Dirt racing gets back on track in Manitoba

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This article was published 07/07/2023 (1078 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While dirt track racing was one of the first major activities to get back up and running in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, that wasn’t quite the case in Manitoba.

It took until near the end of the summer of 2020 before the Victory Lane Speedway in St. Adolphe and the Swan Valley Stock Car Club were having races again, and they weren’t fully up to speed until the following year.

Meanwhile, the Prairie Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (PASCAR) decided not to hold any races at their track at the Souris Glenwood Airport in August 2020 due to COVID-19 cases spiking in Westman.

Nearly three years later, there still hasn’t been any action at the facility.

STILL ON HIATUS

PASCAR president Chad Bicklmeier says he and founder Matt Bootsman have considered restarting racing at the 3/16 mile oval, which hosted four-cylinder racing since opening up in 2014.

However, they’ve run into a pretty big obstacle.

“Our biggest bill before COVID was in regards to insurance, but for some reason, despite there being no racing, the cost has doubled,” Bicklmeier said.

“I can’t see it being related to exposure or accidents. We have the same safety procedures and barriers in place as they were in 2019, and there have been no accidents at the track because, well, there’s been no racing. I’d just be speculating though as to why the insurance cost has gone up, but I think that’s something that is pretty universal for a lot of people at the moment.”

Bicklmeier noted that while he’s had no issues with the airport board and the rural municipality, he and others within PASCAR had started to look at putting together a new facility closer to Brandon.

“With the economic models that we ran, if we were closer to a bigger venture, there would be more people coming out and that would get us to a scenario that we would hopefully be treading water a little bit and allow us to expand PASCAR in some way,” Bicklmeier said.

At the present time, Bicklmeier’s main goal is to get racing back going in Westman and to help find new people to get involved with PASCAR operations.

“Matt and I have ran it for six years and I think we’ve done a good job of getting people off the roads and onto the track to race, which is a lot safer,” Bicklmeier said.

“We’ll still be there no matter what happens and we would like to continue to race. We’re just ready to hand the reins over.”

HITTING THE ROAD

Rob Reese moved to Brandon four years ago for work purposes.

During Thursdays in the summer, he leaves his job at East Side Ventilation and makes the trek to Victory Lane Speedway, where he competes in the Pure Stock category.

“I have to leave a little early so I can make it to the track in time for the heats and have the car all ready to go,” Reese said.

The two-and-a-half hour journey to St. Adolphe is a lot longer than what it was when Reese originally lived in Winnipeg, but its well worth it for the 15-year veteran, who won a couple of track championships in the four-cylinder class at the then-named ALH Motor Speedway in Morden.

“What hooked me originally into racing was the old NASCAR Racing computer game,” Reese said. “I got back in 1995 and played it for years, then when the opportunity worked out for a monetary standpoint, me and a few guys started to build a four-cylinder car.

“After one season, I kind of picked it up on my own and have kept going ever since. Racing’s such a big part of my life. I love everything about and I think I’ll be involved with it in some way, even if I’m not driving.”

As a regular competitor at Victory Lane, which was previously known as Red River Co-op Speedway from 2006 to 2020, Reese has seen things change quite a bit since racing got back underway during the early stages of the pandemic.

“We actually had more people in the stands than we had in the past, mainly because dirt racing was one of the only things that was really available for people to do and see,” said Reese, who has also raced at Lake of the Woods Speedway outside of Kenora, Ont., over the last couple of seasons.

“The crowds have been good there ever since and I think a lot of fans were introduced or re-introduced to dirt racing once again during 2020 and 2021. When people have come to chat with us in the pits, there’s been a lot of comments of how exciting the racing has been to watch.”

Boissevain’s Brian Kentner also has a two-and-a-half hour journey to his home track. He competes at the Estevan (Sask.) Motor Speedway in the IMCA (International Motor Contest Association) Sport Modified division.

He also races at Swan Valley and travels to North Dakota to run at the Nodak Speedway in Minot and the Thunder Mountain Speedway in Bottineau, which is where he got introduced to the sport.

“My parents took me down there to watch the races when I was a kid and I’ve always been interested in fixing old trucks and that kind of stuff,” said Kentner, who started racing nine years ago and has also run in the pure stock and street stock divisions.

“Preparing the cars and getting out on the track is really a nice break from the working world. The family comes to the traces with me all the time and it’s something that we can do together.”

Kentner used to run in St. Adolphe and Morden on a regular basis before the pandemic. During 2020, he and a number of Manitoba drivers ventured west as Estevan was running a limited schedule.

“The announcer there started calling us the Manitoba Mafia and that name has kind of stuck,” Kentner said with a laugh. “It’s a bit of a drive but we make a weekend out of it and everyone there has been great to us.

“When COVID hit, there were a lot of guys that I normally raced with for years that stepped back from racing. Now that things are lightning up again, we’re starting to see a lot of people returning.

“In Estevan, we had the same 10 cars in the Sport Mods every week, but we were up to 24 cars a couple of weeks ago and there were 26 cars down in Minot the other week when we went down there. That’s great to see.”

TAKING ON THE BEST

The old saying goes that in order to be the best, you have to beat the best.

For Manitoba dirt racers, that involves going to the United States and running against the top drivers in the business.

The most well-known competitor from the province for avid followers of the dirt racing scene is Headingley’s Ricky Weiss.

He brought home US$50,000 as the winner of the North-South 100 — a prestigious late model race outside of Florence, Ky., — in 2018 and was second in the 2020 World of Outlaws late model series point standings.

The Outlaws tour, along with the similarly named sprint car circuit, are annual visitors to the River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks, N.D., which is widely considered one of the best tracks in the business.

While bringing up names like Bobby Pierce and Brandon Shepherd would result in people giving you strange looks if you talked about them at any restaurant in Brandon, they are household names for those that watch them on a weekly basis.

For Winnipeg’s Shane Edington, making the feature race during last Friday’s World of Outlaws show at River Cities was a major accomplishment.

“It’s sort of like bringing a butter knife to a gunfight for us local guys,” Edington said. “These guys are so good and you can always learn something when you are racing again them.

“The biggest thing is just how hard they drive. You think you are going into the turns hard, but then you watch these guys and you need to step up your games just to compete with them.”

Like Weiss, Edington has spent the last few years travelling around the United States to compete at events.

“We definitely would like to come back home and race more, but we’ve been busy with running all over the place since the pandemic,” he added.

“It’s pretty cool though that people get to watch us race online no matter where are we racing. It’s good exposure for the sponsors and lets people know what we are doing.”

BACK IN BUSINESS

As was the case in Souris, racing in Morden came to a halt during the pandemic.

That changed on Friday night as the newly-named Dead Horse Creek Speedway re-opened for a two-day event that concludes this evening.

“There’s a bit of a nervous excitement for this weekend,” Valley Motorsports Association president Chris Unrau said on Wednesday. “This is a new endeavour for a lot of us and we’re hoping that people are patient with us as we work through this first race.

“It was a big loss to the community when the track didn’t re-open post-COVID, but people have been pitching in to get things back going again.”

Unrau says one of the biggest challenges in getting things back going again was re-engaging the municipality and working with the track’s neighbours to get their conditional use permit put in place.

“When the track was first built, there was basically no one else around so it wasn’t a big deal to get that permit back in 2008,” Unrau explained. “Since then, there’s been so much growth in the area and more neighbours around the track, so we have to make that we are considered of them.

“Also, since the facility hadn’t been used in three years, there was an amazing amount of work we had to do to get rid of the overgrown grass and all of the changes we’ve had to do to get things up and running this year.”

The Valley Motorsports Association — which features 10 people that are involved with dirt racing, drag racing and tractor pulling – is holding the Watermelon Cup this weekend and the King of the Corn event on Aug. 25-26.

Both weekends will see funds raised towards the expansion of the Boundary Trails Health Centre in Winkler.

They don’t plan to run the races at Dead Horse Creek on a weekly basis and are more focused on special events during the season.

“A lot of us are still going elsewhere to race and a lot of us have other things that tie us down during the summer,” Unrau said.

“We love getting together for those big races and having a good time and there’s been a ton of support for this already, especially as we’re helping to give back to the community.”

Veteran WISSOTA Midwest Modified driver Brandon Rehill of St. Andrews says the return of racing in Morden is huge for those looking for a place to compete.

“Most guys were sticking close to home at Victory Lane, but we had several guys going to Minnesota, North Dakota and Ontario just so they can get more races in,” Rehill said.

“To have another track that’s only a couple hours away … that’s going to be great for everybody.”

Bicklmeier is also excited about the sport coming back to Morden and hopes that will lead to renewed interest elsewhere, especially if PASCAR gets back up and running.

“It would be great if we could get a touring circuit going or just have more options for people to race on a track and not take that out on the highways,” Bicklmeier said.

“There’s a real synergy that comes with any type of racing to the communities that have it. I know that with our races, we had people coming in from around the province and from Saskatchewan, and they were spending money in Souris.

“I think that’s something that gets overlooked sometimes. These events do a lot of good not just for the community but for the overall economic engine.”

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