POSTED December 3, 2001

One week down and 13 to go during this off season! Gosh the weather was good enough Saturday we could have run night number 76! You just never know when it comes to weather in Michiana!

Enjoyed having dinner Friday night with Rita Courtney, our world famous flag lady, and Shelly Lauderdale, our security and EMT person. Saturday night it was dinner with Lillie Pearson, our ticket seller, pit pass seller, photo sales person, and her husband Tom, our pit steward. Had  a pleasant visit with all 4 and enjoyed talking some racing and some other items. Would also like to take our webmaster, David T. Schaefer, and his wife, Sandy, out but trying to get a night planned in advance with them is tough!

Well we had a few items on  our web sit this past week that I wanted to respond to. First of all I understand Jessica Degoedde, our 1999 Mottville Stock Rookie of the Year is coming back for 2002 and that would be welcome news. We missed her in 2001 and apparently, from her bulletin board message, I got the idea that the grass is not always greener away from Mottville!

Good to hear Tom Waddell say he was looking forward to coming back to Mottville in 2002! That bodes well for our Thunder Car class which had its first full season in 2001 and was a solid 5 every night late in the season and at times jumped to 8 or 9 and even 10. With the economy being the way it is TC and MTC are really economical! Of course, pay-offs are small but so is the expense.

Interesting reading Wesley Schaefer’s comments on his son, Jason. I certainly remember when Jason started racing and how he spun out over and over but I just was certain he would make he a very good race car driver and I was correct! Wes has every reason to be proud of Jason!

Now David T. Schaefer is asking should he drive a TC, MTC or large Kart for 2002? I suggested to David about 2 months ago he should consider a MTC! Since he has great experience in Mottville Stocks he knows how to drive a 4 cylinder and the MTC would cost considerably less than a MS, both in initial cost and in upkeep during the season. Personally, I can not see David in a kart! Weight wise the kids have a huge advantage on us old folks when it comes to karts! If we had about 20-30 karts per night we could group them by total weight but we don’t so we have to group them by speed and unless they break out like at least 4 in a group that can be hard to do some nights!

Speaking of karts I am seriously considering buying a kart and renting it out on race nights. Would be a 6 hp very rugged kart and of course, I would probably test drive it on Thursdays to make sure it was up to standards! I did buy a very good helmet this past week along with  racing gloves and a neck brace so I am all ready to roll should I get a kart!

But if I did not own a race track and was serious about getting back into racing I would definitely get either a TC or MTC or perhaps even both, a la Randy Morley or Terry Kline! The money works this way: the kart would cost about $1200 and while expense thereafter would not be too bad, the income would be totally zero. But I could get a TC or MTC for say $300 and then find out from Fred Collins where he gets these used tires for nothing or next to nothing! When I crashed the car beyond repair I could simply get a 2^nd one for about $300! Most nights I would probably get around $20 per car so it would pay for my pit pass! If I did not own a track and was not driving I would be at a track anyway and buying a pit pass so I really do not see the purchase of a pit pass as an extra expense.

Actually were I to get serious about racing and if I did not own a track the truth is I would get 2 TC and 2 MTC and have one each in reserve. I would then be in a position to race each division every night and be points champion in both divisions! If I crashed one of the cars I would go to the back-up car and then during the week get another back up car ready! Even with 4 cars at all times, racing 2 per night, I figure I would not have over $4000 tied up in racing and that would be for over 70 nights! When I owned a late model or even a street stock I often had $10,000 to $12,000 in expenses after pay-off! Plus remember that was 13 years ago, so it would be much worse now!

This past season we ran 75 points nights, our highest ever! My first year, 1991, we ran 38. After that it was 33, 46, 37, 52,52, 50,47, 56 and 70 so in 11 seasons we have ran 556 points nights plus 10 non-points races for 566 nights and I have been there for every single one of them! We currently have gone 124 nights in a row without a cancellation!

This past season in street stocks our high car count was 19 on November 11 and we averaged 10 ss per night which was up considerably from 2000! The high Mottville Stock count was 15 for our Wednesday night special on July 11 and we averaged 8 cars per night in that class, somewhat below what we had expected. 11 was the TC high car count on April 21 and we averaged 7 TC per night. For the first full season of this class it was not bad at all! MTC high count was 10 on September 30 and Oct 6 and we averaged 5.1 per night which for a  brand new class that was not even planned at the start of the season very good! Kart high count

was 13 on August 25 and we averaged 6.2 per night which was about as expected. July 8 we had 50 total cars in the pits which was our high for the season.

Crowd wise, counting pit passes, adult and  child admissions, our largest total crowd was Saturday, April 28 and 2^nd was May 28, Memorial Day.

Bottom line wise our best month was September followed by June, April, July, May, November, October, August and March. In 2000 November was our worse month! June was next to worse in 2000 so while the years were very close on bottom line how we got there was much different!

The lesson is that our long season, covering 9 months and some 75 nights really helps in the long run because when Mother Nature gives you a bad month she will usually come back with a good one eventually!