Usually I would be packing the car right now to head south to Springfield for the annual Turkey Bowl but another commitment takes precedent this weekend, so our chilly road trip last weekend closed out my 2026 racing season. On Friday we made the eight hour drive down to Colcord, Oklahoma, to get our first look at the Arrowhead Speedway where on this night they were running full programs for both the Super Late Models and Modifieds, plus qualifying heat races for several other classes.
I thought that this would be a new track for me, but entering the grounds I realized that I had been here before back in the 1990's even though the modernization of this facility is nothing short of phenomenal. Qualifying for the Late Models was scheduled to start the program at 8 p.m., but as we settled into our seats next to our own Ed Reichert and his lovely wife Linda, I could see water in the sheep's foot holes glistening in the lights. That might work when it is seventy and sunny out, but not on this night when the sun had set more than an hour earlier and after several failed attempts to hot lap the Late Models, the track prep equipment came out to the track to tear it up a bit and then pack it back down. I believe that qualifying finally started around 9:30 and to their credit the show ran off quickly from there with Cade Dillard taking the checkers in an entertaining Late Model feature around 12:30.
Arrowhead is definitely a track that I will come back to in the future as it is a great facility that features an enticing schedule of special events.
On Saturday we made the trek over to the I-55 Raceway in Pevely, Missouri, for the third and final night of the second annual Fall Frost. We went to this program last year as well and the fact that the roster for Saturday's show was trimmed from nine to four, MLRA Late Models, Modifieds, B-Mods and Mod Lites is the one reason that we came back! I have always loved the racing at I-55 and the track delivered again on this night with Tennessee driver Blake Steele working his way to the front to win the B-Mods. Mike Harrison and Kenny Wallace waged a great battle for the lead throughout the Modified feature with Harrison prevailing.
In the Late Models Frank Heckenast Jr. and his Stick Man took the feature win. In true Frankie fashion he made his way to the front by digging around the bottom and taking advantage of lapped traffic to take the lead, but when Daniel Adam started to close the gap quickly while ripping around the top, Heckenast suddenly abandoned his bottom groove and moved up to block just in time. It was a thrilling race making it well worth the trip to both facilities, but with the colder than expected temperatures the crowds at both tracks were very thin. Hopefully the back gate and any streaming revenue helped to pay the bills as I would definitely like to see these two events back on the calendar again in 2027!
For a more complete report on each night visit my Positively Racing colleague Danny Rosencrans' Racin' Down The Road.
This final weekend would get me to sixty races in 2026 at twenty-seven different tracks in eight states. My season started with three nights at Volusia Raceway Park with both the Sprint Cars and Late Models and it was an honor to do some announcing again for Todd and Janet Staley and the United States Modified Touring Series in 2026. That started in late March with three nights of the annual King of America event at the Lucas Oil Speedway and I had a blast working alongside Zach Clark and Pat Graham. Zach is one of the up and comers in this business and while I have known Pat for many years now, this was my first chance to really get to know him and I wish him all the best as he recovers from a significant health scare a couple of months ago. All of the USMTS events are streamed by Racin' Dirt and it was truly a pleasure to work with Trenton, Stick, Heather and the entire crew at West Union, Cedar Lake (two nights), Park Jefferson, Princeton, Ogilvie and Sauk Rapids. Those final three Minnesota tracks were all "first time visits" for me and that brings my total up to 226 across 25 states.
One of my other new announcing opportunities this season came at the Independence Motor Speedway where Promoters Mike Van Genderen, Dan Benning and Trent Chinn placed me in the booth alongside Jeff Kropf and Tony Paris for three race nights during the IMCA Summer Nationals. The three of us have known each other for a long time now and I hope that those who were there, or tuned in on IMCA.tv had as much fun as we did providing the call. A visit on a Tuesday night in April would bring my total number of nights at Independence to four. I would also get four nights in at Oskaloosa, one of them with the Sprint Invaders and it is always a treat to trade the microphone with a long-time favorite Jerry Mackey. Being there the full Oktoberfest race weekend at the La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway has always been a bucket list item for me and I marked that one off this year spending three nights and one glorious October afternoon at the paved facility in West Salem, Wisconsin. Kudos to my good friend Mark Hayes who made the trip even after suffering some serious injuries in a bicycle crash just days before. He was a trooper!
Another one of my favorite tracks, and not just because it is close to home, is the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson and after watching this show from the stands in May, my partner Bill Wright and I called a Sprint Invaders race on Memorial Day weekend and then I appreciated Tony Paris allowing me to join him on the mic for the 27th edition of Shiverfest on October 31st. Two of my favorite events in 2026 came at a former weekly track that now only holds special events and that was the West Liberty Raceway. The return of the UMP Summer Nationals was a huge success in June and frankly the entertainment value of the Liberty 100 in October surprised me a bit. My third night at the track where I spent my childhood Saturday nights at was the poorly attended Sprint Invader event on Labor Day weekend that had some good racing, but just not enough people there to see it.
I spent two nights at the Scotland County Speedway in Memphis, Missouri, two nights at the Quincy Raceways, two nights at the Cedar County Raceway in Tipton and two nights at the Benton County Speedway in Vinton. Rick Dripps had scheduled me to announce for him on five different dates this season, four at Vinton and one with the Dirt On The Downs, and all five of those dates were washed out by the weather. Thankfully Mother Nature cooperated with this one where I took the notebook to the stands.
Our early season Sprint Invader show at Stuart was co-sanctioned by the ASCS Midwest Series so I pulled out the note book on my one visit to Mike Van Genderen's quarter-mile gem this season. The Invaders also took me to the CJ Speedway in Columbus Junction for one visit this year and I also made one time stops at Dubuque, Marshalltown, Boone and Bloomfield. Notably absent from this list is the Davenport Speedway where on at least two occasions I was planning to make the trip only to have the weather intervene.
For those of you who have read my "wrap ups" each year, both at Hawkeye Racing News and here on the online edition of the Back Stretch, you know that I will often make a comment or two about the state of the sport and now buried at the bottom of this entry I will make a couple of comments that will go against the grain of what seems to be "popular click bait" right now.
First is the discussion about purse distribution. Mark Richards, the owner of Rocket Chassis and the car owner for the 2026 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion Brandon Sheppard comes out and ponders whether we should be paying less to win and more just to start in order to keep more racers "healthy". And the online community goes nuts acting like this is a brilliant idea that nobody had ever suggested before!
Duh! If you get bored this winter and want to make your way through the archives of the Back Stretch I bet that you will find three or four entries where this has been suggested, and believe me I know that I was not the first to come up with this plan! I even had a quiz several years ago where I listed two purses, one with an entry fee and a high payout to the winner, and another that paid less to win, more to start, and did not have an entry fee. I then asked the readers which was the better purse and even though they were both the same net pay out, the majority of those who responded said that it was the high winner's purse that was better, hands down!
Perhaps now that a championship car owner puts forth the idea of paying the winner less and spreading the pay out more through the field, something will finally be done about it.
The other thing that drives me nuts is the online freak out that happens when a track comes out and announces that it will be closing its gates. Just to be clear, I hate it when a track promoter can no longer survive financially or the owner finds it more attractive to sell the property than to continue racing, but why is it that we always get the "our sport is doomed" posts to follow? I am biased, I have eight tracks that race weekly on four different nights that are within 100 miles of my home and one of those is looking for a new promoter next year. Will somebody step up and give it a try? Perhaps, but if not I would guess that the facility will still have some races on the schedule just like the three other former weekly tracks that are 75 miles or less from my home.
Yes, I know that eastern Wisconsin has lost several tracks in recent years and if one was your "home track" that really sucks, but you still have some fantastic choices in your region. We all want to wring our hands and think the world is coming to an end when a track closes, but what about when a new track opens? The new 127 Speedway in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, opened this Fall to a full grandstand and a packed pit area. The Benton Speedway in Missouri reopened a couple of years ago and now features some of the best car counts in the region. The Red Dirt Speedway in Meeker, Oklahoma, will come back to life in 2027 after sitting idle this past year. The new Belle-Clair Speedway will have a full schedule in 2027. You just don't see the online entities posting about that, do you?
At the age of 63 maybe my horizon is a lot shorter than some of the pundits, but I don't see our sport dying, I simply see it resetting. So let's stop preaching the doom and gloom and instead let's celebrate our heroes; every promoter and their team of employees that take the risk to put on the show and every driver and their crew that work so hard throughout the week to then be the show on race night!
Thanks for reading the Back Stretch and take a friend to the races at the track near you in 2027!
