For the past several years I have made the unscientific argument that the weather in October is better for racing, after most tracks have long closed down for the season, rather than in April when nearly every track tries to kickoff the season here in the upper Midwest. For the first three weekends of October 2009, trying to maintain that argument would be like trying to convince someone that the sun rises in the west. All they would have to do is look out the window and they would know that I was out of my mind!
Here’s hoping that weekend number four in October bucks the trend and provides us with dry weather and near normal temperatures (high 50’s) as this is the weekend of “Shiverfest” at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson. Ten years ago Terry and Jenni Hoenig, the promoters at LCS, took a chance and agreed to schedule this late October event as the final race of the old National Kidney Foundation Heartland Tour for Cure that I directed at the time. It was cloudy and it was cold with temps starting out in the mid-forties and then dropping through the evening, but the cars came out and there were enough crazy ticket-buying people there to watch them to make the show a success and a tradition was born. That first event was titled the “Millennium Grand Finale” as it was the final race to be held in the 1900’s in Iowa, and perhaps the final race ever if the Y2K bug was going to wipe us off the map as some predicted so if it were to be run again we would obviously need to come up with a new name. After the show had concluded, the purse had been paid, and the crowd had headed for the warmth of their cars, several of the track’s employees were discussing the night’s activities when Jenni made the comment, “well that was a real shiverfest.” Needless to say, it stuck!
Shiverfest is not a big money race, it is after all traditionally scheduled for late October and our race day weather has ranged from drizzle with temps in the low forties to bright sunshine warming the temperature into the mid-seventies, and one year we were forced to cancel the show completely due to two straight days of rain and snow. This is a family fun event that includes hayrack rides through the pit area from 1 to 3 p.m. and trick-or-treating with the participating drivers on the front stretch at 4 p.m. After that, we’ll all settle in and enjoy the racing action featuring five classes of cars; Modifieds, Stock Cars, Sport Mods, Hobby Stocks and the Four Cylinder “Wild Things”. Best of all, through the generosity of our sponsors and the fans who participate in the 50-50 drawing, we will raise well over $1,500 for the Southeast Renal Dialysis Units to assist the individuals and families who are fighting kidney disease in Mt. Pleasant, Burlington, Fort Madison, Keokuk and Fairfield, keeping the tradition alive from that very first NKF Tour event. We do hope that you will join us this Saturday in Donnellson for Shiverfest “The Big Party Race.” For more information visit www.leecountyspeedway.com.
Usually Shiverfest wraps up the racing season in Iowa, but with this cool wet October weather we have been having a couple of area events had to be rescheduled beyond this weekend. The Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa will run night number two of their annual Fall Challenge on Halloween night, Saturday October 31st and then the following weekend Todd Staley and his crew will present the Pepsi Fall Nationals at the Scotland County Speedway in Memphis, Missouri. Practice night will be held on Thursday November 5th with complete shows on both Friday and Saturday November 6th and 7th. I know that a few people are thinking they are nuts for racing in November, but you watch, it will probably be sunny and in the sixties that weekend! We wish them the best.
I don’t have anything official on it yet, but I heard that promoters Jeff and Amy Laue have announced that the Lucas Oil Late Model Series will make an appearance at 34 Raceway near Burlington next May and I believe that it will be the weekend before the annual Show Me 100 down in West Plains, Missouri. The Lucas Series already draws an interesting mix of drivers, including 2009 point champion Scott Bloomquist, and with the Show Me the following weekend there could be quite a field at 34 as drivers make their way into the Midwest. Keep an eye on their website at www.34raceway.com for more details. This is quite a change from this past season as you will recall that DIRT Motorsports and 34 Raceway had scheduled a World of Outlaws Late Model show on the Saturday night of the Show Me 100 weekend, the middle show of a three-day stint for the Outlaws that included Osborn, Missouri, and Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. With the World of Outlaws scheduling on top of the Show Me in its own neck of the woods, the long running non-sanctioned event later announced that it would become part of the Lucas Oil Late Model Series. I will be interested to see if this new arrangement with the Lucas Oil Late Model Series will have any effect on the scheduling of a third World of Outlaws Sprint Car show at 34 in 2010, as the first two have been very successful.
Several Fair Boards are requesting proposals from prospective promoters right now including the tracks in Bloomfield, Eldon and Cresco. For any of you considering taking a look at running the Cresco Speedway I can tell you that you will have a hard time finding anybody better to work with than Tom Barnes and the Mighty Howard County Fair. Tom was the first person to book an NKF Tour race when we started it all off in 1998 and he was the first one to re-up each of the next three years. Hopefully all three of these facilities will be successful in finding the right promoters.
I still have two and a half more years of tuition to pay so I am definitely not in the market to be a promoter, but I would have to think that the most effective plan for tracks like these would be to keep it simple and keep your costs as low as possible. Run three or four divisions at the most on a weekly basis, such as Stock Cars, Sport Mods/B-Mods, Hobby Stocks and Four Cylinders and structure your purses where you aren’t paying a bunch to win, but instead payout a solid amount “to start”. Make sure that driver who is running in the back of the pack has more than enough to cover his pit pass, his family’s tickets and some fuel money at the end of the night so that he’ll be back again the following week. And this way if you are paying that Stock Car driver for instance $65 to run sixteenth in his feature your purse only goes up as your car count rises. And, as your car count rises, so does your pit pass sales and likely so does your grandstand ticket sales. Sure you’ll have the vocal minority of local drivers that will stomp their feet and complain that you are not paying enough to win, possibly even threatening to go run somewhere else, but when it all shakes out the extra money that they would spend to travel to that “somewhere else” and the lack of exposure that they are getting for their own local sponsors who are vital in supporting their racing efforts usually finds them right back at their local track after a few weeks. The bottom line is this, if a promoter cannot bring in more money than what he pays out in purses and expenses, then it is definitely not worth his efforts to continue to operate and tracks will shutdown. Painfully we saw that happen with at least three facilities in 2008, so racers and fans alike need to realize that when someone new comes in, and their not running Late Models weekly, or the Modifieds are only getting $350-to-win, that just might be what it takes in order to keep the gates open. And that is a much better situation than having weeds grow on your local track.
Be Positive, support the sport and we hope to see you at Shiverfest this Saturday!
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