POSTED  JULY 6, 2025

MERLE YODER won a rain soaked 15 lap Mini Stock Car feature Sunday night at the Mottville Speedway to complete a triple header week-end!

As the MS came out for their feature a light rain began falling and when the white flag flew the rain changed to down pour for the final lap! Yoder had no problem however in winning his 8^th feature of the season with season points leader Eric Root 2^nd followed by Michael Landry, Shane Eldridge and Larry Birk. In the heat it was Yoder over Root and Landry.

The street stock and pro stock features were rained out and will be made up next Sunday night. Paul Scott won the PS heat over Jeff Brunt and Robert Sutton won the SS heat over Mike Mersich.

Dave Kutz won his 3^rd Mottville Mini Cup feature of the season over season points leader John Hackler while Hackler won the heat.

Chuck Hall made it 5 Mini Thunder Car feature wins on the season by taking the 15 lapper and also winning the heat.

Tony Eldridge brought his new Bomber to the Mottville Speedway for the first time and won the heat and 15 lap feature.

Bill Stump won his 3^rd kart feature of the season with a 12 lap win over Justin Stump, Mike Zehr and season points leader Jacob Caines. Results were the same in the heat.

Saturday night will feature a ladies powder puff and Sunday is Mid Season Championship Trophy Nite will trophies going to all heat winners and the top 5 in all features including the karts!

Well this was one of those nights we will never forget! Before arriving at the track I was hoping this would be one of our better nights of the season as the sun was out and the skies were clear and had several phones about the races on my cell phone including two from new SS! But then I arrived at the track I found it had just showered there even though I never ran into any rain on the way! But it was clear and seemed fine! Then the skies began to darken! So we hurriedly started the races (right at 6 pm!) and ran the MMC, Kart, Bomber and MTC heats before the skies really unloaded! After about a 40 minute rain delay we dried the track with the tires and other cars and ran the MS, PS and SS heats before intermission. We had a very quick intermission because once again the skies were dark!

Now we hurriedly ran the kart and MMC features and managed to get them in before it rained! As the MS feature went onto the track it was sprinkling. Gradually the rained increased as the race went on! By the time the MS feature was over it was obviously raining far too hard for SS and PS!

But I do want to thank all the drivers for their cooperation in drying the track and their understanding! Everyone did the best they could and we almost got the complete show in!

Justin Stump moved to 6^th in the kart point standings and his father Bill to 8^th!

Larry Birk moved to 10^th in the MS point standings but the bad news is he either blew his clutch or his engine! Lets hope it was the clutch!  Shane Eldridge moved to 15^th and is only about 3 pts out of 12^th!

Mersich says he will be back in two weeks and is buying some new Good Years so look for him to be much faster!

Chuck Hall is to bring Richard Allbee a new water pump for his MTC and he should be back to racing Saturday night as well!

Tony Eldridge really has a beautiful Bomber car! It is only our 2^nd Bomber car of the season and runs real nice also!

Derk Sargent missed for the first time this season and now only Eric Root has been there every single night this season! 39 for 39! Quite remarkable!

The biggest news of the night was from the Mottville Mini Cups. They have had major problems trying to get car count this season and they have decided to end their points race for 2003 as of now giving John Hackler the points championship. In addition they will no longer be on the schedule but will race whenever they can get the cars together. They feel that night will probably be Sunday as they think they can get about 5 cars from Jackson, Mi on Sundays! However, Jackson does not run July 19 so they may well run that Saturday. They will also run for trophies for the heat and feature winners just as the karts do.

With mid season coming up this week-end I can tell you it has been a most challenging first half of the season! While other track promoters practice “the big lie” and say what an outstanding season they are having, forgetting of course, people can count, I will readily admit that we are like most tracks, our crowds are down about 1/3 to 1/2! This has really made putting on a show difficult! I think probably because of my 12 years prior experience at Mottville I have learned how to cope with it. There really is very little I can do except do the best I can do and go on! I think the economy is reason number one and weather reason two but first and foremost it is the economy! The economy will eventually improve, it always does, and meanwhile it has forced us to be as lean as possible on expenses! I am constantly searching for ways to lower the cost of racing for all involved! Sometimes I feel like I am all alone in that search! Throwing money at the problem will not solve it. It starts with CART, IRL and NASCAR and goes all the way down to Mottville, the cost of racing is just too expensive! But at Mottville I really think

you can race for less than anywhere else! MTC and Bombers are very economical to race and a lot of fun! Our MS class is also certainly not an expensive class and our SS class is way less than PS or LLM! For 2004 I am seriously considering adding a pure stock class which would be less expensive yet than SS!

But things will improve, they always do, and the 2^nd half of the season at Mottville is always way better than first half! Every year that has been the case and I am certain it will be in 2003 as well!

It will seem strange running only two nights this week-end after two  weeks in a row of triple header week-ends! But it should be a good week-end coming up, especially Sunday will the trophies!

Here it is mid-season one week away and I am already working on rules and schedule for 2004!

Don’t forget that Friday, July 18 it will be the MS running 50 laps for $250 to win and SS, MTC, MS, Bombers and Karts running a regular program on that night.

40 nights total now in for 2003 and 51 to go! Some tracks actually have only 8-10 nights left in 2004! Some will only run 14-16 nights for the entire season but we are still looking at 91!

So if you love racing and are looking for an inexpensive place to race try Mottville!