POSTED December 9, 2001

With the beautiful weather the past 2 Saturdays we could have stretched the season another two weeks! But who could ever predicted it as a year ago we had snow and cold by now!

Had a phone call from Jessica Degoede, our 2000 Mottville Stock Rookie of the Year, and she clarified that she would be again running a MS at Mottville in 2002 and her father, Dee, will run a Thunder Car! Great news and it will be good to have that family back at Mottville!

It was also thrilling to hear that Andrew Behlke, our kart season points champion for 2001, is moving up to Mini Thunder Cars in 2002! If my calculations are correct Andrew will be 11 years old! I do not know how dedicated he will be but if he is dedicated he could be youngest stock car track champion ever at Mottville next year!

It really is great to see drivers move up in the classes! Karts is a great way to get started and then MTC is the next logical step! Who knows we may well see Andrew Behlke racing NASCAR someday!

Also talked to Al Maurer, 9^th in Street Stock points in 2001 at Mottville. Al has big plans for 2002 and I mean big plans! He is going to run late models at another track next season on Saturday nights and then run Pro Stocks at Mottville on Sunday nights! Considering 2001 was Al’s rookie year that is really taking on a challenge! But we certainly wish Al the best and are thrilled to have him back at Mottville in 2002!

Elsewhere on this web site is our 2002 schedule. Let me make clear that this schedule is very, very tentative and will surely be changed from time to time before the season starts on March 2! In fact you might well say it is a “working outline” for 2002. The dates are all firm, that you can count on, but specials and such will be added as time goes on. Right now we have the mid-season championships set and the season championships. Next year we are trying running the PS and TC mid-season champs on one Sunday and the MTC and MS mid season champs the following Sunday. But all 4 classes plus the karts will run each and every one of the 76 nights including Friday, July 5 when the MTC and TC will each run 50 lap features!

Looking back to 2001 we had many successful things happen and , as always, some things that did not go as well but overall it was a very good year! The biggest surprise was the success of the SS class! Never expected it but it sure was nice! Now we want to build on that success with PS for 2002. We have greatly increased the pay-offs for this class and want a strong field of PS!

Next in the line of success was the first full season for the TC! Starting a new class of cars is always a tremendous challenge! We started TC late in 2000 and thus this past season was our first full season for them and while we had some growing pains at times, overall the class grew and looks stronger yet for 2002! Looking back over say the last 10 years at Mottville prior to this past season I would easily say our biggest failure has been the inability to build even one “supporting class” of cars! I think we finally have done it with the TC!

3^rd in line of success was the start of the MTC! Again starting a new class is just so tough but we started out with 2-3 many a night and then slowly and I mean slowly grew! But the outlook for 2002 , our first full season of MTC, is very good! I actually got the idea for MTC when I went to Florida in mid-February for speed week and saw an ad for a track running  them, although what name they gave them I am not sure. It seemed to me at the time that they were a natural fit for Mottville and I ran my idea past several people and all seem to agree with me and thus we started MTC!

Actually most tracks need or at least should have an economical class of racing , especially for those just starting out in racing and for those with very limited dollars to spend! TC and MTC opens the sport up to people who otherwise would be shut-out!

We fully intend to keep the rules very tight on both classes and I think we showed that during 2001! In the past when we started an economy class it gradually opened up and become too expensive! This has happened at hundreds of tracks over and over across the US all during the history of racing! But with TC and MTC it is not going to happen at Mottville!

The fact that we managed to finish with a bottom line profit almost identical to 2000 despite the sluggish economy and Sept 11 is because of success number 4! We managed to keep our expenses low! The only way we can run over 70 nights per season and open in March and close in November and run 2 nights per week is that we keep our expenses low! For example if you add only $100 per night in expenses that might not sound like much but over 70 nights that amounts to $7000 and with our razor thin profit margins $7000 is a real bundle! We never have a night where we make major bucks like some tracks but we also never have a night where we lose major bucks either! Around 1994 I scheduled in a group of winged sprint cars for the first time ever at Mottville! Had the biggest crowd of the season that night and one of the biggest of the last 11 years and still lost more money that night then I have lost on a single night! Yet for weeks afterwards I heard over and over how well I had done that night! The crowd was good but the expenses were unreal! So that is why you will not see expensive outside shows at Mottville!

Success number five is what I would call our “family atmosphere.” This continued in 2001 and we had more campers than we ever had! Its rare to find a track where so many drivers are willing to pitch in and help another driver make the race! Plus its rarer still to find a track where so many drivers will pitch in and help at the track with such things as sweeping the track and drying the track! Also pitching in at times to drive the track truck or wrecker!

Our only big failure for the season was the Bomber class. I really hated to drop it when we did at mid-season but the car count was just too small and was also taking away from the SS class. I know there is a possibility someday of a class between PS and TC but that day will not come until we have strong PS and TC classes. Then we can look at a Bomber class again!

A failure on a smaller scale was the Mottville Stock class. Our car counts in this class were down from 2000 and I really do not know why. I am getting some signals that the numbers may well be better in 2002. I know we are gambling by increasing the MS pay-offs but we were the first track in the area to run 4 cylinders and we want to stick with them and we will, that I can assure you!

Had two reports this past week that another track in our area did not pay points money to their 4 cylinder division citing “increased cost of tires” as the reason. Meaning they did not have as great a profit margin on tire sales as they had before. At Mottville we do not pay the highest point money around but we always pay it! When we pass out the points fund checks to those who ran 80% of the races during 2001(at our banquet February 9) you will find that we paid for our champion will be very good! For all 11 years of current management we have paid points money!