POSTED FEBRUARY 11, 2001

Wow! What an Awards Banquet it was! Our 10th annual Mottville Speedway Awards Banquet Saturday night was certainly our biggest and best ever! More Excitement than I have ever seen in February before! Most of the drivers on hand indicated they would be racing in the February Follies Feb.25th and opening night March 3rd!

The food was absolutely the very best and all you could eat of it! 22 Awards Plaques were presented and two special awards, an official Mottville Speedway track jacket and hat, were presented to David T. Schaefer and Vic Krontz. David for his work as our webmaster and Vic for his mowing and help out at the track! The 3 Season Points Champions, Melissa Worthington, David T. Schaefer, and Randy Morley all received very nice Good Year jackets! The biggest cheers of the night were for the points money checks! The 3 Champions each received $500! This is the most we have ever paid for these classes and compare to $200 paid by another close by track for their 4 cylinder Champion! 2nd place Wesley Schaefer received a check for $300! These were the only 4 drivers who raced at least 80% of the nights in 2000 although we hope to have more in 2001!! 

All our Tack Officials were on hand for the celebration and we registered 9 new cars for the upcoming season! Many people took advantage of the one and only photo sale and went home with a big bunch of pictures! We also sold some of the brand new Mottville Speedway sweat shirts, hats and T-shirts! These will be available at the track concession stand each race night!

Actually just prior to the start of things Saturday night I had been feeling the effects of a virus bug but the banquet was such a high I forgot all about it!

February Follies is now less than 2 weeks away and opening night less than 3 weeks! At this point it certainly appears we are in for an even better season than last year and last year was our best of the last 10! Registration for this date are at an all time high!

Our 2001 season schedule is now complete and has been mailed to everyone on the mailing list and is posted on this web site. We reached an agreement at the 11th hour with the Vintage Modifieds and we are most most pleased to have them back 11 times in 2001! No track over the last 10 seasons has run the Vintage Modifieds more than Mottville Speedway and they put on a good show! They tell me they have added some new cars and figure on about an average of 20 cars per date in 2001! Sure beats the old days when they often had 3-4 cars! I had hoped to get them for about 15-16 dates but they only want to race once per week-end so I had to settle for 11 dates!

We now have our first Rookie registered for 2001! Jason Schaefer, son of the 2000 Rookie of the Year, Wes, has now registered the Mottville Stock 61 which I understand is the former Grandpa Bill Jones number 34! Speaking of Grandpa Bill Jones, I saw him this week and he has retired from racing as a driver but told me he certainly plans on spectating at Mottville a great deal in 2001!

Tom Dowling called me after the banquet Saturday night and informed me that Joe Cool will drive the #3 Ford Ranchero Thunder Car in 2001 that Tom drove last season! Tom will have a new Thunder Car and he said Dave Wilber will be in a Thunder Car as will Mike Jones! This would really be a big class of cars in 2001and most exciting one! We are going to keep these cars very very stocky and low cost! Jenkins NAPA Auto Parts in Nappanee, Goshen, Milford, Wakarusa and Bremen have agreed to sponsor a dash trophy each and every night during the 2001 season at Mottville! Rick Jenkins is the head man of this operation and we certainly appreciate his support! Gold Crown Lanes and Torch Lounge of Nappanee, Paul and Deb Teal, are again sponsoring a "B" feature trophy each race night as well! Good Year will again provide feature winner stickers for the car of each feature winner throughout the entire 2001 season again! We still have openings for sponsors for trophy nights and for additional dash and feature winners each night! If you are interested let me know and we can work something out I am sure!

Right now I am expecting a pretty good field of cars for February Follies and opening night and they are only mere days away and I am really getting excited!!

See Everyone Then !!!