Lucas Punkari
One of the biggest factors that helps make the top race drivers become the very best in their level is the amount of seat time they get during a season.
So when the Emo Speedway wraps up its schedule in early September, a number of locals head out to many of the year-end specials around the area, such as the “Thunder in the Pines” two-day event this past weekend in Grand Rapids, Mn.
“The competition at these events are really nice, and if you can run strong here you’re doing really well overall,” noted Fort Frances native Kyle Gavel, who races a Late Model at the Hibbing Raceway on a regular basis.
“For example, if you beat a guy like Jeff Provinzino here on the track, and then you watch him when he goes to Arizona and finishes in second against the guys who race on the World of Outlaws tour, it makes you think that you can be there, too, if everything went right,” he reasoned.
“It feels good when you race against guys like that,” Gavel added.
“There are about five of those guys who race the touring guys on a regular basis here this weekend, and when you pass them on the track it’s a really nice feeling.”
In some cases, though, local drivers can be quite familiar with a different surrounding, which is the case for Midwest Modified pilot Christopher Leek.
“We run here in Grand Rapids every Thursday during the season, along with racing in Emo on Saturday,” said Leek, who won the track championship at his hometown facility for the second-straight year.
“Even though they are both 3/8th-mile ovals, it’s definitely way slicker here than it is at Emo,” he stressed.
“And you have a lot of traffic with the Late Models and the Super Stock classes, so the track dries up a lot when there is a lot of rubber down on it.”
The differences between each track, while it might not seem obvious to the naked eye, is one of the biggest factors a driver has to contend with if he wants to be successful at a variety of facilities.
“Every track has its complications and its challenges,” Gavel explained.
“At Hibbing, it’s the same size as it is here in Grand Rapids but it’s very dry,” he noted. “And this track here is really loose and it’s hard to get a hold of sometimes.
“When I went to Emo earlier this year to go and shake the car down in a couple of hot lap sessions, I had a phenomenal hook-up with this car and the front end was hiked up right up off the ground,” Gavel recalled.
“That was a very fast track to run the car on that night while here in Grand Rapids, you have to be slow and smooth out there.”
While out-of-town drivers usually are trying to find that right package to get around the track, those who run on a regular basis at the facility usually are the ones that you have to beat, which presents another interesting challenge.
“That’s probably the biggest thing that I enjoy out of racing elsewhere,” said local Midwest Modified driver Cody Ossachuk.
“I find the only way that you can learn as a driver is from going elsewhere to race, as you can get used to having the same set-up and racing against the same guys if you just stay at home all the time,” he reasoned.
“You get to meet a lot of new guys when you come to a place like this, and you also get chance to test your skills against some of the top guys in the area,” the Pinewood native added.
However, there always is the danger that your car could be damaged while running far away from home, which is what happened to Leek during the WISSOTA 100 in Huron, S.D. earlier this month.
“I had two cars roll over right in front of me during a race and I had nowhere to go in that situation,” he recalled
“It’s safe to say that I’ve seen more roll-overs this year running at different tracks than I have in my entire life, but it’s been interesting and a pretty good experience to run elsewhere,” he added.
