Jamestown's Michel progressing in competitive Wissota Midwest Modified class.

tombergie01
Sep 16
3 min read

For Aaron Michel of Jamestown, the appeal of racing isn’t just the competition on the track. It’s also trying to get the race car to work each week.

“It’s the challenge of figuring out the setup,” said Michel, who pilots the #62 Wissota Midwest Modified. “It’s always trying to get that little bit better. Every week, there’s so many (adjustments) one can do.”

Michel, who races at Jamestown Speedway and Sheyenne Speedway, plans to race at the annual Jamestown Speedway Stock Car Stampede this week, which is scheduled for Friday. He’s been in the Wissota Midwest Modified class for a decade. Over the past three seasons he’s recorded six feature wins in the competitive division.

Aaron Michel’s dad, Todd, raced years ago in several different classes and that sparked the interest in Michel hopping into a go-kart when he was younger.

“Dad had been racing since the 1980s; I’ve been around it my whole life,” Michel said.

Michel’s brother was racing a hornet, and he decided to follow suit.

“It looked like it was fun, and they weren’t all that expensive,” Michel said. “I decided to build on one day and go racing.”

He won his first hornet feature in 2012 – he still has the trophy – and decided to bypass the Bomber class to make the jump into the Wissota Midwest Modified class. At that time in Jamestown, car counts were high, and just making the A main was difficult.

“When I first got into it there were about 40 cars a night,” Michel said. “It was hard to make the main event; there were two B mains every night. It took me until Labor Day to make a show that year. It was pretty good competition.”

There was an adjustment going from the front-wheel drive hornet to the Wissota Midwest Modified class.

“it was totally different how it drove through the corner,” Michel said.

In his second year on the Wissota Midwest Modified class, he started recording heat wins, but it took a while to get his first feature win in the class. After several years of trying, he broke through on June 10, 2023 for his first feature win at Jamestown.

“It felt like a relief. Dad and I had worked a lot of years just to get a win,” Michel said. “Finally getting one, it says ‘we can do it.’ We do all the setup ourselves.”

The 2023 season was his best of his career with three wins and nine top fives.

“That was a pretty good year,, but even that year it seemed we were pretty sporadic,” Michel said. “It was hit and miss.”

In 2024 he had one win and 11 top five finishes in 24 starts. But his highlight may have come in September when he finished 10^th at the Wissota 100, where more than 80 cars competed.

This year, Michel won at Sheyenne Speedway for the first time on July 24, and followed with another win on Aug. 16.

“It was another big relief we could finally win there,” Michel said. “In 2023 I felt like I was figuring out how to get around that track. I just drove in the fast lane to start with and ending up winning.”

A year after the top 10 finish at the Wissota 100 at I-94 EMR Speedway, things didn’t go as well for Michel this past week as he didn’t qualify for the feature.

“There were a lot of good guys and we were just not fast,” Michel said. "They definitely show you how to race. We took the same car there last year and we finished 10^th. You have to be fast, and we weren’t.”

While he does have the two feature wins this year, he has accomplished, so far, another goal for the season.

“I’ve raced all the laps; that’s what I strive for is to race all the laps and not take any DNFs,” Michel said. “That’s a harder goal than one can realize.”