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Friday, August 23
For those of you who didn’t know, I was recently hospitalized again due to health issues, but treated and released on Tuesday afternoon. It was just in time to make it to Gondik Law Speedway’s Friday night show, the final weekly season event where track champions were crowned.
I’ve found over the years here that championship night does not bring out a large number of competitors, just those embroiled in the championship races plus a few other competitors.
That said, there were a total of 104 cars in the six divisions. The WISSOTA Late Model division had the largest population with 26 cars on hand. Former track champion Pat Doar won again when all was said and done. This one went down to the wire, as behind Doar in the point standings were Billy Kendall III and former track champion Travis Budisalovich. Doar won the feature and took the championship by 21 points over Kendall and Budisalovich in the top three.
In the WISSOTA Modified division the champion was Brandon Copp. In five features he scored one win, and four top fives. He edged Jack Rivord (#19J) from Superior by a narrow 11 points. Coming home third was Jody Bellefeuille, just a scant 18 points back of Copp according to the GLS website.
Keeping it in the family, so to speak, the 2024 WISSOTA Super Stock champion was Kyle Copp, Brandon’s cousin. He beat out Superior’s DJ Keeler by a single point. Interestingly, Kyle and DJ did not win a single feature between them. Finishing third was many-time track champion Scott Lawrence.
In the WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds, James Vendela beat out Ryan Savoy by 22 points. Paul Ripley finished third. I have been watching Ripley over the last couple of seasons and he has progressed very nicely.
In the WISSOTA Pure Stocks the 2024 champion Aaron Bernick. He finished just 21 points ahead of Tom Treviranus.
In the WISSOTA Hornets the battle for the track championship was among DeJay Jarecki, Nikota Larson and Carson Gotelaere. Jarecki won the championship in the division by 29 points over Larson, with Gotelaere in third.
In the Late Model feature, Doar won the race from the outside of the front row, while Sabraski came from the fourth spot to finish second. Burdick was third with Darrell Nelson fourth and Sam Mars in the top five.
Nelson came back to win the WISSOTA Modified feature from the fourth starting spot over Andrew Inman and Jack Rivord.
In the WISSOTA Super Stocks it was a win for Dexton Koch, with Matt Deragon trying to track him down. There was a good battle for a while between Koch, Deragon and third-place Rick Simpson.
In the WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds Joey Jensen ran off with the win over McLean Andrews and Justin Bassa. Cody Carlson got into something and posted a DNF, a certain comedown from the big win at ABC Raceway a week ago Saturday.
On the Pure Stock side, Bernick took the win followed by Tom Treviranus.
And finally, the Hornet feature went to DeJay Jarecki with Justin Schelitzche second. Third was Carson Gotelaere.
Saturday, August 24
I felt well enough to head to Rice Lake Speedway on Saturday for their championship night.
On the Modified side, Buzzy Adams won the feature, and the track champion is Joe Chaplin, Jr.
In the WISSOTA Super Stocks, Curt Myers finished the night with a solid feature win to take the 2024 track championship.
In the WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds, Mike Schnider held off Joey Jensen for the feature win. Schnider is also the 2024 Midwest Mod track champion.
In the WISSOTA Pure Stocks it was a win for Bob Wahlstrom, ahead of Bob Thompson. Whalstrom is also the 2024 Pure Stock track champion.
And finally, it was a sweep for Cody Kummer in the WISSOTA Street Stocks. Danny Richards is the 2024 Street Stock champion.
It seemed that it took a long time to finish the program, but I guess not, as we were headed back home just a bit before 10 p.m. Still it wore on me, but hopefully I’ll be better by the time the WISSOTA 100 rolls around in a few weeks.
That’s all for this time from the Tundra. Hope to see you here at the Northern Nationals, after I see you at the Silver 1000 this Thursday.