BHG Blogs

RC: (Laughs) I kind of take the heat for that most the time. We never want to cancel a program. If we get a lot of rain and the ground is wet already it takes a long time for things to dry up. There were five of us making the decision on the Outlaw show. We had an available date the following weekend and the forecast was not good so we decided to postpone until the 3rd.

DD: People have said that if Knoxville doesn’t feel they can draw the crowd needed to break even, they’ll cancel. What do you say about that?

RC: No, this is racing. We don’t have to make much money. We like to break even, but we plan to take those hits. We want to race. If we feel we can get the track ready we’ll race. One thing I think you will see more of this year that we haven’t seen in the past is that we are really trying to be considerate of the teams. The April date for the Outlaws for instance, we had teams coming from Indianapolis for that race. At $4 a gallon for diesel, that would cost a team $1,500. That’s a lot of money for a rainout. So you may see some cooperation between the sanctioning bodies, teams and the tracks this year when it comes to weather.

DD: You have stepped up your marketing campaign this year. Do you think it will work?

RC: I really think it will. We need to really bring in new fans and the value of entertainment cannot be beat.

DD: Do you think the number of fans that come week after week has declined?

RC: Yes, we have lost a great deal of our base. Sad to say, many of those people that used to come every week have passed away. We really need to replace those people and get younger people in the seats.

DD: Anything else you would like to say?

RC: I just want to thank everyone who has supported us over the years and I hope to meet many new faces this year.

With that our conversation ended. Through all of his optimism I couldn’t help but sense some concern with our economy and some sadness when talking about friends that have come and gone.

We never talked about retirement, although we know he can’t have too many years left. I would hate to be his replacement because those are some big shoes to fill and “heavy lays his crown.”

This Saturday, take a trip to Knoxville for the greatest show on dirt. As you walk under the Knoxville Raceway sign at the main entrance to the fairgrounds, look to the left and I’ll bet you’ll see Cappy sitting there on his golf cart watching fans come in, just like he has done every Saturday for the past 31 years.

5/1/08 Nuts and Bolts: Newton track ‘perfect fit’ for CTS

By DAN DAVIS/NDN Sports Columnist

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — I have to admit, I have never paid much attention to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

I have watched it on occasion when they raced at Daytona or Texas and the most memorable incident that comes to my mind was Geoffrey Bodine’s horrific crash at Daytona in 1999.

This past weekend I got to see the Craftsman Truck Series up close and personal when they raced the O’Reilly Auto Parts 250 at Kansas Speedway. The race produced what I would call a Saturday night brawl, similar to what you used to see on ESPN’s old USAC Thursday Night Thunder.

Unlike their big brother, Sprint Cup, these guys race hard the entire race. They only have 167 laps to get it done and they give new meaning to rubbin’ is racin’.

The race saw Ron Hornaday Jr. become the only repeat winner at Kansas since the inception of this race, but he had to fend off teammate Jack Sprague and Colin Braun through a series of close calls and a plethora of yellow flags.

While walking through the garage area on Saturday afternoon I was reminded of the old days when Cale Yarborough, Buddy Baker and Harry Gant were common names heard over the track P.A. There was a professional but laid-back atmosphere in the pits, and the drivers were very accessible to the fans.

One driver I caught up with was Colin Braun. If his name sounds familiar to Jasper County race fans, it is because he finished fourth last year in the Rolex Daytona Prototype race at Iowa Speedway.

Braun also has spent days practicing in Newton in both ARCA cars and, most recently, last week testing a COT for Roush Fenway Racing.

In the ARCA car last year, when testing a qualifying set up his lap times would have put him on the pole for the 2007 Prairie Meadows 250.

Braun was the youngest driver to ever win a major motorsports race when he won the Brumos 250 at Daytona and the youngest ever to place on the podium at Le Mans.

When asked about the Iowa Speedway Braun responded, “Iowa is a first-class facility and a very fun place to run. The compound banking makes it easy to run fast all over the track.”

Braun stated that the road course “was kind of tight for the Daytona cars but was challenging and fun.

“We were running second when we got spun out, but we were able to make it back up to fourth.”

Newton residents who continue to think that the Iowa Speedway is a “white elephant” may be surprised to know that our track is gaining quite a reputation throughout the Sprint Cup garage.

When asked why so many Sprint Cup teams come to Newton to test Braun replied, “Well, it isn’t a NASCAR track right now so we are able to test our cars on it. It is also a new track that has a smooth racing surface and it is a lot like Richmond, but still runs like a 1.5-mile track. The facilities like the garage area are first-class. I would love to get the chance to race there.”

I asked Braun what he thought the chances were of seeing a CTS race at Iowa.

“It would be a perfect fit for the Craftsman Truck Series,” he said. “The size of the track and the ability to run side-by-side along with its location would make it a fantastic race. I hope they make it happen soon.”

That makes two of us.

Picture this: a sultry July night, bugs twirling around Musco Lights, the sound of thunder as 36 drivers hammer down around Iowa Speedway.

The lights reflecting the reds, blues and yellows of their half-ton trucks, Ron Hornaday Jr. and Todd Bodine hug the bottom while Dennis Setzer rides the rim up high and Colin Braun pushes Jack Sprague as they split the middle.

Forty thousand fans come to their feet as they come to the checkered flag... Sorry, I was just trying to capture the spirit of the thing!

Well, another Nationals is in the books. I was going to make this editorial about how great this Speedweek was and how great it was seeing all of our friends from Oklahoma, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska,etc,etc. Well what happened during the B-main Saturday night made me change my mind. Now I’m not going to give you my opinion about what happened or what should have happened. What I saw Saturday night was not unusual. People spin each other out, bang on each others cars during yellows and even fight occasionally. What was unusual was the reaction of the fans. Knoxville fans have always been hard on their former champions and have a keen eye for B.S. I have never seen a crowd show so much hatred towards a driver. Their reaction could be compared to David Duke showing up at an NAACP convention. Not since Bobby Davis, Jr. flipped Van May at Williams Grove in 1983 has a crowd come that close to the edge of chaos and anarchy. So the past couple of days I’ve thought about what might have made this sprintcar super star fall the way he has. So these are the reasons I have come up with by talking to different people about their feelings toward Danny Lasoski. Get mad at me if you want but this is the reason people turned on Lasoski that night.

It started in 1985 Danny Lasoski came to Knoxville driving the Derry #22 sprinter. Danny won 3 trophy dashes that year and started to become a fan favorite. The next year Danny Drove for Max Rodgers and won his first track champion. Danny and his father George became popular figures at the campgrounds. Danny was very friendly to his fans, especially the kids. He would play golf with some of the other campers and stay up with them after the races rehashing the night’s events. Danny was very well liked. He won his next championship with Ron Kohls in1989.

In 1990 Danny drove Guy Forbrook’s car formerly owned by Kohls. Danny became very successful with this team but he left the next year to drive for Casey Luna with the Outlaws. In 1992 he returned to the Forbrook #5 and put on a clinic everywhere he raced. It was around this time Danny started to lose touch with his friends. He no longer camped at the North campground or played golf with some of his old friends. Well maybe he was too busy but no reason was ever given.

Danny began to really rack up the wins and people wanted him and Guy to step up to the Outlaws and quit beating up on the smaller teams. Guy didn’t want the expense of traveling when he was making a good living racing in the Midwest. Who could blame him? Danny became less friendly to his fans at this time and good luck getting your kid to sit in his car after the races. In 1994 Danny drove for Knoxville racing legend Gil Sonner. Danny became admired again by fans when he was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He raced (if my memory serves me correctly) seven nights in a row and won six of the seven before going into surgery. He returned to Knoxville two weeks later and with a bag of frozen peas in place won the feature. Wow!

Danny returned with Forbook in ’96 and won another championship. Danny started to develop a habit of leaving the pit area every time they had a bad night leaving his fans high and dry. When Danny won the Knoxville Nationals in 1998 it was probably the second most popular win next to Bobby Allen. When Danny started to drive for Tony Stewart he became less and less accessible to his fans. Danny would leave the pit area every time something ended their night early. Lasoski probably was the least liked champion the Outlaws have ever had. Tony Stewart was more accessible than Danny. Danny also become very angry if things weren’t going right with the car. This ultimately cost him the seat in sprintcar racing’s dream team.

The past four years I believe Danny thought he was like Tony and Kasey and you could get your autographs at an autograph session. Sure if you ask Tony or Kasey for an autograph at Oskaloosa during the Front Row challenge they will refuse. They will say hi and shake your hand but no signatures. Stewart and Kahne are house hold names. If Kasey Kahne walks into Hy-Vee or your local Kroger people will recognize them. If they stop to sign an autograph they will be there for two hours. If Lasoski walked into Dahl’s in Des Moines, IA no one would know who he is. Now don’t get mad at me, Danny has his group of fans that he will talk to and no one would recognize Shane Stewart if he walked into Dahl’s. I also think Danny Lasoski is one of the greatest sprint car drivers of all time. Who could argue with his stats? So why all the hatred towards him?

Saturday night of the 2006 Knoxville Nationals was the lowest point in a great career and probably Danny Lasoski’s life. The track he loves the most turned against him with extreme prejudice. I wonder if they would have done that if it was Steve Kinser or Doug Wolfgang? Well all sprint car drivers take a lesson from Danny Lasoski so this won’t happen to you.

Let’s compare sprint car drivers to fire fighters. Being a fire fighter since pre-9/11 I know how it feels to be treated as a hero. After 9/11 people would bring us all kinds of food, wave at us as we drove by and would come up to us and thank us at the grocery store. Firefighters are paid by tax payers’ money. Race car drivers are paid by the fans. I know after a night at the races crews want to get their things cleaned up and loaded so they can go drink a beer or get on down the road. When we get done fighting a fire and we’re cleaning up and reloading the hose, we still let the neighborhood kids crawl through the trucks and talk to us. WE OWE IT TO THEM! THE PUBLIC PAYS OUR SALARY! When we finally leave the scene we can’t go drink beer, we have to finish our 24 hr shift. Some drivers will stay until the last fan leaves, most don’t particularly the traveling teams. So those who don’t, suck it up! You owe it to that last fan. You want the sport to grow? T.V. isn’t the answer, the fans are. Public relations is the name of the game now. The fans love accessible drivers. In return happy fans= happy sponsors. Doug Wolfgang still can sell out of t-shirts, why? Doug was a people person. He would stay for hours after the races signing autographs. So will Steve Kinser and even Sammy Swindell. We’ll have twenty elementary students sit in and crawl through our $750,000 ladder truck so what does it hurt to let kids sit in your $75,000 sprint car? The drivers that let kids sit in their cars have fans for life.

Danny Lasoski had the drive of his life that night but his antics on the track cumulated with every time he pulled out of Eldora, Eagle or Knoxville early ruined it. Drivers remember that. You are not here to serve yourselves. You are here to serve your boss, the fans. Without them you would not get to race for a living. So remember the words of Doug Wolfgang, “One day you’re a hero, the next you’re a zero.” Until next time!

Heaven on Earth by Dan Davis

        Well the time has come when we head to the Sprintcar holy ground for ten days of racing by the best in the business. It is exciting to see that what was the best in 410 sprintcar racing coming to Iowa for four days has now been built up to Southern Iowa Speed weeks. Nowhere in the world does the best in 360 sprints, 410 non wing sprints and 410 winged sprints get together for ten days of mudslinging, slide job pulling, wheel standing, side by each racing. Even though Pennsylvania can boast the most sprint car teams and tracks and Indiana holds the record for non wing sprints, Knoxville is the true Mecca of sprintcar racing. Thursday August 3rd you can drive into Knoxville and see campgrounds and yards packed with multitudes of campers, Fans walking along highway 14 wearing racing shirts from all over. T-shirt and souvenir trailers line the streets and parking lots outside of the Marion County Fairgrounds as well as behind the grandstands. The trade show that goes on in the barns is always a stop along the way to turn three where sprint car teams work diligently preparing their cars for battle. Yeah things have changed especially over the last twenty years. This year marks my Twenty-third year at the Nationals and I have witnessed many changes. Most good, some bad. Let's take a walk back in time at Nationals past. Not the races so much, but the event as a whole.

      The walk along Highway 14 was much different as there was no Hy-Vee or Caseys, no Hall of Fame and no four lane highway. Bingley’s Sale Barn stood where O’Reily’s and the church now stands. Every morning the week of the Nationals you could go to Bingley’s for pancakes, eggs, bacon and coffee all for $2.00 bucks. All the t-shirt and souvenir trailers (all ten of them) were on Ralph Street behind the grandstand. Ralph Street has changed the most over the years as camping was allowed on the fairgrounds. Yeah, what a challenge that was. You would have to park your butt outside of the skate pit the Friday before the Nationals so you could be the first in line for camping spots that went on sale on Saturday. Card games and drinking contests would entertain the fans as they waited overnight. Gone are the days when you could camp next to drivers and crews. I remember in 1986 we would pitch a tent outside turn 2 at 4 am and wake up at seven because we couldn't get a spot and didn't want to get caught “squatting”.

      Walking behind the grandstand in those days could be stressful for the ladies as Weiner, Jack Daniels. L. Merrill Jacob and crew would sit in lawn chairs and hold cards with numbers on them “rating” women as they walked by. Oh and be careful where you step because there was usually a fresh (fake) cow pie lying in the main stream of traffic. There was quite a festive atmosphere that no longer exists. How many of you remember the slot car tracks? Kids would play for hours there. The Carrera Shocks and the Blue Max buses were icons on the grounds every year.

      The night life has changed dramatically. When people camped on the fairgrounds you could stop anywhere at 3:30 am and hear hootin’ and hollerin’ coming from all directions. Nobody slept. The camper behind Sec. L with the stage and the neon palm trees served up cold Coors Light and entertainment all night. The dumpster races were a popular late night attraction. Take two dumpsters, two riders, and too many inebriated pushers and you had a race. It was all fun and games until 1986 when they crashed into the Blue Max bus and a rider lost two fingers. Speaking of buses. Weiner was the official bus driver for the late night bus rides. Eight riders and one driver (Wiener had an old bus steering wheel) would line their lawn chairs up and head off to Moonlight Bay, Blue Moon Lagoon or The Twin Titties. Weiner would shift gears, yell “right turn, left turn” and when the destination was reached the appropriate body parts were exposed. I remember one night the local law enforcement tried to break up the bus and Cappy unlocked the grandstand and let the bus ride take place in front of the grandstand. Believe me when I say that the crack down on fun the past years was NOT because of Cappy. The bus took its final run when Karl Kinser was driving and he put Doug Clark to the back of the bus. That was it! No more!(Doug didn’t mind!

      Staying with the bus theme, the Brown Bus and the BHG became the place to be in the 1990’s. A tall light tree made from PVC and Christmas lights was placed on top of the bus so that it could be seen from the grandstands so the bus was easily identifiable to would be partiers. A keg of beer a night was destroyed during the week. Homer and Curt would man the keg and 100 to 150 fans would arrive to watch the antics of Robbie, Brad, Z, and big daddy on top of the bus. “Put the kids to bed mother we’re goin’ the bus!” Shopping cart races replaced the dumpsters and despite what the Fairboard thinks, the last water balloons were launched in ’96. These fans were not just drunks looking for a party they were hard core race fans. Ask anyone in attendance what compound of tire the winner had on that night and they would tell you what the top ten cars had on. Ladies beware though Butch was running around on his golf cart wearing an aardvark on his head looking for contestants for his wet t-shirt contest on Saturday. Well in 1996 when the law shut it down and they kicked all the fans off the fairgrounds Butch packed up and headed back to Kansas never to return. The Bus was removed too, now parked in a secluded section of the North Campground. 2001 was the last time the BHG led a crowd of festive bystanders in a chorus of Margaritaville. Twenty deputies arrived to protect us from ourselves and removed us from a top the bus and squashed the last of the big parties.

      That brings us to today. The Nationals are a huge ten day affair that brings National attention. Many things have made this event the best week of the year. Unfortunately a great deal of the festive feeling is gone. People come to party behind the grandstand that have nothing to do with the races or the camaraderie that goes with it. They want nothing but to drink and fight ruining the fun for the fans. Now instead of people saying “if you want to have fun camp at the track but don’t plan on sleeping” have been replaced by people who are intolerable and believe that their rights supersede everyone else’s. Knoxville has apparently never been to Indy or Daytona and allow the minority to rule. Oh well it still is the most fun you can have with your clothes on (or off!) and we’ll keep coming back. We keep making new memories of antics and stupid human tricks, right Luke?! Just ask Lucas if he wants a screw driver. So welcome to Iowa! Forget about high gas prices, low wages and turmoil in the middle-east. Enjoy the Greatest show on dirt and the freedom our soldiers give us to do so. Stop by and say hi to us this week. We’ll leave the lights on for ya!