Season opener thoughts...

Went to Shawano last night to give a hand to Adam Janke on opening night.

He has a new crew chief helping him... came from Terry Phillips crew. Sure seems to know the cars and set-ups.

The sound of race engines and the smell of race gas and methanol was pretty sweet.

Good weather and a great crowd on hand... must have been 2,000 plus. Plenty of racers, too. 18 supers, two bmains for the IMCA mods, two for the sport mods, stock cars and one for the four bangers. Likely 100 cars or more.

The track was ok... a little bumpy in one and two but the crew graded and did a bit of watering to try to fix it. Plenty dusty but with all the rain we've had I would bet they were pretty lenient with the water this week.

Gravity Park over in Chilton, WI got there first ever show in this weekend. Heard they had a good turnout of cars and fans. Hoping for the best for that new operation.

Can't do anything except get better.

Sounds like dirt racing in Wisconsin is alive and well. Good the hear!

Enjoyed my Wisconsin racing experiences; Cedar Lake of course, Rice Lake, Eagle Valley, Red Cedar, Oshkosh, and Luxembourg are the ones I recall. Never made it to Shawano.

Every time I see Pete Parker helping Paul at the track I think, "Man, he's gotta still have another win or two in him." From what I remember of the results in the old racing papers back in the day, Pete was the king in Wisconsin. I remember seeing a bounty or two out on him.

Which track was sort of a tri-oval? Seymour, or Shawano? I never went to either, but I think the track's shape was part of their logo.

Tri-oval was Mississippi Thunder, Fountain City WI, they reconfigured it to a std oval quite awhile ago.

Seymour was a tri-oval also. Now has traditional shape.

When Seymour shortened up to a 1/3 mile there was a light pole in the way on the backstretch that wasn't moved because of the cost so it was sort of a trip-oval. They fixed that several years ago. BTW the speedway is now called Outagamie Speedway and is run by the venerable Eastern Wisconsin Stock Car club.

Seymour went to a tri-oval layout around 1987 or so. That was a neat track but in the hairpin (corners 3 and 4) it had a pretty bad hole. A few years later in the mid to late 90's it was reconfigured slightly. Still a tri-oval but the hairpin was widened out and that corner was more of a sweeping turn instead of a tight paperclip type of deal. Now it's a 1/3 mile.

More than any other NE WI track Pete Parker was unbeatable on that original tri-oval. Russ Scheffler and Terry Anvelink would give him a run but Pete was dominant. Because of that hole in the hairpin some guys opted not to run there regularly but MJ McBride and Chuck Buckbee were two guys who were always a threat when they showed up.

The last time I saw Pete run in a race (he's hot lapped a few times since) was a few years ago at Oshkosh and then a week or two later in a special at Seymour. It wasn't the Pete of old....no real need to elaborate on it much farther than that except he was getting in the way of guys when he was getting lapped.

When that Seymour track was a half mile it was something else. Tight corners and long, long straightaways. The old wooden grandstand would shake when Terry Anvelink was running his big block. If you are there and squint just a little bit you can still tell how the half mile sat at that place. My nephew runs an IMCA mod and one night at Seymour I pointed out where 3 and 4 were on that half mile. He couldn't believe it and then wondered what type of gear you would run in today's cars on something like that. Shawano is considered a half mile but if memory serves me correctly it's a half mile in the middle of the track. Seymour was a half mile on the inside fence. Antigo is a half mile 90 feet inside of the inside fence.