Madison was a track I had been to several times before. I always enjoyed seeing the compet
Everything is there for success, they just have to find a set of rules and a class structure that will appeal to the teams, and then stick with it to encourage better attendance. Many tracks struggle with this and along the way on this Tour, we have uncovered various methods and tricks that other tracks have developed that have enhanced their programs. We will be sharing that information as we write about each track visit.
One thing I liked here at Madison was that the Legends class ran the shorter infield course instead of the half-mile track. I think that was both more entertaining and safer. Some tracks like Madison are too long and fast for these types of cars. They have a high power to weight ratio and can attain very high speeds. But the chassis may not be well suited for high speed impacts with concrete walls in my opinion.
In some of the classes, we saw some interesting cars. One of the late models had a true Camaro looking body on it and one of the Sportsman cars had a station wagon body style. He actually won his race in that car. It’s kind of cool to see different body styles racing in these events and I think the fans feel the same way.
The 81 car of T.J. Goldade is clad in a great looking Camaro body. We need to see more of these cars that look like current or true Late Model street cars. The “late models” we see more of don’t resemble the stock car at all. Remember, we featured a car on the cover of CT a few years ago built by Bobby Wilberg that had a Dodge Challenger body over a stock clip Sportsman chassis. It was a hit at that time and ran here at Madison.
The Mid-American Stock Car Series was here on a scheduled appearance for their tour. This series is a very cool sanction for sportsman car type of racing where you can bring your car to different racetracks, not spend a fortune doing that and receive a fair set of rules that allow for different engine packages and somewhat body styles.
The show was well run and everything ran on schedule. The racing was over at 10 p.m., something other tracks seems to struggle with. Most attendees, including both fans and racers, want to get home at a decent hour. Having an event run late is hard on everyone.
We were especially glad to have the opportunity to retire before midnight because we had a 305-mile run to our race the next day at Elko Speedway. And that is a convenient segue into speaking of the next issue of our Tour report for next month’s CT.
The next race is indeed at Elko Speedway located just south of the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, metropolis and we then travel east the following day all the way across the state of Wisconsin to Slinger Speedway. It’s a high-banked and very fast quarter-mile racetrack that I have wanted to see for some time now, having spoken with many of the racers who run there over the past few years.
That will conclude our four racetrack run in four days and then we are off to a few more Wisconsin tracks and adventures before heading west for Montana. We are learning a lot so far and we will be sharing those lessons with you as we do our monthly report. I thought the Michigan and Wisconsin regions would be the greatest learning experience for us this year, but I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw when we moved farther west.
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This Sportsman class car at Madison was built to look like a station wagon and was a big h
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There were plenty of Legends cars racing at Madison. They ran on a smaller infield track a
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The track at Madison was technical and here we see the No. 25 Late Model team going over n