After 15-plus years behind the wheel, it’s just too hard for Brett Hoium of Villard to walk away from racing.
He drives the #5H Wissota Modified that he races at Viking Speedway in Alexandria and other tracks. Hoium will be one of several local competitors looking to battle at the Advantage RV Mod Tour this Saturday at Viking (the tour is at I-94 Sure Step Speedway on Friday).
The 40-year-old farmer is in his 11th year in the modifieds after starting in the Wissota Midwest Modifieds in 2006.
“It’s tough to get out of it, sometimes you think why am I doing this,” Hoium said. “You know so many people; pretty much all your friends now get to be associated with racing. You hang out with them in the summer and hang out with them in the winter.”
Hoium is one of several racers that have come out of the Villard vicinity — the Reents family, the Gerdes family, the Gierke family among them. And he's a pretty steady competitor, as he has six top fives in
Like many future drivers, his interest in racing started with going with his father as a child to Viking.
“My dad would come up here and watch when we were younger, and we wanted to go every week,” Hoium said. “We were coming up here whenever we could.”
He started pitting for some drivers before hopping behind the wheel in 2006. He quickly earned his first win three weeks into the season, but so found the downside of racing the next weekend.
“It was my third night in the car here. I won the heat and won the feature, and I think were about eight cautions in that feature to make me sweat. It was pretty neat,” Hoium said. “Next weekend, I think was Memorial Day weekend (doubleheader) and I didn’t make the show either night. You go from a high to not even making the feature.”
He’s not a season points chaser at area tracks.
“I don’t commit myself to running a weekly show,” Hoium said. “You end up getting a wedding, or have a tough Friday night and don’t feel like working all night long. I like to bounce around. I’ll try to get down to Madison; last year we went out to Wisconsin.”
Hoium is having a good year in the #5H, with two wins and six top five finishes in 10 starts since May.
He won the May 29 feature at Viking (which was made up the next day), and then followed with another win at Madison on June 26 during a Wissota Modified special.
The competition in the Wissota Mods in western Minnesota is pretty stout, and Hoium said that can be a positive, or a negative. He’s held his own — he has 10 feature wins since 2017, winning four in 2018 alone.
“It’s good and bad,” Hoium said “It’s awful humbling sometimes; there’s so many good cars. But in the other way that’s one of the best things about it — it makes you step up. You can’t just leave the car on the trailer all week and expect to compete with these guys.”
Another thing Hoium can count on is a good cheering section each week.
“I have a lot of family that likes to come and watch every week,” Hoium said.
Driver Profile
Brett Hoium
Wissota Modified #5H
Hometown: Villard, Minn.
Age: 40
Sponsors: Channel Seeds (Scott Anderson), We Fix Blinds.com, Mikkelson Relocating, Mom, Belgrade Co-op, American Family Insurance (Kyle Hoium Agency), Extreme Auto & Gas, MBC Drainage, Wife-Sam, Grundman Hoof Trimming, SSR Racecars, Tim’s Automotive, Blinds.Com
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