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Chi-Town Lowdown with Tony Baranek · Midwest Racing Central Today

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, everybody, and welcome to this week's edition of Midwest Racing Central.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Today I'm Pete Bestoni, and it's hard to believe Labor Day weekend is here.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: That means we're getting toward the end of the racing season around the Midwest, and certainly here in the Chicagoland area.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: And let's bring in someone who's got his finger on the pulse of the Chicagoland racing scene for a lot of years.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Tony Baranick is with us here on Mace uh Midwest Racing Central today.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Tony, how are you doing?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: All right, Pete.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing good.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's good to see you.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so I was gonna say from the Daily Southtown, but I thought you retired, but I feel like you're busier more now than you've ever been, Tony, when I see some of the stuff you're doing out there.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I always thought I was a halfway decent writer, but I'm a lousy retiree.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I just I've been doing some part-time work.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm going back next week to do some girls' volleyball for the Southtown.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in the spring, I still do softball for them, but I have found some free time.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: My wife and I have gone to a lot of concerts, and and um, you know, we have a swimming pool and trying to enjoy the retired life too.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: But then Grundy hired me after I retired from the Southtown.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I spend every weekend during the summer out at the beautiful track there out in Morris.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we appreciate that because again, if you come to Midwestracingcentral.com, Tony's stories from Grundy are are there.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start there.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this season I think has been kind of interesting.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: We had Steve Bechtel with us at the beginning of the year on the podcast.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: He laid out some of the things they wanted to do this year.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: What are some of your general takeaways from Grundy County 2026, Tony?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, one of the big players has been Mother Nature.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she has made it pretty challenging this summer out at Grundy.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: We've had several rainouts, and then a lot of nights we've had double features trying to make up for them.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, probably the biggest news racing-wise out of Grundy this year has been the inception of the six-pack summer shootout events for the super late models.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we've already had five of them, with number six coming up uh on September 19th with the uh running of the Bettenhausen Memorial.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we still have the Lee Schuler Memorial coming up this Sunday.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, two more Enduros, a night of thrills featuring figure eight school bus racing, and the uh 35th annual Bahama Brackets, which Grundy has inherited from the late great Rockford Speedway.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, some of the neater moments we've had this summer were the appearances of former NASCAR competitor Rich Bickle Jr., who uh he's won one of the summer shootout features.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Another legend, open wheel star Sammy Swindell, uh won a Midwest Pavements Midget event.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then just last week uh we had the inaugural Ed Hoffman 111 and uh Boris Yerkovic, you know him as a longtime Chicagoland stalwart, had a horrific crash out at Berlin uh Speedway in 2021.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Won for the first time since then, uh last last week, and what a battle it was with him and DJ Weldmeyer.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: They uh they went at it and uh clean racing, and man, I'll tell you what, that gigantic six foot thirty guy or what however tall he is, he was sweating up a storm at the end, but he was also tearing up.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was very emotional for him.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, if you want to interject at any point here, I I'll just I could keep going.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the the the Bora story is great because again, as he you know, he raced around the uh Chicagoland area for a lot of years.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is this uh the Croatian sensation, right?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is what we call him.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: But to go back there and win the way he did, I think the the six-pack uh idea, I think, was a really good one, Tony, because we all know how expensive super late model racing is, and to run it on a weekly basis is just almost impossible.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: What'd they have?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: 21 cars, 22 cars last weekend for you guys.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: For the for the the Hoffman race, they had 19, okay, which was really a good field.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh, you know, the the thing about that is anybody, you know, people have been hanging out at the racetrack in the 60s and 70s say we ran four nights a week at Raceway Park.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, now these guys can't even run runs a week.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's funny because I was asking Dave Waltmeyer uh out at Grundy one night.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I said, David, when did the phrase racers gotta race go away?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because you guys seem like you don't want to race on a regular basis.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he explained exactly what you were saying.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's so expensive.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and just the world is turning so much faster than it did 40 years ago.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you're right.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: The six-pack idea is good.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've thrown in a few other late model nights, plus, they've added that big eight series, uh, which is a late model uh Wisconsin tracks.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't, you know, I don't know specifically how they do it, but I know they run them up there.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um, we had like 16 of them a couple weeks ago.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's a good feel.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, again, again, that's another idea that kind of came out of Rockford Speedway to try to bring down the cost of uh of late models.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I kind of feel that, and I told this to Steve, I kind of feel like Grundy has absorbed a lot of things from our area of the country.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Bentonhausen was at Ileana, as you well know, now it's there.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: The Bahama brackets, the trailer figure eight races at Rockford, now it's at Grundy, putting a figure eight track in there and all.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of feel like Grundy County Speedway has found a little bit of a kind of different vibe these days.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's great for all the different things they're doing down there in Morris, Tony.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, it's to the survivor, I guess, go the spoils.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, and trying to keep the tradition alive from these other racetracks.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and you know, whenever we run those events, we mention Ileana Speedway, we mention uh uh Rockford Speedway when they have the Bahama brackets, and um, you know, the memory of those tracks are very important, and um but so are running the events and keeping them alive, and that's what we're doing out at Grundy.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things I've always admired about you when you're writing about motorsports and high school sports is you always find stories.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think you're a really good storyteller, and I think you found some stories.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Tell us about some of maybe the younger kids that are out there at Grundy, uh, some of the other divisions that are out there.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: What are some of the stories that have kind of resonated with you with some of the kids and drivers we're seeing out there, Tony?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can definitely tell that there is a future for racing.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know how many of these younger drivers are going to become super late model drivers and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on cars, but we've had a lot of interesting battles in the in the of the quote-unquote lower classes.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But uh uh got a lot of kids that a 13-year-old girl um win her first super cups feature a couple of weeks ago.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And um the uh after it was over, I asked her, so you know, how long you've been doing this?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, Oh, it's been a long time.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've been waiting five years.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: She's been raising since she was eight years old.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and that's what it's what it's been, you know, like.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And and um uh yeah, I'm trying to, you know, you're trying to think of some names here of the uh the the the younger Cameron Priceler, you know, he's he's a the real good one.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um Brianna Riggins is another girl who's driving up a storm in the six sixes class.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we have, by the way, 11 different divisions.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, which I to me, I've never seen that before at any racetrack ever.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we've had 50 different feature winners.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's uh that you know says all says a lot uh for just competitiveness and uh the amount of drivers that are still out there trying to live dreams.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's great.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the other end of that spectrum, and we talk about this on the NASCAR channel on SiriusXM, because drivers start so young now, the veteran drivers are not quite as old as some of the guys that we knew when we were racing, we know following racing.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you rarely see guys in their 50s and 60s, but yeah, there are some guys out there, aren't there, Tony, on the local level who are a little bit longer in the tooth than some of these kids we're talking about?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Larry Schuler.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's the number the number one example.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and well, Sammy Swindell is still kicking it, you know.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I belong on the uh Hall of Fame committee out at Grundy, and yeah, looking at that Hall of Fame list from over the years and uh realizing that oh well we gotta consider this guy.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I said he's only 40, but he's been racing 33 years, you know, and like holy smokes, you know, you're right, you're right.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's becoming harder, you know.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Eddie Hoffman uh is in his 60s now, and and uh he's won what nine, I think.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's nine.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: I could be off by one, but uh he's having a hard time uh dealing now with uh with some of these other guys.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: DJ for crying out loud, DJ Waltmeyer, David's little boy, is now like a nine-year veteran.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, where has the time gone?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's funny too, if you want to hear a little bit of nostalgia.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't know if you've seen or heard or been out there to see it, but DJ, who of course is the son of the great Dave Waltmeyer, uh, is using the paint scheme, the yellow paint scheme from the 16 car that David drove around Chicagoland in the 70s and 80s.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: You ought to see this car, it looks so sweet running around the Grundy Oval.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the funny thing is, is David wasn't all that keen on him doing this.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh uh, David, part of it, David said, I yeah, I don't want to pay, I didn't want to pay for it because it costs a lot of money.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, they went ahead and did it, pulled the design out of the history book, and it is one of the most popular cars at the speedway.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and DJ's been driving up a storm.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he and Ricky Baker, um, who's another was a young guy not that long ago, but Ricky's been around forever now.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they're in like they got like a six-point deficit with two racing nights left uh for the track title.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So um that's gonna be something to look forward to uh this weekend in the in the Schuler race, and then of course in the the season any Bettenhausen.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the night of features is on Sunday to Tony's point.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of divisions racing, plus the Lee Schuler Memorial for Super Laminos.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you mentioned the Bettenhausen, that's gonna be a co-sanction with the ASA Midwest tour.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: So that'll pay both points for the six-pack series and the Midwest tour.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Tony, is that how you understand how that's gonna be?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: You'd be better off asking Steve Bechtel about that.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, I know for sure it's a uh a Grundy uh points race.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you we were talking about veteran guys too.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: I talked to to Richie Bickle a couple well.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: I saw him up at Slinger actually, and he's a guy.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Listen, I'm stopped, I'm gonna stop racing.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And now he can't get enough.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I've he's been down to Grundy a lot this year with that 45 car.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: He has.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: He has.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he uh he's been racing with with Tony D'Ambrose and uh the number 45 car, and he's led a lot of races.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he did win one of the shootout, I think it was the night of the triple thirties.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was like a Monza classic, if you can go back to the old raceway days, and they had three 30-lap features, and uh he won one of them and was leading another one when he broke down.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, I mean it's it's great this it's great to see him.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he he's not exactly living next door either.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: He comes down from Wisconsin.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so pretty impressive.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So for our listeners who might be kind of relatively new to the Chicago land area, we've mentioned some tracks that aren't there.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Ileana, Raceway Park, you mentioned Rockford Speedway.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: When you were doing that on a more regular basis, what was your schedule like?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Were you like covering races Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Tony?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: How did it work for you?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, yeah, when I was in in its in the the peak of it, um, May and September were horrendous for me because I was going back and forth from the high school stuff to the auto racing.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, in those days, you literally on a Saturday night could go to any one of three or four racetracks.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, you had Raceway, you had Ileana running on Saturday, uh, you could go to uh uh Santa Fe.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it was it was again, it was funny because when Raceway closed uh and then Santa Fe did uh that was the first time in like thirty thirty years on a Sunday night.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting in my backyard out of the patio saying, This is what this feels like.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, to have Sunday night off.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was you and you just couldn't get enough back, especially way back in the day when uh you know the early 80s when Santa Fe Speedway, you know, had got on any given night you could have uh nine or ten guys win that race.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, of course the the all-time champion, and we're sorry to see him pass away, Tony Izzo Sr.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, led the charge.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then you know, Raceway had just transformed from the uh Kaler, Pronger, Janice, Kemperman, Middleton deal into your Bobby Dotter, Dave Waltmeyer, Frank Alinsky, the young, you know, the younger guys at that time, and it's so it kind of transitioned.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: But um yeah, I just it was it was a hectic, it was a hectic life.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the pro the hardest part was though hearing from fans of the other racetrack when I wrote about the other one.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, like why don't you come out to our place?
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I used to get that at Santa Fe all the time, and it was well deserved.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't I didn't in my early days I didn't give Santa Fe enough publicity, and eventually I got it straight though.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: You were out there a lot.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned Tony Izzo Sr.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: We had Tony Jr.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: with us a couple of months ago.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: He's running LaSalle Speedway.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: They actually have a big show Thursday night.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: You want to talk about weather?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Boy, that that racetrack has been just ransacked by weather.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: They had uh stands down and such.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad to see Tony Jr.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: still in this, but I'm hoping LaSalle gets some some dates under their belt because they they need it there.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a rough season for those kids.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I've not been there since they renovated that racetrack, so that's something something I want to do here soon.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been a while since I've been out there too.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's uh, you know, obviously I spent a lot of time in the in the 90s with the uh Izzos uh out at Kankakee Speedway before they went.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And my wife Jan actually was a scorer out at LaSalle Speedway for Al.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was so funny because we would go, we didn't cover LaSalle because it wasn't in our circulation area.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Saturday nights, I would go to Ileana, she would go to LaSalle, so we would put like 200 miles between us practically to be at auto racing.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it was just it was a it was that she'd bring the results home, and then I put a little bit about LaSalle at the bottom of the column if I could sneak it in there, and uh um a lot of good memories, and of course, you know, I got to see you several times when the big track out in Joliet opened up, yeah.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh at yeah at the beginning, and well, shoot, we can both go back to Chicagoland on Cicero Avenue.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, that's right.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Out there for a few years as well.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm glad you gave us a little time to catch up.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to see you.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Great to see you still involved out there at Grundy.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I either this Sunday or the Bettenhousing.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna make it down to Grundy County Speedway.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully I'll be able to chance to see you in person when I do that.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: All right, we'll look forward to seeing you, man.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's Tony Baranick, long time race coverage again, Grundy County Speedway.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've got everything covered.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's a busy holiday weekend.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: We'll have it all here at Midwest Racing Central today for the podcast of Miss Midwest RacingCentral.com.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Pete Pistoni.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for tuning in.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: So long, everybody.