The Wolverine Justin Vogel of Brooten moved a step closer to clinching his second Dirt Race Central Street Stock Tour title by grabbing the feature win Friday night at Jamestown Speedway. Jamestown is hosting the final two nights of the tour this weekend. I figured there would be around 25 Wissota Streets on hand, so I was disappointed only 19 were on hand, especially with Brown County Speedway in Aberdeen off this week. But the quality was there with a good amount of the f

Contending for wins and top five finishes in the INEX Legends class locally is difficult because of the deep field of competition at tracks in the Red River Valley. Shawn Dement of Fargo sees this first hand. The 42-year-old, in his third year in the class, and has raced at Fix It Forward Speedway, Norman County Raceway, Jamestown Speedway, Dacotah Speedway in Mandan and Buffalo River Speedway near Glyndon. In 12 starts this year he has five top 10 finishes with a best feat

Brennan Schmidt’s 32B Wissota Midwest Modified had been running well, often in the top five, through the month of June. He was craving a feature win. Then came July. He won three features in July, all at his hometown track of Bemidji Speedway, and has continued the consistent finishes in the top five. In 24 starts this year, he’s finished in the top five 17 times. “The season has been great, very consistent in the top five and podiums compared to previous years,” said Sch

The Dirt Race Central Street Stock Tour invaded the Casino Speedway in Watertown on Sunday night on a nice summer evening. After battling weather much of the summer the 1/4-mile Bullring was finally blessed with good weather. Justin Vogel of Brooten entered the night as the DRC Street Stock Tour point leader with Cody Kummer of Medford, Wis., six points back. While it was a good night for Vogel, it was not for Kummer, who ended up as DNF after a crash in turn four. It was

River Cities Speedway was back in action on Friday with 79 cars on hand, led by 22 Wissota Midwest Modifieds. The Wissota Street Stock feature quickly turned into a three-car fight at the front between Greg Jose of Grand Forks, Trey Hess of Grand Forks and Cole Greseth of Harwood. Hess, who is driving Rodney Hulst’s 49 machine this season, grabbed the lead with 18 laps to go. A spin brought out the first caution and the second came out before all the cars could even take

An afternoon rain shower threw a wrench into Norman County Raceway’s show on Thursday night, but after some time working the moisture the show went on. Things got started about 45 minutes late at NCR as it took time to work the track. The track was muddy and had a couple of holes, which was not unexpected after the rain. Those type of tracks are not easy to pass on. Some new faces found victory lane on Thursday – one for the first time in five years while another won his fi

Dairy farming has been a constant in the Lund family for decades. The other is dirt-track racing. Long-time Larry Lund started the racing tradition, way back in 1982 at Viking Speedway in Alexandria. He ran in the Sportsman class for many years before transitioning to the super stock class in the 1990s. Lund was inducted into the Viking Speedway Hall of Fame in 2025, and is a two-time track champion at the half mile. He was also named Sportsman of the Year at the track tw

Dale Mittleider spent many years helping Mike Mund with his race car at Sheyenne Speedway in Lisbon. About a decade ago, he decided it was time to hop behind the wheel himself. “I was working for Mike Mund, and I just started coming to the races when we was racing,” Mittleider said. “I helped him out the pits enough years; I figured if I had to be at the races, I might as well race myself.” He jumped into the class that has been known as Mini Stocks, Hornets and Short Tra

The Dirt Race Central Street Stock Tour entered the week with eight different winners in eight different races. Saturday night that changed. Friday’s tour feature was called off because of rain, so it was made up as part of Saturday’s program with Huron’s Jayden Bogh and Princeton’s Tommy Pogones leading the field to green. This turned into a heck of a race over the final few laps. Defending national champion Kolton Brauer of Eyota suffered a problem before the green eve

Fix It Forward Speedway in West Fargo was back in action for the first time since July 3 with a strong 109-car field on hand. Some familiar faces found victory lane while one driver won his first career feature, and another claimed her first IMCA sprint feature win. The weather looked grim for a while and there were a few sprinkles, but the storms stayed to the south and west. Between the fair and the layoff, I was wondering what the track would be like. The track had some

I think almost every driver I’ve interviewed, and its at 300, says something like this: I grew up watching races at _______. It could be Viking, Buffalo River, Red River Valley, Jamestown, Lisbon or whatever track that driver went to as a kid. For me, that comes down to two tracks in western Minnesota. Madison was the primary one, but the other was about 21 miles to the south, in Canby, Minn.. I think my first race was at Canby, maybe 5-6 years old, when my dad still race

Scott Oeltjen of Villard already has a track championship in his young racing career, but he is still chasing something he wants even more. “I want a win,” Oeltjen said. “I want to get that monkey off my back. That’s all luck.” Oeltjen has raced in the Wissota Midwest Modifieds since 2020, racing mainly at I-94 EMR Speedway in Fergus Falls and Viking Speedway in Alexandria. He won the 2025 track championship at I-94 last year. The 24-year-old, like many in racing, star

This has been a bizarre week, to put it mildly, in the racing world. One track’s financial situation is so dire that some drivers are giving their winnings back to the track so they can run next week; a track owner/promoter being seriously injured in a side-by-side mishap (good news is he will recover); and of course, there’s ALWAYS some off-track drama playing out on facebook that I choose to ignore in this blog. We wish James Trantina well in his recovery (owner of I-94,

He’s raced in several different classes in his career, but Austin Veralrud feels he’s found a home in the B modified class. Veralrud has raced hornets, pure stocks, and even dabbled briefly in the A mod class. He actually has two cars – an IMCA Sport Mod and a Wissota Midwest Modified – that he races locally at tracks such as Fix It Forward Speedway, Norman County Raceway in Ada, Buffalo River Speedway near Glyndon and I-94 EMR Speedway in Fergus Falls. “I feel like thi

Casino Speedway was back in action with 66 cars on hand. It was the second show in four nights for the Watertown track, which hosted an USMTS show on Thurssday. The final checkered flag waved at 8:58 p.m., a great job by Casino officials and drivers. As I said, I will compliment racing programs that run efficiently and are done in a good time, and this was one of those nights. But I won’t hesitate to point out shows that I think run way too long because of a lack of urgency

Buffalo River Speedway near Glyndon hosted the Midwest Sprint Touring Series which concluded a three-day swing in the area. Jack Dover of Springfield, Neb., was the class of the 410 field from the green flag. The IMCA RaceSaver sprints also had 20 cars on hand along with 10 Lightning Sprints and seven IMCA Stock Cars. Dover roared out front of the MSTS feature with Mark Dobmeier of Grand Forks chasing him. Christopher Thram of Sanborn was third, and Jade Hastings of Grand

The Dirt Race Central Street Stock Tour moved to Fiesta City Speedway in Montevideo on Friday with 25 Wissota Street Stocks signed in. Because of the heat, Fiesta City moved its start time back by a half hour in order to save some of the sun’s impact on the track. On their Facebook page, FCS was looking to run a quick show to get fans out of there at a good time. Instead, the opposite happened. It was a long night, in large part due to several cautions, and a big wreck in

The Dirt Race Central Street Stock Tour made a stop at KRA Speedway in Willmar on Thursday with a quality field on hand. The tour had not had a repeat winner yet this year – and that trend continued on Thursday. How would I describe the race? Cautions. Eventful. A call that puzzled me. A wild final few laps. I hate to say a race was decided by the redraw, but when Keith Tourville re-drew the No. 1, I figured that was real bad news for the field. Tourville, from Janesvil

Adrian Kubitz sometimes spends three nights a week at the racetrack. But only one of those is behind the wheel of a race car. Kubitz races the No. 84 Wissota Hornet Sunday nights at Buffalo River Speedway near Glyndon. The other two nights? He is driving a tow truck for Fargo-Moorhead Towing at Norman County Raceway in Ada and Fix It Forward Speedway in West Fargo. Kubitz even helps with the tow truck at Buffalo River when he’s not racing. It certainly provides a differen

Tony Smith had a different hobby before hopping into a race car nearly a decade ago: bull riding. “I loved it. I was really good at that,” said the Jamestown resident. “I’m an adrenaline junkie.” He gave up bull riding in his early 20s, and a torn groin ended his comeback years later. His need for an adrenaline rush led him to stock-car racing; he started in the Bomber class at Jamestown in 2017. Smith started out in the Bombers at Jamestown in 2017 and moved into the