National notebook
Notes: Activities aplenty at Dairyland Showdown
Mississippi Thunder Speedway. (Tim Hunt)
When Mississippi Thunder Speedway promoter Tyrone Lingenfelter and his team created the Dairyland Showdown in 2021, he knew it would be a marquee event for the World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series. What he didn’t realize was how fast the event at the Fountain City, Wis., track would grow.
In two years, the event has gone from a two-day show to an three-day showcase and one of the WoO’s richest weekends of the season. May 4-6’s third annual Dairyland Showdown will pay a total weekend purse of $264,000, including Saturday's $50,000-to-win finale. That Saturday winner’s share, first paid in 2022 after the $22,500-to-win finale a year earlier, was among Lingenfelter’s initial goals.
“I shouldn’t say I didn’t think we’d get to this point. I just didn’t know how fast it would be,” Lingenfelter said. “Our goal was to someday get to $50,000-to-win. It’s pretty cool that we could do that in the second year already.
“I think it just goes out as a thank you to the fans and drivers that have supported the event. It’s grown every single year. We get more campers each year. Our driver count went up the first two years, and I expect it to go up even more again this year.”
While racing highlights the three-day event, it’s only the beginning of what fans can expect.
One aspect that's grown since the event's inception is camping, which has led to more activities to supplement the on-track action.
“The camping aspect gives you the opportunity to have a guaranteed fan base because they’re there all weekend long,” Lingenfelter said. “It’s part of the reason we started doing all of the events we have. We have the golf tournament, the cornhole tournament, and the wine tour. We want to make sure everyone that comes here for the weekend gets the biggest bang for their buck, not just on the track but off.
“I think the biggest way of doing that is keeping everybody busy all weekend long.”
While many racing events across the country have activities such as golf and cornhole, the geography of the Wisconsin-Minnesota border allows for a rare wine tour. It’s the second year, fans can enjoy a tour of the area's wineries, giving them another option while they wait for racing to start.
“The wine tour was actually Hailey Towner’s idea,” Lingenfelter said. “She works in the office with us. We have a couple of wineries that are pretty close by. It seemed like a really good idea. Last year was the first year of it, and it went really well and this year we’ve already got more people signed up.
“It seems to be well-received by a lot of drivers. It’s like, ‘Hey, my wife wants to come along, and now she’s got something she’s looking forward to on Saturday.’ That’s where I think we’ve gotten the most uptick from fans.”
The racing and off-track activities allowed for the Dairyland Showdown to grow to where it is in its third year. But Lingenfelter and his crew are also excited because fans in the upper Midwest can start their season off with a bang, he said.
“People are going to get the opportunity to come out right off the bat and see a big $50,000-to-win show,” Lingenfelter said. “The World of Outlaws Late Models, the best drivers in the country, are going to be in their backyard, and I’m just pleased that we’re the ones to be able to host it.
“We’ve had a lot of anticipation. A lot of things we’ve been working up to. It’s pretty exciting for us to be able to start things off with a bang. It’s almost like our Daytona 500.” — Mike Warren
RUSH rookies
Starting the season with a bumper crop of rookie drivers, the Hovis Auto & Truck Supply RUSH Racing Series presented by Born2Run Lubricants expects to have 14 newcoming Crate Late Model regulars, including six teenagers.
The youngest new member to the division is 13-year-old Brock Pinkerous of Ellenville, N.Y., who plans to follow RUSH’s tour and made two starts in the season-opening Battle by the Bay action. The seventh-grader previously competed in slingshots and sportsman modifieds and is driving a Crate Late Model owned by his father Paul Pinkerous and wrenched by veteran Russ King, the team’s crew chief.
"Our goal is to be competitive and hopefully get some top-five finishes, as well as win one or two,” Paul Pinkerous said. “He goes to school, then to baseball practice, the gym to workout, and then home to do his homework. Mentally, he is more committed than I’ve ever seen him before.”
Among other first-year Crate Late Model racers with RUSH, which is scheduled to sanction events among 26 Northeastern dirt tracks in various divisions:
• Jarrett Edwards, 16, of Mechanicsville, Md., is a former gokart champion and has received support from former NASCAR driver Hermie Sadler.
• Brian Huchko, 35, of Coraopolis, Pa., has been racing 16 seasons in the hobby stock, pro stock and open-wheel modified divisions. He won the 2010 hobby stock title at Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Motor Speedway.
• Devin Kaiser, 16, of Winchester, Va., is piloting the Will and Ann Marie Beverlin-owned No. 11 and already has a runner-up finish at his home track. He’s a sophomore at James Wood High School and was a four-time winner in the hobby stock division last season.
• Frank Magill, 19, of Clairton, Pa., previously competed in the four-cylinder division and made a few Crate Late Model starts last year. His car is owned by parents Frank and Kelly Magill with his father serving as crew chief and younger brother Tony as a crew member.
• Tristin Neiderer, 18, of Landisville, Pa., whose father Larry Neiderer has competed in the Super Late Model division since 2015. The younger Neiderer, a senior at Hempfield High School who plans on attending Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., won’t be able to race full time in 2023 because of a recent injury he suffered while playing lacrosse.
• Other RUSH newcomers: Lane Brock of Bruceton Mills, W.Va.; Allen Clark of Moundsville, W.Va.; Derrick Garner of Huntingdon, Pa.; Darryll Hoon of Berlin Center, Ohio; Cody Koteles of Pittsburgh, Pa.; Adam Nixon of Woodland, Pa.; Marshall O’Brian of Addison, N.Y.; and Bailey Tolson of Forest Hill, Md. — Doug Kennedy
Odds and ends
The purse for May 20’s Roscoe Smith Classic at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway on the Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series has been boosted to $10,044-to-win (up from an originally scheduled $5,000 winner’s purse). … Cade Dillard of Robeline, La., is parking his Black Diamond Chassis with plans to field a Longhorn Chassis in May 4-6’s World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series action at Mississippi Thunder Speedway. … Saturday’s portion of the Jayhawk Classic at Lakeside Speedway, which pays $10,000-to-win for Malvern Bank-Hoker Trucking tour competitors, is the half-mile Kansas City, Kan., oval’s richest Super Late Model event since 2017’s WoO race won by Brandon Sheppard. … Tickets and camping reservations are available for Carl Short’s 43rd annual General Tire Dirt Track World Championship presented by ARP by visiting eldoraspeedway.com.
