2/12/2020
Gondik Law Speedway
FastLane Super Stock Series Set For 2020
This year marks the sixth year for the Series, set up to recognize the Super Stock Class. Series Spokesman Dennis McCauley and FastLane Motorsports & Powder coating owner Chris Bretting have been working since late November to again bring the fans and drivers of the Super Stock Class a great mid-summer event for this year. Bretting & McCauley in mid 2014 sat down and wanted to do something for the Super Stocks, who rarely have any specials during the summer racing season, and thought if a few tracks could come on board offering an enhanced payout during their scheduled event that it would make a great short Series with rounding up a few sponsors for a payout for those drivers who competed at the events. Little did they know a few short years later it would be so well attended by some of the best Super Stock Racers in WISSOTA Country.
In a pivotal year for the Series 2019 became the 5th year that McCauley and Bretting partnered up, both knowing that many events can either fail or succeed at this point or before. The offseason again was a time of planning and figuring out what, if anything could be done to make the series even better for its drivers and fans, while still keeping tracks involved and it to be profitable for them to host the events. The series knew with the 5th year we needed to keep advancing the series to make it enticing to the drivers and the fans alike, the question was what could we do in order to accomplish that objective? At this time we had many conversations with the drivers on what they wanted from the series. Drivers overwhelmingly stated to continue doing what we were doing and they still appreciated having some special races during the summer to race for additional dollars and prestige.
The series opened up its schedule Saturday July 13th at the Ogilvie Raceway and the anticipation was high for everyone at the series and the host facility. Series statistician John Kimmes got put to work right away helping out Ogilvie doing the draw with their staff having so much to do with the high energy of the WoO Late Models being onsite they wanted everything to go as planned. After the tally was finally totaled we ended up with a series high total of 52 Super Stocks jammed into the pits to compete for their first event of the series at Ogilvie Raceway, not bad for a “support class”! The series would continue the next night at Granite City as rain surrounded the area it seemed everywhere outside of 10 miles from the track was raining but grey skies did not hamper the efforts of the 41 drivers who showed up to compete. The following weekend set Superior, Ashland and Proctor on the front burner with 46, 42, and 42 cars respectively giving the series an average of 44 cars per event. The series had 75 different drivers compete over the five nights and found 28 drivers who made all the races taking home at least $400 for their efforts. With the help of the great series sponsors we were able to pay out the top 15 in points with Dave Mass taking home the series title, our first repeat winner. Kevin Burdick, Nick Oreskovich, Dexton Koch, Scott Lawrence, DJ Keeler, Andy Grymala, Tim Johnson, Shawn McFadden Jr, and Chad Fouquette rounded out the top 10 in points.
The series had a payout of over $28,000 last year not including almost $4,000 in gift certificates handed out by Bretting for FastLane Motorsports and Powder coating. Adding in the contingency awards and the drivers of the series took home over $33,000 in cash and prizes over the five nights plus the over $27,000 in purse paid at the track level giving a total of over $60K for five nights of Super Stock Racing! Not a bad year and we hope it exceeded the expectations from the previous year.
A few accomplishments for the Series include it is the best attended Series for any class of cars throughout all of WISSOTA. The Series also boasted having the most cars attend any single event and also all of the events throughout all of WISSOTA. In addition we had the best average attendance for each event and we only fell 2 short of matching the total number of cars at any event including the WISSOTA 100! In all a fantastic year for the Series!
So what does 2020 hold for the FastLane Northland Super Stock Series? We have to admit that somewhere it may cap out, but we will do everything we can to continue to provide some great Super Stock Races to attend and bring something special for the Super Stock Class! Remember drivers this series is all about YOU and what you would like. You drivers are what make this series great and with your support we will continue to do this for many years. After 2019 we immediately had verbal commitments from all five of the tracks competing that year. As of the time of this article writing the Series has locked down six tracks into contract, two of which are new tracks to the series. In 2019 the series tried to get Princeton to add on to the first weekend with it being such a short distance from Ogilvie and Granite City it was an obvious attraction. Unfortunately it didn’t work out then, but we are happy to announce that Princeton Speedway will kick off the Series in 2020 on Friday July 17th! We are expected to be at Ogilvie (not confirmed as of date written) on Saturday July 18th, and rounding out the weekend for its third time hosting the series Granite City Speedway Sunday July 19th. The series will take a quick break and come back to another anticipated new track Thursday July 23rd at Grand Rapids Speedway. The series will then head to its three “core tracks” who started it all out Gondik Law Speedway Friday July 24th, ABC Raceway Saturday July 25th, and hopefully capping it all off Sunday July 26th at the Proctor Speedway. So if plans hold true we will have seven nights of great Super Stock action in ten days. It a monumental task for these drivers but I feel they are up to the challenge said McCauley. We will again be contacting drivers from all over WISSOTA country to make sure as many of those talented drivers attend as many races as possible to showcase their talents. We hope to drag a few of those Dakota guys over for a few laps this year, and with the amount of racing they can get in during a short amount of time we just may get a few. We set some goals again this year and we hope to achieve a few of them, of course we always want more drivers to compete so we hope to break both the single track record of 52 drivers and the series record of 75 different drivers. And lastly we are in hopes of trying to make sure that the drivers who support this series bring home at least $500 for competing at all of the events not including their individual track purse payouts, whether inside or outside the top 15 in points.
The Series is excited to hopefully have both of these new tracks Princeton and Grand Rapids on board for 2020. The Series was also contacted by two additional tracks outside of the two areas we already race at. The question was set out to the drivers what they would like to do, expand the series to a third weekend or possibly spread out the series throughout the year as other series have done. Our drivers, who I respect their advice were mixed but the majority of the drivers wanted to keep the series to two quick weekends back to back so they only had to worry about missing their home track racing for a short period. The Series was very proud to be approached by both of those new tracks and humbled that we had gained the notoriety that tracks want to bring our drivers to compete at their facilities. For the record both of the proposed tracks were not WISSOTA Super Stock Sanction tracks! Additional tracks since have also contacted the series concerning bringing races to their facilities but with the current request of the majority of the drivers we will keep the existing format of two weekends intact for 2020.
Article Credit: Dennis McCauley
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