POSTED APRIL 30, 2025

The last week-end of April is always a rough week-end for Mottville as the last two tracks to open in our area opened this week-end and many drivers and fans go to them for opening night, even if they do not intend to race there much thereafter! So with in mind for the past several years we have scheduled the Vintage Modifieds for the last week of April to help offset this! The last two years it worked to perfection with great car counts for the VM! But this year the VM’s had only 8 cars! Normally that would spell trouble but to my amazement we had a very good car count of our own cars and they put on terrific shows both Saturday and Sunday and it was another very good week-end of racing action at Mottville!

Actually it started with a very strong Thursday practice session and we sold 3 full sets of those Goodyear tires!

Saturday night’s feature for the Mottville Stocks was one of the best races ever in the 51 year history of the Mottville Speedway! Right up the last lap 7 of the 9 cars were in contention for the win! Close and clean racing for the whole 25 laps! Plus the Thunder Cars put on a tremendous show with action all over the track-so much action it was hard to keep track of it all!

Then came Sunday night and to my utter amazement we had the same number of stock cars on Sunday as we had on Saturday! Wow! Street Stocks went from only 2 cars Saturday night to 5 on Sunday and put on a very good show! In one of those quirky things that happen ever so often, the MS had only 5, their season low but it was another very good feature with Wesley Schaefer taking home his first “A” feature ever and he and Merle Yoder really put on a show for the fans!

Our track officials had some tough calls to make both days! Sunday Melissa Worthington was dqed for being 50 lbs underweight and in the Bomber feature Joe Cool and Bill Crapo had a near photo finish for 2^nd place! Both nights there were some spin-outs that were judgment calls!

Might say something at this point about pay-off. WE paid the Bombers, SS and MS more Sunday night than we advertise and also Saturday but not as much more as we paid Sunday (see last week’s column for that!). Anyway I have learned over the years not to put all the money on the top but to spread it out as it will benefit more drivers! This is especially true when one driver is dominating a class! Saturday we paid the MS winner $75 as the rules call for but 2^nd was paid $60 then $50, $40, $35, $30 and $25. Sunday the SS and Ms each paid that same pay-off. As a result here is what the 5 MS drivers made for the night: $80,$70, $50, $45, $35. The 5 SS drivers made $75, $70, $55, $45 and $35. So the money was spread around rather well! The 4 Bomber cars were paid $85, $55, $45 and $25 (ran 2 laps in feature!). I would rather do this than pay one driver $100 to win the feature and then $50 for 2^nd etc!

What a lot of people do not understand is that Mottville actually pays very well! One driver who raced at another track Saturday made $50 there and Sunday at Mottville made $85! Another made $30 at another track Saturday and made $45 at Mottville! Plus you will normally find it costs less to keep your car running at Mottville because the crashes are not as severe! That is a big part of the racing  expense and remember there are two sides to a profit and loss sheet, income and expense!

With two months now in at Mottville it is interesting to compare the results vs. other years at this point! We have run 11 nights vs. 8 in 2000 and 1997! Despite way colder weather for the most part this season (yes last two week-ends were the exception for sure!) we are about where we were last year in most areas except we have registered more cars and sold more tires!

Plus I think our foundation for the rest of the season is much better now than it was a year ago with more “regulars” of our own and a building Thunder Car class and now the Mini-Thunder Cars coming on strong! We had 4 MTC Sunday night and have more and more people talking about building them! Scott Baker and Skinny Cool showed just how quickly you can build a MTC! Thursday night they had a street car and Saturday night they had a MTC beautifully painted and it won the feature both nights!

At this point I think it is a very reasonable goal that before too many weeks have gone by we can expect around 10-12 cars each in MS, TC and MTC  plus maybe 8 Bombers and 6 SS! That is around 46-48 cars plus the karts and with that we can put on some great shows! I really think our “peak days” for karts are well behind us but with TC and MTC coming on strong it is just as well! We will continue to run the karts but they will pretty much be stock karts most nights and I am not expecting more than 6-9 on Saturday and maybe 3-4 on Sunday.

When it comes to economy racing no track in our area offers more than Mottville! Besides TC we have the MTC and MS and Bombers!

One change we have decided on is that when there are less than 4 SS and/or Bombers they will run together with separate points but one combined pay-off. This will make for far better racing for the fans!

The point standings are really getting interesting now that we have gone to two nights of racing per week and bonus points for the drivers running both nights! Merle Yoder looks like he will have a fight from Jean Behlke, David Schaefer, John Yoder and Wesley Schaefer all season long! Terry Humphries looks very strong in Bombers but Melissa Worthington is coming on, just needs to get that Bomber 02 working right! Scott Baker is giving Randy Morley a run for the money for sure in SS! While Terry Kline has a nice lead in TC he has been known in the past to miss several week-ends later in the year and that will be a huge break for Worthington and Chris Arnett! The MTC is literally wide open at this point!

Hard to believe the perfect weather this past week-end with no predication of rain at all! Don’t count on that much if ever again this season but do count on the fact will be racing at Mottville every Saturday and Sunday night unless it absolutely pours down from 7-10 pm!