POSTED January 27, 2002

This Thursday, January 31, 2002 is the absolute deadline for purchasing tickets to the February 9 Awards Banquet and be assured of getting a plaque if you finished in the top 15 in points during 2001! After January 31 you can still buy tickets but we will not order any additional plaques unless you have a sponsor for your plaque! I will make a prediction right now that during the week of February 3 at least one person will call me wanting tickets and expecting a plaque and they will have all kind of excuses on why they waited but the bottom line is it will be too late! Anyway we now have 47 reservations for the banquet and should hit 50 for the 2nd year in a row!

Had several people tell me we could be racing with this beautiful weather of late! No doubt that this is true! But my worry is that we are going to pay for this eventually! I mean you know we are going to get a certain amount of snow every year and a year ago we got it in December. But this year January is about ready to pass and no snow! So probably February but hopefully not March because we open for racing in just 5 weeks=March 2! Enos Yoder, father of Merle Yoder, is quoted in the Elkhart Truth as being an expert on ice fishing! He was interviewed while ice fishing on Shipshewana Lake! While I am glad Enos and John and Merle are so well rounded in their interests I would rather be racing any day then ice fishing!

Had an interesting phone call yesterday from a clown! NO JOKE! He actually is a race track clown and called me and told me he had "an offer I could not refuse!" Guess what? I did refuse! $1000 per night and I told him he was out of his mind! That leads me into "outside shows." Over the years I can never remember
making a profit on outside shows! I was very lucky to break even on some but lost money on the vast majority! I really do not feel Mottville is unique in that regard! So why do tracks keep booking outside shows? Well, in my opinion, the answer is that the promoter really does not keep track of what these shows bring in vs. what he pays for them! I am certain no promoter likes losing money but unless you take the time and make the effort to track what they bring in you can just assume they are paying for themselves when they are not! I have received suggestions that we book an outside late model show! Now for 15 cars and $8000-$10,000 purse that means I have to take in $8000-$10,000 more in pit passes and tickets than I normally would and that would just be to break even! 15 cars MIGHT bring in $1500 in pit passes but no more! That means at least $6500 in tickets more
which is 650 people and that will never happen!

Every so often I get an inquiry from someone about leasing the track for a special show. Now the last time this happened it was a very experienced promoter and he advertised all over the place and lost about $3000! For an outside promoter like this the expenses are big! Before you ever sell the first ticket you have $1500 for track rental, $1000 for insurance and at least $1000 for advertising! Now you are $3500 in the hole before the gates ever open! Then, in order to assure a good car count, you probably pay much bigger than average purse! 
End result is that you are doing well to lose only $3000! What we seem to have great difficulty in making some people understand is that we are really happy with what we have at Mottville! We are not Kalamazoo and never were and never will be! We keep operating expenses bare boned and run 70 or more nights per year and have a good time! In the end we hope to make a modest profit, put most of that profit back into the track, and get ready for another year! While I am sure being rich would be nice it was never a big goal of mine! I enjoy dining out frequently, living in a nice house and driving a nice car. A few 2-3 day trips along the way are nice and that is about all I want beyond my regular job and racing! I really can not believe that the promoters at other tracks are more happy than I am! We turned the corner at Mottville in 1998 and the last 3 seasons have been wonderful! Can we do better? You better believe it! Will we try to do better? Of course! But we are having fun and that is what life is all about!

Over the next few years, as the Lord provides, I do hope to install new bleachers, put a roof over the new bleachers, and repave the track surface. A few more lights in the pits would be nice also! Also some more stone in the driveways! But I have no vision at all of big crowds and high powered outside shows!

Talked to our former tire dealer at Mottville, Bill Russell, last week for about 45 minutes! Bill is a member of our Mottville Speedway Hall of Fame and many times a track champion at Mottville! He told me he only raced about 4 nights total last season and talked about the "good old days" when he ran South Bend on Friday night, Mottville on Saturday night and Plymouth
on Sunday night! It did bring back the memories! But for me the memories of the 2001 season at Mottville were just as good!

Our web site set yet another milestone this past week when we crossed 19,000 hits! Wow! David T. Schaefer, our web master, has really done a magnificent job! It is truly amazing how many people go to our web site during the off season! Now how long will it take to hit 20,000?

Well the banquet is now just 2 weeks away and the start of racing action only 5 weeks away! My worse month of the year (January) is almost over! When next I write this column it will be February and the final month of the off season! PTL for that! If those of you who attend Mottville regularly felt 2001 was interesting and exciting I can predict that you will find 2002 even more interesting and exciting! For many reasons! But you have to wait! I expect our new Pro-Stock class will be really exciting and I am getting vibes that our Mottville stock class will be picking up in numbers! I expect the Thunder Car and Mini-Thunder Car classes to grow and provide excitement and some "behind the scenes" things so to speak will also be most interesting! 

So stay tuned! Our 52nd season of racing at Mottville and the 12th under current management is getting closer!