GREETINGS FROM BRAINERD, MINNESOTA AND THEN CANBY, MINNESOTA

I WOKE UP IN SUPERIOR, WISCONSIN THIS MORNING. THIS IS WHAT TRANSPIRED TODAY.

 

 

You can click on www.ranlayracing.com to see photos from my Memorial Day, six tracks Upper Midwest tour (May 25-29).  After you receive the Trackchaser Report for each track, I’ll have photos posted on the website for that track for you to see.  This will allow you to put pictures with the words.

 

 

 

PEOPLE/STRATEGY/TRAVEL NEWS

 

The Strategy

 

I’ve mentioned many times previously how important information is in trackchasing.  Information is power.  I am often incredulous as to how poorly racetracks communicate their activities to the public.  Let me give you a case in point.

 

I noticed there was going to be some afternoon road racing at the Brainerd International Raceway in Brainerd, Minnesota this weekend.  I got this information from the track’s website.  There were no starting times or any other information other than “SCCA” would be racing.  SCCA, in the world of road racing, stands for Sports Car Club of America.

 

The SCCA is the premier road racing organization.  They are very professional, always start and stay on time and usually bring plenty of cars to the track.

 

I emailed the track to get more information.  There was no response.  That’s not unusual.  I would estimate that less than 50% of my information requesting emails that I send to racetracks is answered.

 

My next step was to call them.  I called about two weeks before the scheduled event.  I reached a woman named Sandy.  Although she didn’t have much information, she tried to be helpful.  Brainerd is primarily a drag racing operation.  Road racing really takes a backseat when the facility’s main revenue generator is an oval or a drag strip.

 

Sandy agreed to find out more information about the scheduled road-racing event.  She called me back a few days later.  Sandy told me it really wasn’t the SCCA racing.  It was an independent group within the SCCA and not a sanctioned event.  She had no other details.  I told her I needed starting times at a minimum.  She agreed to call me back.  She never did.

 

A couple of days before the event, I called B.I.R.  Could I speak to Sandy?  No, Sandy wouldn’t be back for 10 days or so.  Great!  I was talking to a young woman who obviously didn’t have much enthusiasm for her job.  Every time I asked her a question, she asked me to hold and then came back on the phone with little or no real answers to my questions.  Finally, I asked if I could speak to the person she kept talking to while she put me on hold.  Her answer to that question was to put me on hold again!  She came back with, “You need to call back tomorrow and someone will be here to answer your questions.”

 

Without a starting time, I would be flying in the dark.  Carol and I attended two road course events last weekend.  I figured they would both race on both Saturday and Sunday.  It turned out both just practiced on Saturday and had countable racing on Sunday.  I couldn’t drive all the way to Brainerd and find out they weren’t racing on Saturday at all.

 

I called back the next day.  I talked with “Mark.”  He acted as if he was in charge.  Actually, he acted as if he had a hard time handling the power of his position.  Yes, he told me a “Private group” was renting the track.  No, he could not tell me who was renting the track.

 

Could he give me a phone number or website?  No, he couldn’t.  Could he leave my phone number with the racing organization in the hopes they would call me back.  No, he couldn’t.  He was simply too busy to make a phone call he told me.  I thanked him for his time.

 

Mark and the young woman I spoke too certainly shook my faith in Minnesotans.  You know that I feel the personality triangle of Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota have the nicest people in all of America.  I’m going with the belief that Mark was simply visiting from the East coast, which explained his surliest. 

 

I decided to drive out to the track and go with potluck.  I picked a 1 p.m. arrival time.  I was guessing they might practice on Saturday morning.  These types of road racing events usually go to lunch from noon to 1 p.m.  They are very predictable.  I showed up at 1 p.m. to find the very first race of three for the day was starting at 1:20 p.m.  Perfect!

 

The racing organization was the National Auto Sport Association (NASA).  As far I know they have absolutely nothing to do with the SCCA.  Thanks for nothing Brainerd. 

 

My evening track was the Canby Speedway.  They were scheduled to start racing at 7 p.m.  Due to my own negligence, I got lost and didn’t get there until 7:30 p.m.  Not a problem!  They had over watered the track on a sunny 92-degree day.  They would not turn their first lap of racing until 8:32 p.m.

 

It’s difficult to employ effective trackchasing strategy when I’m dealing with such poorly prepared organizations.  Of course, their systems give them exactly the results their systems are designed to product.  Actually, I guess that a major part of the trackchasing strategy element is overcoming the unpredictability of the racetrack’s organization.

 

 

The trip

 

I was just cruising around in the middle of Minnesota’s back roads, when my inattention to detail had me making a wrong turn.  This mistake cost me about 90 minutes.  Overall, I didn’t really mind.  It was a nice day and the scenery was beautiful. I saw buffalo grazing at one farm and crossed the famous Mississippi River, which wasn’t that wide where I crossed it.

 

I also saw several gas stations selling Ethanol.  With corn being such a large crop here in the Midwest, it’s not surprising that Ethanol is so popular.  Gas prices are lower in this part of the country.  I paid an average price of about $2.70 per gallon.  California is currently at about $3.30 per gallon.  Ethanol sells for about $2.20 per gallon but can only be used in specially outfitted vehicles.

 

On my way from Brainerd to Canby I noticed a few stock cars on trailers sitting in a very wooded area.  I immediately stood up straight in the seat and did a double take.  Could this be some small group of renegade racers getting ready to hold a race in the woods ala the Empty Jug? 

 

Upon further investigation, it was simply cars arriving early to the North Central Speedway in Brainerd for their Saturday night racing action.  I had been to North Central a few years ago.  I can still remember the announcer trying to guess my occupation after he learned I had the time to go everywhere with my trackchasing hobby.  What did he guess?  Teacher.

 

 

The People

 

My experience with the people who represented the Brainerd International Raceway shook my faith in Minnesota people.  However, I’m hoping it was just an aberration, which I suspect it was.

 

 

 

RACE TRACK STATS:

 

BRAINERD INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY, BRAINERD, MINNESOTA - TRACK #1,043 – 5/27/06

 

This was my 30^th track to see in the Gopher state.

 

CANBY SPEEDWAY, CANBY, MINNESOTA - TRACK #1,044 – 5/27/06

 

This was my 31st track to see in the Gopher state.  This moves me up from 7^th place to 6^th in Minnesota.  Jack Erdmann leads Ed Esser 62-49 for the state lead.

 

 

 

RACE TRACK NEWS:

 

BRAINERD INTERNATIONAL RACEWAY

 

According to a flyer I found at the track, today’s N.A.S.A. racing event was the “Donnybrook Road Racing Revival.”  That sounds pretty formal compared to the description I got from the track that “This is just an independent group of SCCA racers renting the track for the day.”

 

I arrived at 1 p.m. and was more than pleasantly surprised to see the first scheduled race of the day was for vintage cars at 1:20 p.m.  I’ve really grown to enjoy vintage racing although I must admit my knowledge of these types of car’s history is not very good.

 

There was no charge to get into the track.  All I had to do was sign a liability waiver and put a wristband on.  It looks to me like the track caters to the drag racing crowd mainly.  Road racing at this point appears to be an afterthought. 

 

Here’s what the track’s website had to say about the road course:

 

“The road course is 3.1 miles long, has ten turns, and is quite wide around its entire length -- the main straight is 60 feet wide. There is essentially no elevation change. Brainerd is a very high-speed course; Vehicles will reach speeds near 160 MPH and take the slowest corners around 80 MPH. There are wide runoff areas at most of the corners. “

 

Overall, I didn’t find this track very entertaining.  The best way to explore the course itself is in your car.  If you try to walk it, bring a lunch.  There is a huge, I mean huge, campground in the middle of the track.  The paddock area (pit area for you oval fans) is actually located on the outside of the track. 

 

There is no announcing which is normal for this type of event.  The best viewing spot is seen by ascending 4-5 floors of steps to the roof top of the B.I.R. press box/scoring tower. 

 

I was just happy to see a countable racing event, since they don’t seem to run many on their road course and the track’s management is somewhat clueless as well.  I’m knocking off the traditional road courses in the U.S. at a rapid rate.  That means just one thing.  I’ll have to start bringing my golf clubs along to fill up the daytime hours that will be available in my future trackchasing schedules.

 

 

 

CANBY SPEEDWAY

 

I had driven through the small town of Canby last year on the way to a race in Minnesota.  The Canby Speedway just returned to active racing in the last year or two.  I’m glad they did, as the track’s location was a perfect segway from the Brainerd road course to tomorrow’s outing in Iowa.

 

Due to my own inattention, I took a wrong turn that put me 60-90 minutes behind schedule.  I arrived 30 minutes after the scheduled start time to see the entire grandstand crowd standing.  Could there be something really exciting on the track that motivated everyone to rise to his or her feet?  No, they were standing for the National Anthem.  That meant they were behind schedule.

 

Why would they be behind schedule?  Maybe, because the program is run by short track auto racing promoters?  Yes, that’s it.  They had put too much water on the track.  Even though the high temperature today was 90+ degrees and the sun shown brightly on a very breezy day, they had dumped too much water on the banked quarter mile dirt oval.  They would not get this problem corrected until 8:32 p.m.

 

Actually, this could be a very racy track.  A quarter mile dirt track with the right kind of racing is my favorite.  The car counts were low.  Here’s what they looked like, Pure stocks (5), Street stocks (8), Midwest modifieds (6), Mod fours (6), Super stocks (7) and Wissota modifieds (15).  All of the classes ran just one heat except for the Wissota mods.

 

When they finally did start an hour and one-half late, the track was still very muddy.  The lap time for the pure stocks in the first heat was about 34 seconds.  That’s nearly twice as long as if the track were in normal racing condition. 

 

The most disappointing thing about the entire affair, I hope, from the promoter’s point of view was this was “Fan appreciation night.”  I don’t think this was a very good way to show appreciation toward the fans.  For the most part the nearly packed grandstand of 300-400 people didn’t seem to mind.

 

I was listening to the track’s official radio communication over my race scanner.  Here are a couple of quotes I heard, “We got people yelling at us in the grandstand.”  This was in response to their poor track prep.  “The flagman never showed up.”  Pretty self-explanatory.

 

At one point a wrecker towing a disabled racecar from the track got stuck trying to drive up a small grade to get the car back to the pit area that was located outside the oval.  They did cut the heat race distances from eight laps to six to keep the program moving.

 

A highlight if you can call it that was the intermission entertainment.  They put a series of orange cones on the front stretch creating a miniature temporary oval.  Could I be in for a new track?  Actually, a track of this nature is countable.  Unfortunately, they did not race a trackchaser countable class of racecar on this new track.

 

They raced go-karts which had a bar stool attached for the driver to sit on.  They had 10 of these vehicles and raced two heats and a feature.  The crowd liked it and so did I.

 

When the fifth of six features took to the track, it was time for me to bid the Canby Speedway farewell.  I think I just caught them on a bad night.  I doubt I’ll be back again to give them a chance for redemption. 

 

 

 

WEATHER CONDITIONS

 

There was rain off and on in the Midwest.  Several times during my trip, I would see large puddles of rainwater sitting beside the highways.  I am trained to bypass rainy weather.  I must have been successful, as a raindrop never touched my windshield during my entire six-day trip.  Many bugs did though!

 

 

 

RENTAL CAR UPDATE:

 

The National Rental Car Company Racing Chevy Impala is a good trackchasing car.  There can’t be that much that goes wrong with them when I pick them up with less than 5,000 miles on the odometer.

 

 

 

LIFETIME TRACKCHASER STANDINGS UPDATE:

 

These worldwide trackchasers are within 100 tracks (plus or minus) of my current trackchaser total.

 

1.  Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California – 1,044

2.  Rick Schneider – Bay Shore, New York - 1,039 (-5)

3.  Allan Brown, Comstock Park, Michigan – 1,021 (-23)

4.  Guy Smith, Effort, Pennsylvania – 1,016 (-28)

5.  Andy Sivi, Clairton, Pennsylvania – 1,007 (-37)

6.  Gordon Killian, Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania – 999 (-45)

 

 

 

Other notables

 

These worldwide trackchasers are within 10 tracks (plus or minus) of Carol’s current trackchaser total.

 

37.  Mike Knappenberger, Reading, Pennsylvania - 257 (+9)

38.  Spike Rixon, Watford, England - 252 (+4)

39.  Carol Lewis, San Clemente, California - 248

39.  Virginia Schuler, Allentown, Pennsylvania - 248 (+/- 0)

41.  Steve Kinser, Bloomington, Indiana – 246 (-2)

 

 

 

 

2006 TRACKCHASER STANDINGS

 

1.  Randy Lewis, San Clemente, California - 53

2.  Ed Esser, Madison, Wisconsin – 32

3.  Roland Vanden Eynde, Vilvoorde, Belgium – 28

4.  Mike Knappenberger, Reading, Pennsylvania - 23

5.  Roger Ferrell, Majenica, Indiana – 18

5.  Carol Lewis, San Clemente, California – 18

7.  Paul Weisel, Orefield, Pennsylvania – 17

8.  Linda Thomas, Watford, England - 13

8.  Gordon Killian, Sinking Springs, Pennsylvania – 13

10.  Guy Smith, Effort, Pennsylvania - 11

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading about my trackchasing,

Randy Lewis

The World’s #1 Ranked Trackchaser

 

Eat all your sandwiches.  You’ll need them for the pursuit.

 

 

 

 

 

CUMULATIVE TRAVEL DISTANCES:

 

AIRPLANE

 

Santa Ana, CA – Denver, CO – 844 miles

Denver, CO – Omaha, NE - 470 miles

 

RENTAL CAR

 

Omaha Airport – trip begins

Jefferson, South Dakota – 115 miles

Superior, Wisconsin – 620 miles

Brainerd, Minnesota – 758 miles

Canby, Minnesota – 1,030 miles

 

 

 

 

 

 

TRACK ADMSSION PRICES:

 

Park Jefferson Speedway – $18

Superior Speedway - $20

Brainerd International Raceway – Free

Canby Speedway - $10

 

 

 

 

 

Past trackchasing stories are available at:

www.ranlayracing.com

 

Official trackchaser standings can be viewed at:

www.trackchaser.com  

 

Some of my standings data comes from trackchaser.com

 

 

 

 

 

UPCOMING TRACKCHASING PLANS

 

I’ve now seen tracks in South Dakota, Wisconsin and Minnesota on this trip.  I hope to travel to Iowa and Kansas on the final two days of this trip.

 

 

 

 

 

RACETRACKS VISITED IN 2006 (** not the first time to visit this track)

 

992.  Watermelon Capital Speedway, Cordele, Georgia - January 14

 

993.  Cross Roads Motorplex (asphalt oval), Jasper, Florida - January 15

 

994.  Norfolk Scope Arena, Norfolk, Virginia - January 20

 

995.  Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego, California - January 21

 

996.  Oregon State Fair & Expo Center, Forster Livestock Arena, Salem, Oregon - January 28

 

997.  Morosso Motorsports Park, Jupiter, Florida – February 4

 

998.  Thunderbowl Speedway of Ocala, Ocala, Florida - February 4

 

999.  Cross Roads Motorplex (dirt oval), Jasper, Florida - February 5

 

1,000.  Auburndale Kartway, Auburndale, Florida - February 10

 

1,001.  Ocala Speedway (asphalt oval), Ocala, Florida - February 12

 

1,002. Speedworld Speedway, Surprise, Arizona - February 19

 

1,003. Lowe’s Motor Speedway (1/5 mile asphalt oval), Concord, North Carolina - February 25

 

1,004. Concord Raceway, Concord, North Carolina - February 25

 

1,005. Antioch Speedway, Antioch, North Carolina - February 25

 

1,006. Green Valley Speedway, Gadsden, Alabama - February 26

 

1,007. East Bay Raceway (inner oval), Gibsonton, Florida – March 17

 

1,008. Volusia Speedway Park West (1/6M oval), Barberville, Florida – March 18

 

1,009. Speedway Park, Fruitland Park, Florida – March 18

 

1,010. Sand Mountain Speedway (road course), Fort Meade, Florida – March 19

 

1,011. Anderson Motor Speedway, Anderson, South Carolina – March 31

 

1,012. Westminster Speedway, Westminster, South Carolina – March 31

 

1,013. East Lincoln Motor Speedway, Stanley, North Carolina – April 1

 

1,014. Margarettsville Speedway, Margarettsville, North Carolina – April 2

 

1,015. Sunny South Raceway, Grand Bay, Alabama – April 7

 

1,016. Barber Motorsports Park, Leeds, Alabama – April 8

 

1,017. Coldwater Raceway, Coldwater, Alabama – April 8

 

1,018. Talladega Short Track, Talladega, Alabama – April 8

 

1,019. Ballymena Raceway, Ballymena, Northern Ireland - April 14

 

1,020. Oulton Park, Little Budworth, England - April 15

 

1,021. Somerset Rebels Banger Raceway, Rooks Bridge, England - April 16

 

1,022. Mendips Raceway, Shipham, England - April 16

 

1,023. Oval Raceway, Angmering, England - April 17

 

1,024. Arlington Stadium, Eastbourne, England - April 17

 

1,025. Southside Speedway, Midlothian, Virginia - April 28

 

1,026. Motor Mile Speedway, Radford, Virginia - April 29

 

1,027. Wythe Speedway, Wytheville, Virginia - April 29

 

1,028. Summit Point Raceway, Summit Point Circuit, Summit Point, West Virginia - April 30

 

1,029. Old Dominion Speedway – inner inner oval, Manassas, Virginia - April 30

 

1,030. Shenandoah Speedway, Shenandoah, Virginia – May 4

 

1,031. Bridgeport Speedway (inner oval – front), Bridgeport, New Jersey - May 5

 

1,032. Empty Jug, Hawley, Pennsylvania - May 6

 

1,033. Oakland Valley Race Park, Cuddebackville, New York - May 6

 

1,034. Thunder Mountain Speedway, Center Isle, New York - May 6

 

1,035. Motocross 338, Southwick, Massachusetts - May 7

 

1,036. Glen Ridge Motorsports Park, Fultonville, New York - May 7

 

1,037. Calumet County Speedway, Chilton, Wisconsin - May 19

 

1,038. Grant County Speedway, Lancaster, Wisconsin - May 20

 

1,039. Blackhawk Farms Raceway, Rockton, Illinois - May 21

 

1,040. The Milwaukee Mile (Road course), West Allis, Wisconsin - May 21

 

** Angell Park Speedway, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin – May 21 (new track Carol only)

 

1,041. Park Jefferson Speedway, Jefferson, South Dakota - May 25

 

1,042. Superior Speedway, Superior, Wisconsin - May 26

 

1,043. Brainerd International Raceway, Brainerd, Minnesota - May 27

 

1,044. Canby Speedway, Canby, Minnesota - May 27