2-24 Page 19

News has been a little scarce where we are currently hanging out. We have been pulling the tough but necessary duty of guarding the Florida coastline from invasion, as we spent the last week or so in Ormond Beach, Florida, making sure everyone is safe in the hot tub at the time-share while also venturing out to Volusia Speedway Park every night to monitor the racing situation.

While there are not a lot of drivers from our area who are racing at Volusia, we have had the chance to see part-time WISSOTA racer Dan Ebert in action. He is running his open Late Model for the second straight year, while former WISSOTA racers, Brent and Matthew Larson and Blair Nothdurft, were also in racing action.

All have had good nights as well as some clunkers, and at least two from this group have already made motor changes. That is obviously no treat to deal with, so early into the season’s racing budget. However, all have endured and were still racing when the Volusia activities wrapped up the night before the Daytona 500.

One interesting note from the Larson camp ... Matthew tells me their entire family is building a new race shop in Wisconsin, selling their Lake Elmo holdings and relocating to Wisconsin. The family is originally from there, and that is something I did not know. By sometime this summer, their address will be Alma Center, Wisconsin, which is in the Black River Falls area.

This will make things easier for Brent; he will no longer have to disguise his allegiance to the Packers. As he told me years ago, he is a “closet” Green Bay Packers fan and has been for life. It’s something his Minnesotan wife finds distasteful.

Information on driver plans for 2026 has been slow also and perhaps that is because I have not been talking to the right people, or perhaps they aren’t talking.

I did see a picture of Jacob Anderson’s Mid Mod, as he begins his second season of racing in the class, having moved up from the karting ranks.

Dan Bargender has made the bold move to step out on his own with a business. He was an employee of Mars Racing, but has now branched out on his own, opening DB 10 in Chippewa Falls. He will build race car bodies and do other repair work. Probably the biggest news coming out of this is that he will now be a Longhorn Modified dealer and that his “house driver” for 2026 will be Kaden Blaeser.

Onyx Johnson, after a two-year apprenticeship racing the Mid Mods, will move up to the Late Model class in 2026, presumably to join his father Zach in the class.

I did run into Harry Hanson at Volusia and he is anxious to get the racing season started locally, as we all are. He does have two new Infinity Late Models for the upcoming season, courtesy of his benefactor KME and Pat Kapella. Harry also reported that Kapella will now just be sponsoring him, but no other drivers. He did give all the drivers that were driving cars owned by him last year those cars so it amounted to something like a nine-Late Model handout. I believe KME is still supporting some tracks through a point fund. Ogilvie, for example, will be running Late Models virtually every week this coming season. He did support a couple of other tracks’ point funds as well, but I am not aware of their status for 2026.

James Trantina III was down here in Florida helping his driver Dan Ebert, and while I did not get the chance to talk to him, I know he has announced an increased point fund for Granite City Motor Park for 2026. It will likely be the biggest point fund any track in this area has paid. Trantina has gone back and forth on this topic during the last few years; two years ago he also paid a big year-end point fund but then went back to a smaller one in 2025, while moving some of that money into the nightly purse. However, he has decided to try a bigger point fund again in 2026 with the hope of attracting more racers on Sunday night to his track.

It is interesting how the preferred nightly race night has changed over the years, but right now I think most would agree that Sunday night is the toughest to sell for a number of factors. A speedy program on a Sunday might be number one on the critical list of things to accomplish.

Sheyenne River Speedway in Lisbon has bounced back and forth in recent years, both with the classes they have offered and the night on which they race. After running on Thursday nights in 2025, they will go back to their more standard Sunday night racing schedule in 2026, running WISSOTA Streets and Midwest Mods along with other classes. Dusty Mund has been picked to be track manager for the upcoming racing season.

Things are good in South Dakota once again as the long-standing racing tradition of Saturday night racing at the Dakota State Fair Speedway returns in 2026. I was happy to see they will return to WISSOTA sanctioning and will be running almost every Saturday night.

Related, there is no word yet about Miller Central Speedway for 2026, but I would assume they don't plan on racing since Huron has pretty much filled up the Saturday slot.

There are lots of things going on concerning Grand Rapids Speedway and as of this time, things still haven't been completely settled. The annual election of officers for the West Range Racing Association ended with the entire board, except for one person, resigning their positions. This then required another special meeting for elections.

At that second meeting, Bob Broking, the former vice president of the club, was elected as track agent, a position that will require him to work with both the board and the track promoter, as a communications conduit. Jonathan Powers was then selected as the competition director, responsible for day-to-day operations of the track, promotion and race night management.

Another meeting will be held in early March to elect a president, treasurer and secretary for the board.

Meanwhile, Powers has been busy inserting himself into the workings of a couple of other tracks in the area. He has been announced as the new race director for the 2026 season at Proctor Speedway and at last word, he was also race director at Hibbing — although nothing has been heard from that track since just before Christmas. I'm still waiting to see whether that very early schedule they put out is the one they’re going with or not.

Princeton has dropped the WISSOTA Hornet class for 2026, instead adding the Crown Vics. Let me stew on that for awhile before I offer an opinion.

All through the 2025 racing season, anyone who asked was told that Eric Erickson, who has been the president of the Ashland-Bayfield County Racing Association for seemingly forever (when Weaver Wherritt didn’t hold the position), had decided he was going to retire after 2025. It seemed like it was even more likely after the huge wrap-up to the season with the 50th running of the Red Clay Classic. It was also assumed that most of the board of directors would follow him into retirement.

However, I was not the least bit surprised when it was announced recently that the entire board, including VP Wherritt, secretary Kris Nevala, treasurer Mary Bowers and asst. treasurer Cheryl Klobucher are all returning for 2026.

Good news for Twin Ports racing — The Head of the Lakes Management Group (Joe Stariha, Crash Carlson and Gus Omundson), have signed a new contract to continue to run the racing programs at Gondik Law Speedway for two more years, with another two year extension available. As another benefit for them, they just have to worry about the track and racing programs. They don't have the task of managing other events at the fairgrounds or putting on the annual Head of the Lakes Fair.

By next month there should be much more in the way of track announcements and schedules, plus driver happenings. In the meantime, we all hope for warm weather, drying conditions and early season openers.