POSTED April 27, 2025

       Yet another night of rain and cold featured racing at the Mottville Speedway, Saturday, April 27,2002! In the 12 years under current management this has been the wettest and coldest spring at least on race nights of the 12! Rain started just after noon and continued well into the racing program, stopped momentarily and then started again and once again the track was never dry!

But we did have some good racing! We had 14 cars, 8 Thunder Cars and 2 each of the Pro Stocks, Mottville Stocks and Mini Thunder Cars!

The Thunder Car feature alone was worth the price of admission! With the cars going the wrong way around the track late in the race Bryan Whitaker, Randy Burns and Bill Crapo went 3 wide for the lead in what would have been turn 3 (by the entrance to the track) and Burns and Crapo went off the track and straight for the 1995 Olds Cierra passenger car of Judith Holden’s with Judith inside no less! Somehow, and I have no idea how, both missed her and the car! Whitaker went on for his 4^th TC feature win of the season and 2^nd in a row! Whitaker will not be with us Sunday as he has to go to Indianapolis and Merle Yoder will be driving the number 97 on Sunday! Cindy Grinnell was 3^rd, Eric Root 4^th and Harold Blowers 5^th. Blowers led for the first 25 laps before Burns took over. The order was reversed for the final 10 laps and then the action started!

Burns, with new tires, won the dash and first heat and newcomer Paul Thurston won the 2^nd heat. Richard Allbee, 2^nd in the points, was absent and Whitaker increased his season points lead as a result!

Paul Scott made it 6 Pro Stock feature wins as he bested Fred Lowrey in the 12 lapper and also took the dash win. Paul had been to South Bend Friday night and damaged his car more in one night at South Bend than he had in 10 nights this season at Mottville!

Jason and Wesley Schaefer, son and father, waged a side by side, door to door, bumper to bumper, wheel to wheel battle in the 15 lap Mottville Stock feature with Jason finally winning his 5^th of the season to increase his season points lead! Wesley took the dash and Jason the heat. Larry Birk, 2^nd in MS points, was at the track but without his car which had mechanical problems, and thus Wesley gained on Birk in the points!

Veteran and defending Mini Thunder Car points champion Fred Garrett made it 9 feature wins on the season as he bested Jennifer Jenkins in the 15 lapper. Garrett also took the heat and dash.

Birk told me after the races he had purchased a MTC and will register it and drive it next week!

We are now at the time of year at Mottville when there simply are not enough hours in the days to get all the work done we would like to do! The grass is growing and so are weeds! The garden tractor is ready to go and I have 12 gallons of weed killer ready but we need hot and dry weather! Bill Crapo tired to mow Saturday but the rains came! Tuesday I spent the afternoon at the track moving the old boards that were under the old bleachers and burning them and Thursday 3 of us spent the evening during practice cleaning out some of the buildings!

When we arrived at the track Thursday for practice and a large turnout we discovered that every other circuit breaker in the pits worked! We juggled a wire and got them all working for the night! Friday an electrician arrived and put in two connectors on the top of a pit pole and we were back in business! He also replaced two lights in the pits so we did have more light Saturday night and now we need to count how many lights are burned out around the track and in the pits and get them replaced!

Progress was made on the winterizing of the main concession-rest room building! I caulked the entire outside walls of the building and this week new thresholds were installed on 3 doors in the building and Saturday morning  (just in time as it turned out) guttering was installed on the track side of the building! WE are awaiting an estimate on putting suspended ceilings in the two rest rooms and then we are getting new vents with lights and heaters built in! Should be terrific and make it much easier to keep the pipes from freezing in November, February and March!

We also did some rearranging of the concession stand to make it more efficient and that worked out perfectly!

Between Thursday and Saturday I must have received at least a total of 25 emails and phone calls and in person inquires about the M-40 situation!  Mostly they were from drivers wanting to find out about Mottville, with the opening of M40 delayed for now. Now as you read on, please read the everything I say here and take it as a whole and please do not take anything out of context!

First of all , all I know about M40 is what I read on their web site and what other people tell me! But this I do know, in order to run a race track you must take in more money (or at the very least as much money) as you pay out in the long term. In the short term you can lose some money but in the long term you can not continue losing money on a regular basis (unless you are wealthy which few of us are!) So while I see fingers being pointed all over the place the bottom line is that to be successful a track must take in more money than it pays out.

There are a lot of myths out there about how to run a race track and most of these myths are spread by people who have never ran a race track!

On big myth is that you should give out a lot of free passes and after those people get in for free once they will come back and buy a ticket! Does not work! I have tried it in my early years and very few ever came back and purchased a ticket!

Another myth is that you should let kids in for free because they will bring their parents! What you end up with is a grandstand full of kids and very few adults! Worse yet the drivers look over and see the stands full and complain you are making too much money!

A 3^rd myth is that you should charge like maybe $5 for adults and they will spend the difference at the concession stand! What I have found is that those who are attracted to the $5 price will bring their own food and drink!

Perhaps the most widely believed myth is that all you have to do is pay the highest pay-off around and eventually you will get big crowds! I have yet to see that one work, either!

I do believe that most tracks have far too many people working on the payroll! At most tracks I have visited you could probably cut expenses in half and get along fine!

Anyway, moving on to the phone calls and emails! The “Pure Stock” class that M40 had is rather unique. No other track in the area has such a class. These cars are a little too fast for Thunder Cars that 3 area tracks offer and thus at Mottville they would be Pro-Stocks and at other tracks street stocks or sportsmen.

While I am understanding of the problem these pure stockers face and want to help them I can not help them at the expense of those drivers who have supported Mottville in the TC class. That would not be fair to them! But I have said that if we could at least get 8 drivers who would commit to running at Mottville we could bring back the Bomber class as a 5^th class of stock cars at Mottville! This would be a class between the Pro Stocks and Thunder Cars.

Now if this Bomber ran the Good Year track tires then we could pay them the same pay-off as the Mottville Stocks. But if they want to run street tires then in my mind their pay-off would be the same as the Thunder Cars. Once again we are back to where I started-you can not pay out more than you take in!

So time will tell if we restart the Bomber class and what the pay-off and rules would be but we are very open to it if there is enough interest in it. If not, then fine, we will stick with our current 4 divisions.

I might add a complicating problem here  is that I have absolutely no idea how long M40 will remain closed weather it is one week, one month, two months or even all season but I seriously doubt it would be all season!

Anyway the weather forecasters are saying that by race time Sunday it will be dry and much warmer and I really hope they are correct! Mottville Stocks will be running for $250 to win! Then May 5 tacos will be $1 and PS will run for $350 to win! May 12 all mothers get a free hot dog and soft drink and the Mottville Stocks run for $250 to win! May 19 the PS come back for another $350 to win!