull up the column that I wrote in December of 2000.....

Here’s wishing all of you a great Christmas and Holiday season and I hope that you enjoyed the 2000 racing season as much as I did. We witnessed a lot of great racing this year and we visited a few more new tracks, but most importantly we made some new friends along the way.

Our 2000 season got off to a cold and rainy start during the Ice Bowl at Talladega Short Track in January. The year before, the Ice Bowl crew overcame severe thunderstorms that dropped nearly three inches of rain, but this year it was a persistent rainfall that eventually turned to snow that did everything but put an end to the show. Somehow the races went on with Terry English taking the win in the Late Models while Jeff Anderson wrapped up the event by taking the Stock Car checkers amidst the flurries. We’ll start the new year out with the Ice Bowl once again, more on that later.

Speedweeks 2000 was another great trip watching the Late Models and the Modifieds at one of our favorite tracks anywhere, East Bay Raceway. If you ever get the chance to make the trip to the Sunshine state in February, you must visit the west side of the state and East Bay. We are already counting the days to our return this February. After a rather mild winter we were amazed to be able to go racing in March in north central Iowa as the NKF Tour kicked off on March 26th at the Hamilton County Speedway in Webster City. Dan Chapman and Jim Mitchell were the best of a large field of cars in both divisions and it was obvious by the crowd count that us "northerners" were more than ready to go racing.

We made first time visits to several tracks during the 2000 season. The first one was the Adrian Speedway just south of Kansas City. No, it is not a high dollar facility, but promoter Glenn Portzen takes great pride in giving the drivers and the fans the best dirt track possible for the show as he worked the surface the entire afternoon and during breaks in the program. When the checkered flag flew on the Modified main event it was Danny Scrogham in victory lane for his first time ever. His big win came only hours after he had discovered that someone had burglarized his race shop earlier that day. Two weeks later we visited Missouri’s I-35 Speedway for their regular season opener that featured a huge field of cars in front of a standing room only crowd. Dean Wray nipped Gene Claxton in a photo finish of the Modified main event.

During the first week of June we were a part of the largest crowd ever to watch a dirt late model race when the Hav-A-Tampa late models attacked the Bristol Motor Speedway. The facility was awesome and the qualifying action was intense, but come feature time the high-banked high-speed half-mile won the war when several cars had wheels break and fly off. The race turned into one of survival that Dale McDowell prevailed in. The late models are slated to return to Bristol again in 2001 and I sure hope that some wheel manufacturers have come up with a design that will withstand more than 100 laps at speed.

Our first-ever trip to the Echo Valley Speedway came in late July and we were very impressed with the quality of the facility. Track owners Lee and Sue Hansmeier were excited to welcome the National Kidney Foundation Tour to West Union, but as Lee prepared the track for the night’s events he began to feel ill. The pain gradually increased as the night went on so, the next day, he visited a doctor who informed him that he was suffering from kidney stones. A coincidence? I guess I’ll find out if Lee and Sue still blame me for the stones when we try to schedule a return date at Echo Valley for the NKF Tour in 2001.

We visited two more Iowa tracks for the first time over the next two weeks when we made it to Rapids Speedway in Rock Rapids and I-35 Speedway in Mason City. Both facilities put on great racing program in front of large enthusiastic crowds. While at Mason City I was told by several drivers and fans that they were thrilled with the job that Joe and Marian Ringsdorf had done during their first year at the facility.

Those were my "first-time" tracks, but all of the following also helped make my 2000 racing season a great one: Talladega Short Track, East Bay Raceway, Hamilton County Speedway, 34 Raceway, East Moline Speedway, Davenport Speedway, Lee County Speedway, Southern Iowa Speedway, Farley Speedway, Hawkeye Raceway, Hancock County Speedway, Nordic Speedway, Park Jefferson Speedway, Eldon Raceway, Independence Motor Speedway, Cresco Speedway, Benton County Speedway, CJ Raceway, Knoxville Raceway, Stuart Speedway, Crawford County Speedway, Buena Vista Raceway, Greenbelt Speedway, Algona Raceway, Fairmont Raceway, Nebraska State Fair Speedway, Iowa State Fair Speedway, Tipton Speedway, Spoon River Speedway, Missouri State Fair Speedway, LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway, Scotland County Speedway and Boone Speedway.

There were two things that I didn’t like about the past season. First, the World of Outlaws need to make an adjustment to their rule that allows a driver to re-join the field if a yellow flag comes out before a lap is completed. There were two glaring instances where this rule was applied during the latter stages of the 2000 season and both of them involved Steve Kinser. Now don’t get me wrong, I like Steve Kinser, so my concern with this rule has absolutely nothing to do with who it was applied to, but rather how it can be manipulated by "somebody" with a radio. In both cases Kinser’s crew was not finished working on his car before the pace car pulled in so he was not allowed to restart. However, in both cases, the restart was given the yellow flag for "a pace that was too fast" and Kinser was then allowed to push off and re-join the field. Many have questioned whether or not the same "courtesy yellow" would have been ordered had it been a lesser-name Outlaw, or even a poor local boy, and that it is exactly the problem with the rule as it stands now. Make it be a legitimate yellow for a spin or a crash that would allow whoever it is waiting in the push off area to rejoin the field and eliminate the image of favortism.


My second gripe is actually one that has gone on for years and years. There seems to be an opinion amongst some drivers and fans that promoters are not supposed to make any money. Whenever I hear somebody complaining about a promoter making some money on an event it makes me wonder if that same person also feels sorry for that promoter when an event is busted by bad weather or other competition. Let’s face it, being a short-track race promoter is not the most glamorous job in the world, and that’s the point, it is a job and it deserves compensation. In fact, in a lot of cases, it deserves more compensation than it currently provides. If a promoter doesn’t make money, then there won’t be a racetrack to race at. That fact unfortunately played out at a few facilities this past year. During the twenty years that I have been involved in this sport I have been on both sides of the proverbial fence and I have even seen it from different angles as a fan, a pit official, a car owner, a promoter and a travelling series director. One thing that has always held true is that you will find the happiest drivers and fans at a track where the promoter makes money, because the good promoters put some of that profit back into their operation.

Well that will do it for this year. Once again we wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. We’ll see you on the Back Stretch.