Lucas Punkari
The recent mild spell has been a pleasant sight for many people looking forward to summer, but there might not be anyone more excited to see the snow starting to melt than Borderland Racing Association promoter Anthony Leek.
Leek has been keeping an eye on the recent weather conditions here and feels things are looking good to start getting the Emo Speedway ready for the 2011 racing season, which is scheduled to begin on Saturday, May 21.
“One thing I’ve been doing is [going] out to the track and see the progression of the snow going down on the track,” Leek noted.
“When you have a track that is as banked as ours, the water just drains down and the snow slides down along with it.
“So we’re hoping to have everything gone by at least the second week of April so we can start to work on things,” he added.
Among those things is adding new lights along the frontstretch, which would replace the current system that has been in use since 1986.
“They’ve been up there for quite a long time now, and they really just produce more heat than they do actual light,” Leek remarked.
“It’s more of a yellow lighting on the frontstretch as opposed to the rest of the track, which had new lighting about six or seven years ago.
“It takes time to get everything set up in how do it, and we’ve been planning it for a couple of years now, so we figure it’s about time to get things done,” he stressed.
Other planned changes to the grounds itself include seeing more gravel added to the recently-extended pits on the backstretch, which would include a culvert being put in there to help with drainage, along with adding some new clay to the go-kart track in the infield, which Leek expects many big things for in 2011.
“There’s some new people getting involved with the go-kart track this year as we have some of the older members who have had their kids grown up getting out of it, which is no different than hockey, really,” Leek reasoned.
“We’ll be working really closely in helping to get some awareness for the Friday program, especially since in the last few years a couple of drivers [Matt Mutz and Carlee Bosma] have moved up from the karting ranks to run on the big track now every Saturday,” he said.
As for the race program, the biggest change for the upcoming season is in the WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds, which has had its rear suspension being limited to a three-link suspension as opposed to the four-link one that is used in the faster WISSOTA Modifieds.
“A basic explanation of that is that in the Modifieds, a four-link suspension allows for more adjustability on the rear suspension and also for a lot more steering control on the back end,” Leek explained.
“In the Midwest Mods, a three-link suspension means they are much more limited into how much they can adjust on the rear end, but it won’t lead to much of a change into their overall speed,” he added.
Schedule-wise, Leek cited two events on this year’s calendar that he’s looking forward to—the Canada Day show on Friday, July 1 and the return of the Super Trucks from Winnipeg on Saturday, Aug. 6.
“The trucks put on an awesome show last year, and to this day I still hear from fans talking about how much they enjoyed it,” Leek said.
“On Canada Day, there will be no one racing within a five-and-a-half hour radius, so we’re hoping to draw some out-of-town drivers along with some American fans that wouldn’t normally be here,” he remarked.
“And we’re also working with a number of groups in Emo to help make this show bigger than ever before.”
Before the season-opener on May 21, the association will be hosting its annual work bee to clean up the Emo Speedway on May 7, followed by a practice session May 14, which will run from 5:30 p.m. until sundown.
