New Inductee to Elko Speedway H.O.F

By Jason D Searcy

Former racer and track owner Bill Oas will be inducted into the Elko Speedway Hall of Fame on July 20th, 2013.

Bill started racing at Elko Speedway in 1968 in the Sportsmen division, he then raced Late Models from 1970-1976.  A big victory came on Aug 15 1972 when he won a 100 lap event at Elko Speedway, Dick Trickle finished 7th in that race.  He also held the track record for many years with a time of 15.29 seconds, a record later broken by Mark Martin.

ARCA vs World of Outlaws at Elko Speedway

By Jason D Searcy

Two major, but very different, racing series came to our neck of the woods recently.  Seeing those cars on the same track lead me to a question that race fans have wondered about for many years.

How would the speed of the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars compare with the ARCA cars at the same facility?  That unique hypothetical question was answered this Spring at Elko Speedway.

The 900 horsepower and 1400 lb WoO Sprint Cars raced a rain shortened 34 lap event on May 10th.  Fast time in qualifying was set by Sam Hafertepe at 12.507, thats 107.940 mph.  The 3/8 th mile track at Elko Speedway was incredibly smooth and fast with the top groove coming in perfectly by the end of the feature event, the fastest lap time during the race was 13.347 set by Cody Darrah in the Kasey Kahne car.

The heavy 3400 lb and 800 horsepower stock cars in the ARCA series raced a 250 lap event at Elko on June 1st.  Legendary driver Ken Schrader set fast time in qualifying with a 14.449 or 93.432, that is 2 seconds per lap or 15 mph slower than the winged rockets.

Kimmel wins ARCA at Elko Speedway

"This is racing the way it should be," said Frank Kimmel after winning the Akona 250 at Elko Speedway.  "This is such a cool place to race, a lot of fun beating and banging but not all the crashes and wrecks."

Here is the link to the Victory lane video http://arcaracing.com/videos.php?video_id=1965052

Kimmel from Clarksville (IN) finished just 1.358 seconds ahead of Tom Hessert from Cherry Hill (NJ) who started fifth row outside and moved his way to the front of the pack.  "The car was good all night," said Hessert "I thought we were a little better than him at the end but, we just ran out of time."

Self Wins Second Straight at BIR

For the second year in a row, Michael Self found himself in the lead in the late stages of the race and once again he came out on top in the NAPA Know-How 125 for the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West at Brainerd International Raceway.  Andrew Ranger established the Track Record in Qualifying to with a lap of 96.330 MPH to claim the Coors Light Pole Award. 

Brainerd International Raceway

Preview:  NASCAR K&N Pro Series West

The  NAPA Know-How 125 is coming up on Saturday May 25^th at Brainerd International Raceway.  The 50 lap race (125 miles) will be run on BIR’s 13 turn Competition Road Course.  Practice is slated from 9:45 to 11 AM, with Qualifying scheduled for 1:45 and the Race set to start at 4:40 PM.

Speed Talk’s Dean Reller will be there with a LIVE update during this week’s show and will be providing updates throughout the day on the web, facebook and Twitter.  Here’s a list of drivers to watch.

Returning Drivers

#24 Michael Self (Golden Gate Meat/Bay Bio Diesel/RCR Chevrolet)

            The Park City, UT driver scored his first career win in last year’s inaugural race at Brainerd.  Self would go on to record 2 more wins in 2012.  Self started racing in karts on road courses, so turning left and right is natural for this Richard Childress developmental driver.

#26 Greg Pursley (GPM/Star Nursery/Real Water Ford)

Spring Dirt Weekend at Elko Speedway

By Jason D. Searcy

The weather shortened the amount of spring dirt racing to just one weekend, but it was an action packed two day event at Elko Speedway.  A near capacity crowd was thrilled by the awesome speed of the World of Outlaws sprint cars on Friday night.

32 Sprint cars raced and Sam Hafertepe set a fast time in qualifying at 12.507.  #83 Tim Kaeding worked his way from his 13th starting position to win the $10,000  main event, passing Kerry Madsen right up by the wall for the victory.  "Live or die on the high side, that is my motto," said Kaeding.  The race was shortened because of a brief rain shower that forced officials to end the race at lap 34 of a scheduled 40.  Local Minnesota driver #7 Craig Dollansky finished 3rd after leading many laps.

Raceway Park Season Opener 2013

Sunday May 5th marked the "beginning of the end" of the final season racing at 1 Checkered Flag Blvd in Shakopee MN.

Recovery Technology Solutions has proposed a 20 Million dollar asphalt recycling to be built on the 10 acre site that is the 50+ year home of Raceway Park. 

Raceway Park owner John Hellendrung has vowed to keep the 2013 race season intact as scheduled.  www.goracewaypark.com

#61 Mark Bronstad won the first Figure-8 feature.  The second feature honors went to #33 Rick Martin

Dirt or Asphalt? Elko Speedway has both.

 By Jason D Searcy

Recently Elko Speedway named me, along with Pete Hackett, as the announcers for this upcoming season.  This excites me on many levels including the fact that Elko is one of the very few tracks in America that deliver both asphalt and dirt races at the same exact location, and has since 2010.  Bristol Motor Speedway experimented with it about a decade ago with mixed success and Berlin (MI) Raceway ran a dirt race last October and will try again this autumn.

I have come to learn that a lot goes into switching the race surface back and forth.  Here is a thumb nail sketch of this labor intensive process:

Hutchinson Race Car show 2013

18 race cars and lots of race fans attended the Levi Schwanz memorial Race Car show on Saturday March 23rd at the Hutchinson (MN) Mall.

Levi (photo above) was a big race fan and the son of organizer Derik Schwanz.  He died as a child with heart problems at the age of six back in 2007, the car show is in memory of him. 

Here are some photo's of cars on display: