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

Track officials, drivers and fans braved the heat for Buffalo River Speedway's Sunday night program. I am not going to analyze car counts in weather like this, but I admire the 50 cars who came to race and the fans who showed up, too. I know some tracks cancelled because of the heat warning, and I can’t blame them for that. But Buffalo River, which isn’t running every week this summer, decided to make a go of it. Buffalo River does have one advantage – an air-conditioned b

Now that we've hit the halfway point of the racing season, I have some things on my mind that I'd like to clear out: --Congrats to Jonny Carter of Lisbon who won the Dakota Classic Modified Tour IMCA Stock Car championship this past week. Carter topped Bock Beeter of Minot by 12 points for the win. In the five features contested (Williston’s features rained out), Carter had one win, four top fives and finished in the top 10 all five nights. Jonny is a good guy, and one

The Dirt Race Central Street Stock Tour was back at Rice Lake Speedway on Saturday night with 23 cars in attendance. Since the tour is a presenting sponsor, my goal is to cover as many shows as I can, in-person or remotely. Entering the night there were five different winners in five nights of the tour, including Jeff Ekdahl winning Friday at Red Cedar Speedway. Heading into the Rice Lake race, former tour champion, Wolverine Justin Vogel, led Kummer by six points with Jeff

I-94 EMR Speedway was back in action on a warm Friday night. Between rainouts, scheduled off-nights and trying to get to other area tracks, it had been since May that I had been to the 3/8-mile oval in Fergus Falls. The track had some character after the rain this week, leading to the blade coming out at intermission. It was improved for the feature and there was some good racing; there were also a lot of cautions in some of the features. If I have an issue with I-94, it

For more than 30 years, there has been at least one Hellerman on the racetrack at Viking Speedway in Alexandria. It started with Bryan Hellerman of Parkers Prairie, who began racing in the Sportsman class in the early 1990s; he’s been a fixture in the Wissota Super Stock class ever since. For a while, his children, Ben and Brooke Hellerman, shared a Wissota Midwest Modified fpr a few years; Brooke is now entering her 22nd season behind the wheel of the 2H. “People and en

It may be difficult for Todd Stark to ever duplicate the consistency he had on the racetrack in 2025. Or any driver to do it, for that matter. He won three track championships – at Casino Speedway in Watertown, Brown County Speedway in Aberdeen and Miller Central Speedway. According to myracepass, Stark finished in the top 10 in 31 of his 33 starts. He had 28 top fives and six feature wins. “Statistically, it was our best year,” said the Watertown resident. “We were a mo

Jamestown Speedway held action on Saturday night as part of July 4, with a fireworks show set after the races. If you read this blog, you know I can’t stand longer-than-necessary race programs. But to be fair I need recognize when shows are done in a quick time, too – and Jamestown was done in less than three hours on Saturday, a great job by track officials and drivers. And it set up perfect for the folks who were driving up to the fairgrounds to check out the fireworks (I