Shawano Speedway
Era ending as Shawano champ parks his No. 66
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Ron Berna celebrates a Dirt Kings victory. (Chad Marquardt)
As a young man at Shawano (Wis.) Speedway, Ron Berna had a hard time envisioning that he'd be racing until he was nearly 60 years old. In a previous generation during the glory days of the track's potent Big Three — Terry Anvelink, M.J. McBride and Pete Parker — Berna was a fresh-faced racer impressed by the old guard.
"I remember back when I was a kid and watching Parker and M.J. McBride race (and) Parker was thirty-something years in it, too," Berna recalled. "I was like. 'I'm never gonna do that. I'll never race that long.' And here it is. It's kind of funny."
Indeed the 57-year-old Abrams, Wis., driver of the No. 66 Late Model recently decided to retire, meaning Shawano's half-mile oval is losing a loyal driver who owns 12 championships, the most in the history of the 79-year-old facility. In nearly 40 years of racing, 30 of them in the Late Model division, Berna has been a fixture at Shawano and among the favorite drivers at the sprawling oval.
"Every year we've been talking about (retiring) and then we just seem to move on to another year," said Berna, saying health concerns for he and crew members, expenses and time with grandkids factored into the decision. "It was just getting harder and harder and we're getting older and older, you know, try to keep that car going. It's money and everything. It's just time to maybe do something else, you know. It's just been almost 40 years for me."
Summer Saturdays won't be the same for Berna, who scored nearly 100 multidivision victories over his career, the lion's share of them at Shawano along with his richest career victories, back-to-back $5,000 triumphs in 2005-06's Indian Summer Classic at Langlade County Speedway in Antigo, Wis. Along with nine Late Model titles at Shawano, the most recent in 2023, Berna was also a three-time points runner-up on Wisconsin's Wabam Dirt Kings Tour. He'll miss being behind the wheel.
"The driving part of it was always the best part of it," said Berna, who operates Action Auto Sales & Repair with his brother John. "Getting there and keeping everything running was always the hard part, but when I got to drive, that was always my highlight. I'll miss that part of it. And the people, you know, at Shawano, we were always out in front where the grandstand was and I talk to the people right across the fence ... I could walk up to the fence and talk to them, so I'll miss that part of it, too."
Berna's 2024 campaign started after heart treatment for atrial fibrillation, but as it was for so many years at Shawano, he was quickly back in the groove at a track that "Rocket Ron" says he could navigate blindfolded.
"For me, it's like riding a bicycle, the same thing every year," he said. "For a lot of years, most of my life I (raced), so it was pretty easy no matter what sickness I had throughout the years. I could get in that car and that would cure it."
While he ran many Wisconsin tracks, his loyalty to Shawano "was just a routine that we got so used to doing," Berna added. "We had a lot of fans there. I think that was part of it, and it's kind of close by for me. Like Seymour or Luxemburg or 141, they didn't run Late Models that much, so Shawano dedicated every Saturday night, so we kind of just got in that groove of doing that and just kinda kept doing it I guess. Sometimes a guy don't sit down and think about what (you do), you just keep doing it."
Berna is grateful to steadfast crew members over the years including Jim Kibilowski, who missed three weeks last season after having a kidney removed, and 70-year-old stepbrother Steve Machuirck, whose interest had waned in recent years. Berna's nephew Ray Berna had the enthusiasm to continue, and Kibilowski pitched the idea of cutting back to part-time racing, but Berna wasn't interested.
"It's hard enough to be competitive when you run every single weekend and then you start missing here, missing there, you're not gonna really, to me, you're not gonna get better unless unless you're really on top of it. It's hard to do that," Berna said. "We put too much time in the car and too much money into it to say we're gonna race once in a while."
Berna's pursuit of titles is a throwback to a long-ago era at Shawano, said Bob Schafer, a longtime official, publisher and racing historian from Oshkosh, Wis.
"When he started racing 40 years ago, track championships meant a lot. And 30 years ago they still meant a lot," Schafer said. "That championship thing has kind of gone away, but it never seemed to leave him. Which I give him credit for, because that's a lot of time and effort to be there every week. To come prepared, plus chase other Dirt Kings races or whatever it may be, but he always made Shawano as part of his realm and you're not gonna find that anymore with anybody that's under 30 years old. It's just not gonna happen. That's long gone and it'll be hugely missed, I think."
Bert Lehman, a former McBride crew member and longtime columnist and racing publicist at Shawano, witnessed most of Berna's successful career.
"Berna, back in his earlier days, he wasn't afraid to ruffle some feathers. Let's just put it that way. He kind of mellowed a bit as he got older," Lehman said. "He didn't have seasons where he had 10 feature wins and that sort of thing, but he was just consistently up front (but while) other drivers would travel to other tracks on a Saturday night to race at a special or something, Berna was pretty loyal to Shawano and was there weekly."
With Berna's retirement and 69-year-old Shawano racer Tom Naeyaert, who grabbed a Late Model triumph last season at Outagamie Speedway in Seymour, Wis., also stepping away after a lengthy career, it marks the "ending of an era" at Shawano, Lehman said. It was Naeyaert and his 1999 Late Model title at Shawano that broke the dominance of Shawano's Big Three, ending an 18-year stretch of consecutive titles for McBride, Parker or Anvelink.
"I think all Late Model fans in northeast Wisconsin knew that the day was coming where the older guard would start retiring," Lehman said. "And so we weren't looking forward to the day when Tom Naeyaert and Ron Berna and some of the other older drivers retire. I think for true Late Models in this area, there's a little bit of apprehension about who's gonna step step up and and replace them.
"It just seems like, you know, drivers who are successful in other divisions now, they just stay in those divisions. They don't move up to the Late Model division for a variety of reasons."
Terry Anvelink's son Nick Anvelink of Bonduel, Wis., the seven-time Dirt Kings tour champ, remains in his prime and is five victories away from overtaking Parker as the all-time winningest Late Model driver at Shawano, while the the track's elder statesman becomes 58-year-old hometown racer Troy Springborn, who battled Berna throughout his 40-year career.
"It just makes you think, you know, he's stepping back and you know we're probably the same age. So is it my turn to step back? So as the people that you race with for years start stepping away it's like, 'OK am I next? Or am I gonna be next? Or should I be next?' So it leaves a lot of questions," said Springborn, whose sister Jamie is Berna's longtime partner.
"I think about that when we're the oldest guys, me and Troy and Tom," Berna said. "It used to be Gordie Seegert and all them guys. They were all there before I was, and they all finally disappeared and pretty soon I started looking around thinking, 'Jesus, there's only, I think there's three of us left.' They've been doing this so long. You know, altogether, there's just not that many Late Models left anymore either, you know, like Shawano we're lucky if we get seven to eight cars, 10 cars. It's nice for being easier on the car and easier on the drivers, but when we used to have 20 cars and two or three heat races, it was a lot more exciting I think. But I think it's just the way it is.“
Fewer than 30 drivers officially entered at least one Late Model event last season at Shawano with eight drivers competing in at least 10 of the 13 feature races. The track, whose engine rules have largeley mirrored the Dirt Kings circuit, last season announced plans to transition back to WISSOTA-rules Late Models by 2026 and there's been off-and-on discussion in recent years about shortening the half-mile layout.
"Half-miles are tough," Schafer said. "They're a dying breed. To race a car there weekly is extremely difficult."
Berna will move on to his hobby of restoring and modifying hot rods — he’s tinkering with a 1956 Chevy Bel Air and 1928 Ford Model A — but he hopes Late Model racing at Shawano finds a way to successfully move to the next generation.
"It might be some of the other guys I hear coming up (from other divisions), the mod guys," Berna said. "And maybe that'll happen, too, as we disappear, maybe they'll see that maybe they should get involved in that, and that'll help to keep going. You hate to see anything racing die anywhere, you know, that's for sure. So hopefully it all works out in the long run."
