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Thursday, June 13

We attended our fourth Fastlane Motorsports Northern Super Stock Series in a row, at Grand Rapids Speedway in Grand Rapids, MN Thursday, June 13. They had a nice crowd and the large grandstands were close to full.

They also had a nice turnout of WISSOTA Super Stocks, with 37 in competition. Thus far we have seen fields of 46, 36, 30 and 37. As a quick aside, I may have mentioned it last time, but the rained-out race at Rice Lake Speedway has now been reset for July 3.

There were another 62 cars on hand in the other divisions, including the Mid Mods, Modifieds, Pure Stocks and Renegade Sprints for a total of 99 cars. Not bad!

I was sort of bummed out that there were only eight WISSOTA Modifieds there. I noticed the Brokings, father Bob and son Johnny, drive “Colt 45s”!

The track crew worked very hard on dust control, with fair results. It was still a bit dusty, but better than the last time we were there. They spritzed the track lightly with water between heat races. It did help keep the dust down.

In the WISSOTA Pure Stock feature, Chaston Finckbone started from the pole and completed a sweep of the action, as he led the entire distance to win over Jake Smith and Austin Carlson in the top three. Ethan Elhardt and Caylyn Brinkley rounded top five.

The 26 qualifying Super Stocks including provisionals went 30 laps for their feature. Nineteen of the starting 26 were running at the finish. Terran Spacek, who has been on fire during the first races of the series, started on the pole flanked by Curt Myers. At the green flag Spacek shot out into the lead and stayed there through some caution periods to complete the sweep of the division, holding off former champions Shane Sabraski and Dylan Nelson for the win. Myers and Kyle Copp finished in the top five. DJ Keeler, Tommy Richards, Jordan Henkemeyer, Tim Johnson and Dexton Koch rounded out the top 10.

The WISSOTA Midwest Modified main even was won by the No. 10C of Mervin Castle. Second was No. 10Jr of Mikey Blevins, with the No. 18 of Justin Feltus in third.

The evening finished up with the Hornet feature. The winner, which was also a sweep, was the No. 13K of Russell Kiker, Jr. Tristen McLynn and McKenna Folstad were the remaining top-three finishers.

After all the racing, I have to give kudos to my bride Joanne, who took the controls of the 2011 Caravan and drove home to Superior all the way from Grand Rapids. She did a great job and I was right there beside her on deer watch and saw only one, for a change. It has been a great relief that she is willing and very able to share the driving with me. There is a lot of road construction on Hwy 53 and I found that the pylons that separate the two lanes of traffic have reflective tape on them and it affects my vision, as I have a problem with my left eye. It’s no problem during the daytime, but it’s difficult at night. Usually it works out because she has difficulty staying awake during the day but is wide awake at night, sooo ... me day, she night!

One more story from our travels ... On our way back, US 2 is all two lane except for passing lanes. We noticed a bunch of vehicles moving up behind us very quickly. There must have been eight or 10! Since my wife believes in driving right around the speed limit, she decided, since we were coming into Floodwood, she'd pull off and let them go by. Boy, O boy! It was a bunch of haulers from the races heading down to Superior for the next Super Stock race. Good thing we got out of their way — they were moving right along and obviously running in a convoy!

We went by the speedway in Superior (GLS) Friday afternoon, riding with Joanne to do the banking for her place of work, and sure enough, there were a bunch of haulers in the pits and I believe I recognized some of them from the previous night.

Friday, June 14

When I walked out of my house on Friday I immediately thought “We’re gonna have a difficult night,” as the wind had shifted to out of the east, northeast and the temperature had certainly dropped. Later in the night I took a look at the temperature on my phone. It said 50 something, but felt like 46 degrees! That’s not fun!

Our entries at Gondik Law for the night numbered 16 WISSOTA Modifieds, 36 WISSOTA Super Stocks, 27 WISSOTA Midwest Mods, 9 WISSOTA Pure Stocks and 9 WISSOTA Hornets for just shy of 100 cars. It was a pretty good turnout for the Fastlane Motorsports Northern Super Stock Series.

While at the track Friday, we heard about the passing of Raymond “Ray” Tollers due to an accident earlier in the week. I heard that Ray had a deal he called something like Turn 3 Motorsports, where he and friends would help out racers. When that was announced, the evening became a impromptu memorial to Ray, with people popping up everywhere to add money to the feature winner's check to the tune of $333 dollars on top of the normal payout. Some others added $77 to second and so on. It was a nice gesture for the dedicated race fan.

Now, for the racing ... After an intermission it was time for the main events. In the WISSOTA Modified 20-lap feature, Jack Rivord started in fourth and moved up quickly to the lead. He basically disappeared from the view of second place Brandon Copp of Brule. It has been a very long time since I've seen someone put such a whipping on a good field of Modifieds. By the time the checkered flag had fallen, Rivord was lapping the back of the field. Copp was second, Johnny Broking was third, dad Bob Broking was fourth and Andrew Inman was fifth.

The Super Stock Series feature was set for 33 laps, to honor Ray Tollers. I have to say that the track was as good as I've ever seen it, but a bit dusty.

As the Mods started to do, the Supers wound up using the entire track, and waaay up on top in the turns. I swear I heard some cars scraping the rear quarter against the wall in turn one close to where I was freezing, er, sitting! The track crew is going to have to scrape clay from the base of the wall or some Late Model next time is going to go right over it. Curt Myers led the program from the pole until the waning moments, when Terran Spacek caught him from his fourth starting spot and made the pass for the win. Myers, Shane Sabraski, Joey Jensen and Kyle Copp finished in the top five. Sixth through 10th were DJ Keeler, Matt Deragon, Scott Lawrence, Andrew Johnson and Austin Niemeyer in the top 10.

In the WISSOTA MidMods, Joey Jensen hopped out of the Super Stock and into the Midwest Mod and won the 20-lap feature from his ninth starting spot. Second was Ryan Savoy. Cole Chernosky, James Vendela, and William Moelter finished in the top five. Our friend Cody Carlson started 10th, went forward, went backward, and then finished sixth.

The evening finished up with the Pure Stock and Hornet features. In the Pure Stock feature Aaron Bernick completed the sweep by winning the 12-lap main event. Jake Smith and Shane Basina finished in the top three.

In the Hornet feature Carson Gotelaere took the victory ahead of DJ Jarecki in second and Nikota Larson was fourth in the No. 26n.

That was it for the second race of the season at Gondik Law Speedway for the 2024 season. At least it's not as bad as one season when our first race here was run a week before our mid-season championships we had back then.