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Now that the 2025 racing season is in the rearview mirror, it’s time to take a quick look back before we begin 2026.

In 2025 I attended 191 nights of racing, my third-best season on my all-time chart, though I continue the slow descent from my best year back in 2024. Much of 2025 was challenging for all of us, with poor weather in the first half of the racing season brutal for both weekly shows and special events, in particular.

April, May and June were all very tough, with many tracks struggling to find consistency with their program offerings. July and August were better and for the most part, except for a couple rough weekends, September and October were good.

Of the 191 races I attended, 91 were WISSOTA-sanctioned events, with the rest sanctioned by a variety of other racing organizations.

I saw races at 62 different tracks in 2025, with 20 of them WISSOTA sanctioned. The rest were from a variety of other organizations.

I also saw racing during each of the 12 months of the year. July was the busiest month of the year, with 28 nights of racing. Not surprisingly, December was the slowest with just three nights of racing. I started the year in Arizona and wrapped it up in Missouri and that, if all goes well, could very well likely be the case again in 2026.

I saw some great racing and also saw some real stinkers. But any race attended is a real treat and much better than the alternative.

I witnessed great accomplishments by drivers and I saw the worst kind of horror. I saw someone die right in front of my eyes and the sick feeling in my gut still hasn’t disappeared. While that is not the first time that has happened, it had been many years since I saw something like that. I’ve actually experienced this about a half dozen times over the course of many years of racing.

It’s my opinion that we are getting sloppy when it comes to safety at the track and it’s time to toughen back up, before the insurance companies have the chance to refuse to cover us.

Not surprisingly, Rice Lake was the track I attended the most often; it is closest to my home geographically and also the track I grew up at. I was there 14 times in 2026, as their schedule was ravaged by weather. I-94 emr and Granite City Motor Park were next on the list; I spent more time at Gopher State tracks than I did on the east side of the Mississippi.

Overall, I saw WISSOTA racing in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Ontario.

Thunder City gets an award as the first entry in a new category of cancellation, the “fire out.” I have been rained out, sleeted out, hailed out, stormed out, froze out, winded out, tornado’d out, fogged out, overheated out, no power’d out, and I’ve been at races that were cancelled due to broken water lines and other kinds of “outs” ... but I had never been at a race that was cancelled due to fire. That happened at Thunder City this year when brush fires, out of control and heading toward the track, forced government officials to bring in big airplanes to dump water and put out the flames. The result was that we had to evacuate the track. They did come back the next night to race, but I wasn't there.

I attended three tracks for the very first time in 2026, but none were WISSOTA tracks. Probably one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't get to more tracks in South Dakota, where I used to go yearly. However, I need them to go back to having some mid-week shows strung together to justify making the long drive out there.

As I type this morning, the announcement was made that Dakota State Fair Speedway, in Huron, South Dakota, is reopening and will be running weekly events on Saturdays. However, no announcement was made on what classes and under what rules they will be racing. I hope their decision is one that benefits racing as a whole in the state for the drivers and fans. We don’t need any more “Lone Rangers” in the promoting ranks.

This past 2025 season marked the 45th consecutive year I have attended at least 100 races. Overall, I have attended races at 337 different tracks (many which are no longer running) in 29 states and three Canadian provinces.

And while my enthusiasm for the next racing season is not at the level that it once was, I am still anxious to see what 2026 will bring to the dirt tracks of our area. I only hope that there are lots of folks ready to join me come April.

***

The annual Wild West Shootout kicked off the 2026 racing season for those lucky enough to leave the snow and cold of the upper Midwest and head to the sun and warmth of Arizona.

For the last few years the WWS was held at Vado Speedway Park in Vado, New Mexico. The race was moved to Vado, a state-of-the-art facility located between Las Cruces, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas, when Arizona Speedway was closed down. While Vado is an excellent facility and provided great racing, the weather in the high plateau of New Mexico has not been particularly favorable. Last year's snow-out was likely the last straw.

Concurrent with the miserable weather of last year, Central Arizona Raceway, near Casa Grande, Arizona, has been a rising star in the world of dirt track racing. Promoter Brad Whitfield and the local fairboard made a large number of improvements to the three-eighths-mile oval and brought in a number of high visibility races in 2025.

This combination of factors led WWS promotor Chris Kearns to make a deal with Whitfield, and the WWS returned to Arizona this year, a state where this race was actually started more than 20 years ago.

Located between Phoenix and Tucson, it is a much more appealing place for a family vacation and with six days of racing thrown in.

As a result of the venue, a larger number of WISSOTA racers from the upper Midwest and Canada gathered among the large field of entrants for this six-night series. There was also a considerable number of race fans from the cold climates gathered to see many of the top drivers in the country race in the three classes here: the open Late Models, the open Modifieds and the X Mods, which is a hybrid combination of rules used by several different sanctioning bodies for the second-tier, open-wheel class.

My rough estimate was there was about eight WISSOTA drivers in the Late Model class, nine in the Modifieds and about 13 wheeling the X Mods.

So far, the toughest journeys have been by the Late Model drivers on hand. This is not surprising because they have to make the greatest adjustment to race out here. The WISSOTA spec engine used at home just doesn’t cut it with the 900 horsepower open motors allowed for this event. Teams either have to come up with an open motor or try and make due with their WISSOTA stuff. Most I talked to opted to change over.

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