POSTED April 14, 2025

       Joe Fitzpatrick will never forget Saturday, April 20, 2025 at the Mottville Speedway as he won his first heat ever and first feature ever driving for only the 2^nd time ever in the Mini Thunder Car division! Both events he had to beat the season points leader and defending points champion Fred Garrett to do it, but he managed to get the job done both times! Garrett did win the dash. Rookie Greg Schaefer came close to hitting the wall several times but finished 3^rd and rookie Ron Kern, Jr. raced at Mottville for the first time and was 4^th.

Cindy Grinnell looked like she would win her first Thunder Car feature of the season as she had a big lead over Bill Crapo. Crapo gradually closed the gap and when Grinnell spun on lap 27 the lead and the win was Crapo’s. His 4^th of the season! Richard Allbee finished strong for 2^nd with Randy Burns 3^rd and season points leader Bryan Whitaker 4^th. Allbee did cut Whitaker’s point lead to just 21 points! Whitaker won the dash and Chad Layman, at Mottville for the first time in 2002, won the heat.

Robert Teadt, Jr. made it 3 feature wins in 3 nights as he won the 35 lap Mottville Stock feature over Jason Schaefer, Lonnie Ernsberger (also at Mottville for the first time in 2002) and Wesley Schaefer. Teadt won the dash but Jason Schaefer came back to win the heat and kept his points lead over Larry Birk and Wesley Schaefer.

Terry Kline won his first Pro Stock feature of the season with a 20 lap victory over Jeff Brunt, Randy Morley and Paul Scott. Brunt tried lap after lap to get by Kline on the outside but could not quite get it done! Jeff told me afterwards he is putting on a new set of Good Years for Sunday so watch out!

Morley was driving the 67 car of Polk Wilbur. It was the first appearance at Mottville in 2002 for the 3 time season points champion.

We registered 8 new cars and had our largest stock car count of the season despite the weather! It was damp and cool and all tracks in the area that were scheduled to run cancelled except Mottville and we had 27 stock cars! Not running late models and keeping our expenses low really pays off on a night like this!

The weather was in stark contrast to Thursday when we had a temperature in the 70’s and our biggest tune and test night of the season!

We have a change in our rules so that TC and MTC drivers who race at least 80% of the nights this season and attend the banquet will get points money! This should be a major benefit for these two divisions. We had 9 TC Saturday and its only a matter of time until we start hitting 12-15 every night! MTC count was 5 and we know of at least 10 that are in the process of being built!

Now its on to the Raymond Beers Memorial Race Sunday and I want to assure everyone that we race no matter what the weather-snow, rain, sleet, fog you name it-we will race because Raymond would want it that way!

Sunday kicks off 5 Sundays in a row of specials! The PS are running for $330 to win on a 33 lap feature! April 28 the MS run for $250 to win, May 5 the PS run for $350 to win, May 12 the MS for $250 to win and May 19 the PS for $350 to win. After that we will evaluate the 5 nights and decide which divisions we want to run more specials on this season and how often!

Both the MS and PS features paid $100 to win Saturday night!

This Sunday night we are running a special “reverse gear” race for any and all cars which volunteer for it! After the races Saturday 5 TC had already volunteered! It will be for two laps and it was at the suggestion of Susan Beers that we are running it!

I have to say that for once I was really pleasantly surprised by the results of Saturday! While the weather really held the crowd the car count was better than I expected!

We have all been looking forward to the Raymond Beers Memorial Race for several weeks now and it is finally here! I can tell you that I really miss having Ray around Mottville this season but at the same time I have this sense that his spirit is really with us and has never left us! Whenever you think of Raymond I think you automatically think of the Mottville Speedway! He was a part of the speedway for at least the last 20 years and will always be remembered by those of us involved with the speedway!