Let’s give a shout out this week to all the great race teams showing up at Lakeside and I-35 Speedways. We come to watch racing and it takes a great team to build a car (motor, tires, suspension, safety equipment) and compete. The drivers get most of the recognition but they will tell you how appreciative they are of the family and friends who support them during the week checking the racecars, working on the racecars, cleaning the racecars, and preparing the racecars. During race season the pit crew becomes the family, meals are shared sometimes in the garage, late nights are put in working on the car even on work/school nights, and camaraderie is developed. Thank you to all the race teams, and if you want to thank them personally they can be found standing on the hillside just coming out of turn 4 at Lakeside and on the catwalk in turns 3 and 4 at I-35 Speedway. So when you see them let them know how much you appreciate their sacrifice of time and energy during the season!

What stands out this past week is the weather – very cool on Friday at Lakeside and very nice on Saturday at I-35 Speedway. However, with that said it was still sweatshirt weather as the sun set at both race tracks. Stick around the Midwest and experience temperature swings of 60 plus degrees on almost any given week. That makes planning for the concession area a chore, do we prepare for lots of hot chocolate and coffee, or do we plan for ice and lots of cold beverages.

We are blessed at both tracks to have great announcers, Bob Libbey at Lakeside Speedway and Rick and Alan Staley at I-35 Speedway. And the announcers can be interchanged if needed which is what occurred this past week as Mr. Libbey had to be out of town. Do you know there is more to their announcing than just calling the races. They are responsible for the pre-race music, the intermission music, the national anthem, and the audio equipment. All the announcers can be found in the pits before the races doing their homework, meeting new drivers, checking on sponsors, any new sponsors someone may want to mention, and finding out all the information they can so they can bring it to us via the public address system. All our announcers enjoy having fun, fun with each other, fun with the officials, fun with the drivers, fun with the track owners, and fun with the pit crews. They end their night heading home to write the press release from the evenings events. So we need to say thank you to our announcers for all they do behind the scenes. Thank them for all the work they do to be the best in the business!

Finally, there are other articles that explain the racing in this program, but both tracks have had some of the best racing. Both tracks have been extremely well prepared. All the classes have had really tight racing, passes for the lead, and late passes for the win which always creates excitement. The racing competition at both tracks is some of the best in the area so congratulations to Terry Schultz, Tim Shields, Mike Higley, Thomas Roberts, Isaac Dotson, Yancy Shepherd, Bobby Lane and Houston Johnson for their wins.