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As we get closer to the racing season in the upper Midwest, drivers and teams get anxious to do some early season racing. They want to check out how their cars are going to run once the first green flag flies in our area, and with weather conditions improving to the south of our area, some racing action begins during the month of March.

It does get a bit challenging finding a race though, as most of the sanctioning bodies have their own twist on the rules. This often makes it tough to jump back and forth from one group to the other.

During the third weekend of March, some of the more enterprising Midwest Modified drivers found racing action in South Dakota at a track that was not ridiculously far away. Park Jefferson Speedway in Jefferson, South Dakota held a two-night program and they had sanctioning body rules in effect. In other words, drivers ran the rules from their own group and the three sanctions in action found their rules compatible to create some fair competition.

There were five Midwest Mod teams who made the trip, four from Minnesota and one from Wisconsin. I think all five found that the rules allowed them to be competitive, have some fun, learn some things about their cars and help them prepare for the upcoming season.

The weather was a bonus, with awesome temperatures for March. New high temperature records were set locally in the Sioux City area and on Saturday, the temperature was 94 degrees at race time. For the first time ever for a March race in the Midwest, I never put a coat on for the whole show!

Wisconsin driver Eric Gadach was on hand from New Richmond. He is still running last year's body on his car, which he tells me is an El Dorado chassis with a Wagamon motor in it and is the last car Deuce Arneson raced.

Jake Smith was running the same hot combination that allowed him to win the points title at the Wild West Shootout in Arizona — an MB Customs with a Chubb’s motor.

Carter Matthews is anxious to return to WISSOTA racing this year after some time away and is hoping to do so by early in the season. His car is an MB with a Tim's Automotive motor under the hood.

Chance Kodet is looking to do a lot of racing again this year and the team is anxious to hit as many races as possible. Their car is a 2025 MB Customs with a Frank Zeuli-built motor under the hood.

Justin Jones, from Bemidji, was also racing with his SSR chassis and Chubbs power. It was somewhat surprising to see him, as he usually doesn't get the chance to race this early in the season. Jones has cars from a couple different sanctioning bodies that he races on a regular basis, but he told me that he was going to focus on just one car and sanction in 2026. He didn’t say which one but I guess we’ll find out soon enough once area tracks open up.

The drivers had good luck overall in their two nights of racing on the third-mile, high-banked track that lies in the river valley between the Big Sioux and Missouri Rivers and just off I-29.

Smith finished second and fourth in the two features offered and his Friday night battle with a driver from Nebraska was a highlight of the weekend. The two of them exchanged slide jobs twice a lap for the last six or so laps of their feature race. The driver who won was pretty proud in his post-race interview, having “beaten one of those fast WISSOTA cars that won in Arizona,” so I guess it’s good that our cars have a good reputation.

Jones finished in the top 10 both nights, while Kodet and Matthews also made both features, finished in the top 15 and put their cars on the trailer at the end of the night in one piece.

Gadach did not made the feature on Saturday after scratching out of a B Feature, but he was also the only one of the five to win a race, and he was very pleased to have topped the B Feature on Friday night.

While I have still not seen the full schedules for all tracks in the Northland, so far I have not seen any events listed in honor of Jerry O’Brien, former ATD columnist and longtime publicist for the Northland tracks. Perhaps there are still some things in the planning stages, but certainly Gondik, ABC and Proctor should be doing something to honor the memory of O’Brien. He covered “The Tundra Tracks” in-depth and made them household names for race fans for decades. A “Tundra Classic in Memory of Jerry O’Brien” should show up on someone’s 2026 race schedule.

The WISSOTA organization and its fans and drivers are mourning the recent and shocking passing of Trevor Stewart, from Big Lake, Minnesota. He passed away unexpectedly on March 18 at the age of 52.

Stewart had a long involvement in racing and was everything from a driver to a sponsor. He was the sponsor of the National Rookie of the Year and Structural Buildings WISSOTA Challenge Series Rookie of the Year competition. His brother, Chad, owns Structural Buildings and is also the Challenge Series sponsor.

The recent passing of Harold Mueller of Eau Claire cannot be left unmentioned either. Mueller, who was nearing his 90th birthday, passed away on March 14.

Though his racing involvement was pre-WISSOTA, Mueller was a Late Model driver who was among the very best ever produced in this area and his name was known by race fans and fellow competitors across the state of Wisconsin, bordering states and up into Canada.

His No. 7up fastback Fords were memorable cars, but when he paired with Black River Falls’ Moose Peterson, the bright yellow No. 19 Monte Carlos, Lagunas and Camaros were very tough to beat. He was at the heart of the competition when other drivers like Phil Prusak, Red Steffen, Leon Plank, Punky Manor, Ron Goss, Dave Morgan, Cecil Henderson, Mert Williams and Paul Fitzpatrick and others were the toughest in the whole Midwest.

Condolences to the families and friends of both men.

The weather has been showing signs of improvement lately and everyone is getting anxious to see the first tracks open. As far as I know, the first WISSOTA tracks scheduled to open in Minnesota include Princeton Speedway and Ogilvie Raceway on April 10 and April 11, and North Dakota’s Devil’s Lake Speedway has plans to open April 11. The first in Wisconsin are slated to be Red Cedar and Rice Lake on April 24 and April 25, respectively.

I suggest monitoring track websites and socials for updates in the coming days and weeks.

In preparation for the coming of the 2026 racing season in our area, I have been doing a few final wrap-ups on things from 2025. Closing out my file and bringing things up to date on the “Little Dream” race has been my final project and I wanted to share a couple items I found interesting.

Still the highest paying race to win in WISSOTA, the Little Dream has seen the top prize increase each year except for two occasions way back in the early 2000s. The first official Dream was held back in 1995 and has been a Street Stock special for every year of its existence except 1999, when the Smith-Bisonette family made one of their few mistakes at the track, thinking they might draw more cars if the race was a Midwest Mod special. That was not the case and the following year it was back to being a Street Stock event.

Of course, the premise that this race was built on has not changed. The one thing that sets it apart from other big money races is that the fans in the stands, along with businesses from the area, are the contributors to the purse that make the race what it is. And in a nod of acceptance to the changing times in which we live, other contributors to the race are now the live streaming revenue plus online contributions, which have grown by leaps and bounds in recent years.

There have been 520 different drivers from nine states and two Canadian Provinces entered at least once for the Little Dream, while there have been 19 different winners of the race. Eric Olson, Tim Johnson and Jimmy Randall are three-time winners, and others have won multiple times including Scott Paulson, Scott Clark, Cory Crapser, Nick Traynor and Keith Tourville.

Crapser is the only driver ever to have won the race in back-to-back years, and both Myron Tschakert and Royce Jawaski won the race the very first time they entered the event.

The highest car count for this race was 66 drivers back in 2019 and 2025’s turn out of 47 was the lowest since back in 2012. I might add that track management is currently working on a plan to increase the start money for this race in 2026, to its highest level ever, to help remedy that situation.

Probably the most amazing statistic surrounding the Little Dream is the fact that Jay Kesan has raced in all 30 Street Stock Little Dreams, the only driver left to do so. Next in line is Jimmy Randall, with 22 appearances. Other drivers who have raced at least 10 times in this race include Adam Soltis, Keith Tourville, Danny Richards, Sam Fankhauser, Justin Vogel, Kyle Dykhoff, Mike Knudtson, Cody Kummer, Kyle Genett and Hunter VanGilder.

Track owner Kolby Kiehl had raced in 14 straight Little Dreams until he missed the 2025 event, as he had to run the track!

Lastly, of the entrants in the first Little Dream way back in 1995, there are seven drivers still actively racing. Along with Olson who races a Super Stock at area tracks, Rick Hanestad races Limited Late Models at area tracks, Scott Lawrence still races Super Stocks in WISSOTA, and Kesan still races his Street Stock. Andy Nezworski is still in racing, wheeling Late Models in Iowa, and will likely be seen at some area tracks this year. Shawn McFadden is still in racing as well, racing Super Stocks, and “Crazy” Phil Wernert races Stock Cars on far western Wisconsin tracks.