I was no more than a couple of miles down the road from my house, on my way to the new Spring Lake Speedway for my first time, when I had to hit the brakes and slow down quickly as a black bear went lumbering across the road in front of me, followed a couple of seconds later by the little one obviously following Mom. Now seeing a bear or even more than one is not an unusual occurrence in the north woods where I live, still, the sudden surprises and awesome creatures that nature can spring on you are still breathtaking, no matter how many times you have seen them.
Perhaps not quite so much so when they are hanging out in your yard on a daily basis as one black bear has been doing all Summer with us, and the sight of a large black bear sitting under your bay window, lounging in the grass eating sunflower seeds is just a little more thought provoking. Or the times recently when he's been on our back deck and we've looked eyeball to eyeball through the screen door at each other. Still, Bruno(we've even given him a name) is a lot more handsome than most of the people that show up on our back deck!
But I digress.
New owner Scott Duval of the Spring Lake Speedway near Unity Wisconsin has been after me all Summer to make a visit to his new track and circumstances finally worked out so that a trip was in the cards on Friday, August 5th. Spring Lake is about a two hour drive for me and is located in central Wisconsin with the nearest close by bigger cities being Wausau and Marshfield. Unity itself is a wide spot in the road and the track is actually several miles out in the country with the trip to it past some of the finest dairy farms in the state breathtaking as harvest nears.
Spring Lake Speedway was formally known as Monster Hall Raceway and has been around for a number of years. The track is bordered by a campgrounds and Spring Lake comes almost right up to the back of the bleachers on the front straightaway, hence the new name for the track.
Duval is a long time racer in the area, being from Bloomer Wisconsin and he has made the climb through the ranks, starting out in Street Stocks and for a number of years now having raced Modifieds quite successfully with even some short stints driving Late Models and in other classes. I've known Scott for a long time and seen him move up through the ranks. Scott is a great talker and he could "sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo", thus, he has the personality that is perfect for this line of work. He told me he bought the track, not to make money but to try and give something back to the sport and if he makes a go of this place, he will certainly have done that.
The central Wisconsin area has always had a lot of loyal dirt track fans, even though they're right on the border area with a lot of asphalt tracks not very far to the East of them. After a strong early first few years as Monster Hall Raceway, disputes between the ownership group saw things gradually fall apart and the track has been owned by an absentee owner in recent years and was shut down early two years ago due to failing car counts and crowds. In fact, Scott pointed out that this week is the one year anniversary since he bought the track.
The changes Duval has made to the track and grounds in just one year are quite remarkable and the track certainly looks different than it did just a year or so ago. The changes are almost too numerous to mention but such things as new aluminum bleachers, lawn chair sections to replace the old wooden planks and wood bleachers, remodeling of the tower for the announcer and scorers, a newly redesigned sign in area for the drivers and reorganized concession areas, new track lighting, a whole new surface for the track, a couple of VIP booths for sponsors and about a hundred other changes both large and small.
Among his plans for next year are building a two tier deck with rentals for the year, more new aluminum bleachers and a scoreboard. He's even in the process of building some new quarters for him to live in part time as he spends so much time at the track and his home is quite a distance away from the track.
The track itself is somewhere between a third mile and a three eighth mile oval with medium banking. The track retains its unusual layout that sees the front straightaway go uphill all the way to corner number one and the back chute goes downhill into turn three. The area where the track is located has good dirt for farming but it is notoriously rocky and can't be used for the racing surface. Historically, this track has suffered in that area as good dirt for racing has been hard to come by. Scott admitted that they suffered in that area and still now don't have as much good dirt on the track as they would like. Some of the new dirt added last Fall had to be taken off, an expensive proposition, because it was too sandy and rocky. Some of his major plans are to increase by a hundred loads the amount of dirt on the track this Fall after racing ends. An even surface from week to week has probably been his most challenging issue so far since he took over and he is doing most of the track prep himself, which is something that he has never done before. Plus, he admitted that all the time he has spent on projects has taken time away from his marketing efforts and that is where he excels. I would not be surprised if he hires someone to take care of track prep and maintenance issues so he can focus more of what he does best. He did say that he has over forty billboard sponsors in the first year which he considered good.
After investigating the different sanctioning bodies that were available to him, Scott opted to sign on with NASCAR, making him only the second dirt track in the state to use that sanctioning. Some time I will have to have a conversation with him on why he selected them to sanction him, because I was disappointed when he went that route, although I'm sure he had his reasons. In reality, he is running WISSOTA rules for most of his classes because that's what body most of his cars normally run under. His Modified rules are open however, as he has both WISSOTA and USRA cars running with him along with an occasional IMCA car also. It remains to be seen whether his choice of sanction helps, hinders or has no effect on the track with the main selling point of NASCAR being the track point fund at year's end.
Scott's plan for his track is not to run a weekly show which he has not done this year either. Instead, he wants to run about ten shows a year, make them all specials of some sort and also offer a variety of different types of entertainment, not just races every week. And frankly, I think that more and more tracks are thinking about some sort of this plan as the weekly racing certainly starts to suffer at most tracks as we get into the "dog days" of Summer. I think more and more tracks will start to focus on specials and plan to take weeks off during the season, just to give their fans, employees and drivers a break.
The one area that he is struggling in and knew that he would, is car counts for his shows thus far. Frankly, Spring Lake Speedway lies in a rather rural setting and there aren't a lot of people that live close by. That's not to say he can't draw a crowd and in fact, so far this year his crowds have been excellent. But most of the drivers from this area, due to many years of inactivity for the dirt tracks in this area, have either retired or sold their equipment and it's going to take a while to build their numbers back up. Right now he pulls a lot of his cars from the Eau Claire/Chippewa Falls area and that's between forty and fifty miles away along with some hit or miss drivers left in the local area. Getting the crowds won't be his problem; his problem will be in trying to keep the people patient until the car counts increase. Friday night he had sixty four cars in six classes with four of the classes having enough cars for two heats. He's getting some good quality cars, it just will take a while to increase those numbers. And some of the early season issues with track conditions slowed those efforts.
In touring the pits before the races, I found that many of the drivers on hand were unfamiliar to me as this is largely a different group of racers than those I see more often. One driver I just had to stop and say hello to though was Eric Olson from Ladysmith Wisconsin. And Eric was still having difficulty wiping the "shit eating" grin off his face after events of this week.
One week ago Eric didn't have a ride for the Street Stock Little Dream race at the Rice Lake Speedway. However, a veteran car owner lost his driver recently and offered Eric the opportunity to drive his car. On Tuesday night, Olson won the thirty lap Little Dream race and due to the generosity of the fans and businesses that contribute to the purse, Eric went home with a first place payoff of $15,000! Folks, this is for the equivalent of an IMCA Stock Car in WISSOTA country. Can you imagine that? Fifty five cars from five states were on hand for WISSOTA's biggest Street Stock race of the year in front of a record crowd and Olson took the big money. he said he didn't get to work until about 10 am the next day and only worked a few hours, he was so tired after having been up most of the night celebrating and rest assured, when the Ladysmith crowd parties, they don't mess around!
Olson was on hand with his Super Stock on Friday which is the class he has raced in for many years now, after having started his career in the Street Stocks. And he is having a good year , leading in the points here at Spring Lake as well as at Rice Lake also. On this night he would end up second to Phillips' Randy Spacek.
As far as the racing at Duval's track, on this night they were recovering from a multi inch rain over night and the track surface was a little loose in the corners and the high groove just didn't come in much as it was so tacky on the low side. The track was very fast but it was hard to pass. The program was smoothly run and there were few yellow flags.
The drive of the night was made by Weyerhaeuser Wisconsin's Jay Kesan in the Street Stocks. With all the cars blocking the low groove, Kesan moved up the track, made the only two significant passes of the night on the high side and won the feature race.
In the Modifieds, Steve Lavasseur from River Falls Wisconsin hung on and held off a charging Chris Oertel for the win. Oertel is one of the few running a USRA car on American Racer tires while most are using Hoosiers. Cole Varsho won the Pure Stock feature. Cole is a "comer" at the age of fourteen and looks to be a star for the future in the making.
Duval has made a huge turnaround in the track in just one year and I'm sure that with the plans that he has that things will continue to improve as this year winds up and he gets that first full year under his belt. Next week his first real special will be held as he has booked a $2,000 to win Late Model show using WDLMA rules which should allow cars from both eastern and western Wisconsin the ability to race without an major handicaps. His sponsor next week will be Seubert Calf Ranches(yes, that's the same Seubert that is on the door of Josh Richards' Late Model). Seubert's main headquarters is just down the road from the race track.
Scott, who is known as "Duvy" to his friends, was kind enough to take time away from his pre race duties to give me the tour of the grounds and I'm sure that I'll always be welcome here. The only thing I wish he would have done different is simply to name the track "Duvy's Track." Then I could have remembered the name easier!
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