photos by Brian Skedgel,Jeff Caldwell,Phil Dullinger
by Marsh Muirhead
from Open Wheel Magazine Oct 1982
Once upon a time not so very long ago,say 1973,a group calling itself the Midwest Sprint Association. Its dream was to be what CRA or WoO have become. It failed in its goal. In fact the MSA,if not nonexistent,is only an occasional heartbeat in the life of racing in the area now. For a few years,however,the fans and drivers and car owners had a hell of a good time as they went to any track that would have them in pursuit of the glory and the dream that is sprint racing.
Drivers under the MSA banner included locals Barry Kettering,John Stevenson Bob Hop and Jerry Richert. Invading talent like Don Mack,Dick Sutcliffe and Doug Wolfgang added not only to competition but also prestige to the organization. The machines were of Hill,Trostle,King and “backyard” mint with an occasional resurrected supermodified or stretched midget thrown in.
Twenty five tracks in five states and Canada hosted point meets for the group. Most of these were quarter mile ovals,five were half mile dirt circuits including those at Knoxville,Fargo and Fairmont,Minnesota. Contrasting these lightning fast bowls were Rice Lake,Wisconsin’s one-fifth mile flat dirt circle,a one third mile tri-angle course at Fountain City in the same state,and Minnesota Nationals three-eighth mile paved facility south of the Minneapolis suburbs.
At first the club’s premise was to race anywhere for anything. A reputation would be established by competitive racing,good looking cars and those little extras like flashy driver introductions and parade laps. Forty seven dates were booked in that first year. The men of the MSA were busy twisting the wheels of their mighty machines as often as five nights per week. seven races in eleven days in 1974 involved a towing distance of just under two thousand miles! Keep in mind that these men were basically amateurs-weekend races-and prize money those first years varied from good to almost nothing. A driver could pick up over a thousand dollars at some of Neil Larson’s show’s at North Star or Fairmont,but there were some cold nights at Princeton when the total purse was $600 and a win in the main paid $75! Princeton,a small farming community fifty miles north of Minneapolis,was the Friday night stop for the group in ‘73 and ‘74. The tight quarter mile oval at the fairgrounds had run stockers and supers for years and the latter had evolved into full sprints by the time the MSA was formed. The old covered grandstand there was only eight or ten rows high but it lined the track from turn four to a ways beyond turn one. If one chose,and many did,you could have sprint cars almost in your lap by sitting in the front row. A three foot high board fence and a roll of chicken wire were all that separated the breathless fan from the right rear wheels of as many as sixteen sprinters blurring by at ninety MPH. It was a unique place to watch racing-you could feel it and taste it and smell it as no where else. The sprinters rarely run there anymore. The management and the open-cockpit set parted ways after the ‘74 season-due to differences involving not only prize money, but also the question as to which class should dominate. There were some memorable incidents from those Friday nights,however,that must be recalled. Speed Chamberlain,a veteran from the glory days of IMCA,was hot lapping his pearl and chrome number 7 one night when he suddenly disappeared over the bank on the number three turn. The officials hadn’t noticed this but Speed’s crew did and scampered across the track at the first break in traffic. They found their driver hanging unconscious in the overturned racer. Untrained in rescue procedures,they enthusiastically righted the car-its pilots torso flopping about as the machine settled back on four wheels. Speed came to a few moments later,asked what the hell happened,and then insisted on running his scheduled heat. He finished second in a field of nine. The MSA’s efforts to attract outsiders paid off at Princeton’s opener in April of ’74. the early season date and lots of publicity drew a record crowd and number of cars to the pits. the crowd,already excited over the big field of sharp new cars,really started buzzing when a copper and orange number 18 sprinter bearing Missouri plates. It was Dick Sutcliffe. Until that night,an outlaw was someone who pulled in from Duluth or Fargo,and those who knew of Sutcliffe and his exploits at places like Knoxville were with anticipation. Dick was loaded with charisma. He was big and looked mean to those who didn’t know him. He sat high in the car and his shoulders stuck out both sides. He made the average sprint car look like a midget. He frequently draped one paw over the roll cage during slow warm-ups. It was said by some that certain male glands of his were as big grapefruits,and that he didn’t put his pants on one leg at a time. When the green went out during hot-laps Dick stood on it,and the Trostle racer jerked forward with an explosion of noise and spraying clay. The left front never touched the ground as the Missouri invader pitched himself around that little oval like no one had seen before. He ran away from the field in his heat and ran wheel to wheel with Dave Skari in the dash until the two collided on the white flag lap. Both men started the main but it was perennial track champion Barry Kettering who took the checker. Princeton had a way of getting glassy-hard by feature time and it was usually a track veteran who found the fast set-up. Nevertheless,Sutcliffe’s appearance spread racing fever to Minnesota race fans early that year. For most of its history,North Star Speedway,just north of the Twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul,was the Sunday night home of the Midwest Sprint Association. It was wide,moderatley banked,and it was surfaced with clay and rocks. The rock situation improved a little each year but lots of heavy screen was still used into the ‘75 season. Several drivers were knocked silly or bloodied by flying stones and rock picking sessions became a regular Saturday afternoon event. Neil Larson promoted the place in ‘73 and ‘74 and put on some class shows. Fields of thirty to forty cars were not uncommon. Larson was the last of the big time spenders as far as sprint car racing in Minnesota is concerned. He also ran the fast half mile oval at Fairmont where weekly late model shows were supplemented by big sprint specials three or four times a year. Men like Goodwin,Opperman,Shuman and Ed French towed in for excellent purses.
Larson was publicity conscious and made a real effort to curry favor with local sportswriters who should have been covering his shows without coaxing. North Star’s greatest media event, however was unplanned and came on the opening night of the 1973 season. It was the most spectacular wreck in the track’s history. A couple of cars spun in the dust coming out of two in the feature. Darryl Dawley collided with Leonard McCarl and Dawley bounced end over end down the backstretch as McCarl’s rolling sprinter burst into flames and sent a sheet of fire fifty feet down the track. Amidst the fire and steam and pieces of chrome and fiberglass that filled the night sky,other cars spun and crunched. Amazingly only Bob Hop was injured with minor leg wounds. The story was all over town on Monday. People who had never heard of North Star were now aware that some big time dirt racing was going on north of the city. Larson,in a gesture of both thanks and sympathy,paid the five car owners who sustained the brunt of the damage in the crash each $200. It was a mistake. Others, whose machines had suffered blown engines and other expensive but unspectacular misfortunes,felt slighted. A tongue in cheek question in the pits the next week was, ”How high must one flip for the added allowance?” Larson was never again so generous. Buzz Beck took over the facility in ‘75 and the sprinters continued to run strong with Stevenson,Richert and Hop in torrid action. Its closure to commercial development after the ‘79 season was a major factor in the demise of MSA as a significant racing club. The “travelling” dates were really a kick - especially when the sprinters were in an area where such cars were rarely or never seen. Hot-laps were followed by open mouths,screaming children,and the hysterical babble of those who have seen a miracle.
The MSA group made stops at places like Rice Lake,Wisconsin,where the bellow and roar of 600 h.p. engines echoed back from the hills and big stands of pine that surrounded the one-fifth mile dirt oval. The field caught its tail in three laps and the main event was like a hoard of hornets in a tiny jar. Hutchinson,Minnesota’s McLeod County Fair hosted the car’s for three years in late August. Sprinters hadn’t churned the sandy dirt here since Frank Winkley pulled the IMCA set into town in the late fifties. The half mile was lined on the backstretch by willow trees and by cattle barns in three and four. Half buried tires lined the inside-the treacherous things put Pat Willis and Ron Shuman on their heads on a Sunday afternoon in 1974. Racing here was a photographer’s dream. The intense afternoon sun reflected off chrome and brightly painted racers as they emerged from billowing clouds of black dirt. The narrow turns kept the cars bunched and allowed lenseman close to the action. The MSA made no attempt to sign dates at Hutchinson after 1975. The fair board insisted on a $2.50 top ticket price and even with good crowds the purse wasn’t worth risking life and limb-if such risks can ever be given a dollar value.
Minnesota National,a three-eighths mile paved oval south of Minneapolis,invited the club down several times for “Speed Sport Spectaculars”. The sprints ran in conjunction with late models, hobby stocks,karts,cycles and whatever else the promoters could assemble. The term “spectacular” certainly applied to the open cockpit events. Many drivers found the switch from dirt to tar difficult and showers of sparks were common in the first few appearances of the MSA.
The track management there hyped the initial races with the entry of SCCA champion Jerry Hansen. His exotic Formula A rear-engined road racer was not only superior to even the finest sprint cars-it was a whole different realm of auto racing and the MSA men protested. The promoters insisted on Hansen’s entry for its publicity value but smoothed things over by paying Hansen from a separate fund. He would also start all events from the rear. That only made things more embarrassing. The low orange number 44 lapped the entire field after a dozen laps. He toyed with the cars in the second 20 lap heat but the ploy was obvious and the humiliation was even greater. Hansen was scheduled to run against the group yet another time on a different evening. Time has blurred the reason why the sprinters gave in again. Perhaps it had to do with the original premise of the club-to race anywhere for anything and apparently,against anything. This time,however Hansen didn’tmake it through the maze of scrambling sprinters. He got run over. It wasn’t intentional and he wasn’t injured,but the cheer from the dirt track contingent in the stands expressed a common feeling. Rear-engined cars are not sprint cars. They may run faster than the uprights but the image that is unique to sprints is not theirs and they do not belong. Further shows were run without the gimmick and Kettering,Richert,Ron Larson,Joe Demko and Bill Dollansky waged some good wars on the tar. The only other pavement date for the MSA was at the prestigious Minnesota State Fair in 1978. The whims of the powers that be and a concern over an adequate field prevented a return. Although visiting talent like Wolfgang,Goodwin,and Mack posted impressive wins at some big money dates in the first years of the MSA,the circuit became the property of Barry Kettering. He won close to forty main events and was after the club’s fourth season championship when he was killed at Fairmont in 1976. Barry was good on dirt or pavement-on short tracks or on big ones. He was smooth and professional and when the conditions were to his liking he could be a real charger. He rarely took unnecessary risks-unlike Dave Skari or Darryl Dawley, contemporaries of Ketterings who also died in sprinters. Perhaps that is why Kettering’s death was such a shock to many. His image as a suburban businessman with a family and his pipe in mouth friendly manner seemed to render him immune from the ever-present possibility of death. It is ironic that the end came to the careful, well prepared driver via an apparently broken seatbelt during a routine flip-the kind that a hundred drivers a season step out of unscathed. Few of the club’s members knew how influential Barry’s manner and style and devotion to the sport were in advancing the MSA’s image and reputation. Promoters, fair board members,and fans found it hard to believe that this intelligent,reasonable man with the pipe and three-piece suit was the suit was the same person who manhandled the famous red and white number 57. Barry once towed his washed and polished racer down to a small track near Austin,Minnesota on a free Saturday night to promote a series of upcoming MSA races. During the intermission of the stock car program he strapped himself in, rumbled out on to the track,and made a few reconnaissance laps. Then he stood on it,spraying clay into the darkness and terrifying the locals,many of whom had never seen the ultimate in dirt track machines. Going into three,Barry hit a rut and bicycled it up to the top before bringing it down and hitting the power again for a final pass in front of the grandstand. Barry’s fee for the advertisement was gas money,$20. When Barry went over the wall at Fairmont in his last race everyone,and racing in particular lost a great friend. Surely the MSA lost a great deal-much of its competitiveness,its professional image,its fun,its spirit. Bob Hop dominated the MSA points race after Kettering’s death. In fact he took four championships -sharing the ‘78 title in a controversial split with Steve Schweitzberger and Lyn McIntosh.
When North Star closed down after the ‘79 season the club was left without a home track. Enthusiasm among officials and competitors flagged and the last season title was won by Bill Dollansky in a schedule of less than two dozen dates. The fact that MSA is no longer active is neither a sad situation nor an important one. It served a function-organizing owners and drivers into action at a time when the thunder was dying off in the warm summer skies over Minnesota.
New promoters and clubs are already gearing up to fill the void left by the MSA. Sanctioning groups come and go as they always have,but the sprint car and its special kind of driver will persist here-doing what they have done for decades-quickening the heartbeats and tightening of the throats of those of us who watch-letting us in-if only as spectators-on the sound and fury of life on the ragged edge.
from Open Wheel Magazine Oct 1982
Once upon a time not so very long ago,say 1973,a group calling itself the Midwest Sprint Association. Its dream was to be what CRA or WoO have become. It failed in its goal. In fact the MSA,if not nonexistent,is only an occasional heartbeat in the life of racing in the area now. For a few years,however,the fans and drivers and car owners had a hell of a good time as they went to any track that would have them in pursuit of the glory and the dream that is sprint racing.
Drivers under the MSA banner included locals Barry Kettering,John Stevenson Bob Hop and Jerry Richert. Invading talent like Don Mack,Dick Sutcliffe and Doug Wolfgang added not only to competition but also prestige to the organization. The machines were of Hill,Trostle,King and “backyard” mint with an occasional resurrected supermodified or stretched midget thrown in.
Twenty five tracks in five states and Canada hosted point meets for the group. Most of these were quarter mile ovals,five were half mile dirt circuits including those at Knoxville,Fargo and Fairmont,Minnesota. Contrasting these lightning fast bowls were Rice Lake,Wisconsin’s one-fifth mile flat dirt circle,a one third mile tri-angle course at Fountain City in the same state,and Minnesota Nationals three-eighth mile paved facility south of the Minneapolis suburbs.
At first the club’s premise was to race anywhere for anything. A reputation would be established by competitive racing,good looking cars and those little extras like flashy driver introductions and parade laps. Forty seven dates were booked in that first year. The men of the MSA were busy twisting the wheels of their mighty machines as often as five nights per week. seven races in eleven days in 1974 involved a towing distance of just under two thousand miles! Keep in mind that these men were basically amateurs-weekend races-and prize money those first years varied from good to almost nothing. A driver could pick up over a thousand dollars at some of Neil Larson’s show’s at North Star or Fairmont,but there were some cold nights at Princeton when the total purse was $600 and a win in the main paid $75! Princeton,a small farming community fifty miles north of Minneapolis,was the Friday night stop for the group in ‘73 and ‘74. The tight quarter mile oval at the fairgrounds had run stockers and supers for years and the latter had evolved into full sprints by the time the MSA was formed. The old covered grandstand there was only eight or ten rows high but it lined the track from turn four to a ways beyond turn one. If one chose,and many did,you could have sprint cars almost in your lap by sitting in the front row. A three foot high board fence and a roll of chicken wire were all that separated the breathless fan from the right rear wheels of as many as sixteen sprinters blurring by at ninety MPH. It was a unique place to watch racing-you could feel it and taste it and smell it as no where else. The sprinters rarely run there anymore. The management and the open-cockpit set parted ways after the ‘74 season-due to differences involving not only prize money, but also the question as to which class should dominate. There were some memorable incidents from those Friday nights,however,that must be recalled. Speed Chamberlain,a veteran from the glory days of IMCA,was hot lapping his pearl and chrome number 7 one night when he suddenly disappeared over the bank on the number three turn. The officials hadn’t noticed this but Speed’s crew did and scampered across the track at the first break in traffic. They found their driver hanging unconscious in the overturned racer. Untrained in rescue procedures,they enthusiastically righted the car-its pilots torso flopping about as the machine settled back on four wheels. Speed came to a few moments later,asked what the hell happened,and then insisted on running his scheduled heat. He finished second in a field of nine. The MSA’s efforts to attract outsiders paid off at Princeton’s opener in April of ’74. the early season date and lots of publicity drew a record crowd and number of cars to the pits. the crowd,already excited over the big field of sharp new cars,really started buzzing when a copper and orange number 18 sprinter bearing Missouri plates. It was Dick Sutcliffe. Until that night,an outlaw was someone who pulled in from Duluth or Fargo,and those who knew of Sutcliffe and his exploits at places like Knoxville were with anticipation. Dick was loaded with charisma. He was big and looked mean to those who didn’t know him. He sat high in the car and his shoulders stuck out both sides. He made the average sprint car look like a midget. He frequently draped one paw over the roll cage during slow warm-ups. It was said by some that certain male glands of his were as big grapefruits,and that he didn’t put his pants on one leg at a time. When the green went out during hot-laps Dick stood on it,and the Trostle racer jerked forward with an explosion of noise and spraying clay. The left front never touched the ground as the Missouri invader pitched himself around that little oval like no one had seen before. He ran away from the field in his heat and ran wheel to wheel with Dave Skari in the dash until the two collided on the white flag lap. Both men started the main but it was perennial track champion Barry Kettering who took the checker. Princeton had a way of getting glassy-hard by feature time and it was usually a track veteran who found the fast set-up. Nevertheless,Sutcliffe’s appearance spread racing fever to Minnesota race fans early that year. For most of its history,North Star Speedway,just north of the Twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul,was the Sunday night home of the Midwest Sprint Association. It was wide,moderatley banked,and it was surfaced with clay and rocks. The rock situation improved a little each year but lots of heavy screen was still used into the ‘75 season. Several drivers were knocked silly or bloodied by flying stones and rock picking sessions became a regular Saturday afternoon event. Neil Larson promoted the place in ‘73 and ‘74 and put on some class shows. Fields of thirty to forty cars were not uncommon. Larson was the last of the big time spenders as far as sprint car racing in Minnesota is concerned. He also ran the fast half mile oval at Fairmont where weekly late model shows were supplemented by big sprint specials three or four times a year. Men like Goodwin,Opperman,Shuman and Ed French towed in for excellent purses.
Larson was publicity conscious and made a real effort to curry favor with local sportswriters who should have been covering his shows without coaxing. North Star’s greatest media event, however was unplanned and came on the opening night of the 1973 season. It was the most spectacular wreck in the track’s history. A couple of cars spun in the dust coming out of two in the feature. Darryl Dawley collided with Leonard McCarl and Dawley bounced end over end down the backstretch as McCarl’s rolling sprinter burst into flames and sent a sheet of fire fifty feet down the track. Amidst the fire and steam and pieces of chrome and fiberglass that filled the night sky,other cars spun and crunched. Amazingly only Bob Hop was injured with minor leg wounds. The story was all over town on Monday. People who had never heard of North Star were now aware that some big time dirt racing was going on north of the city. Larson,in a gesture of both thanks and sympathy,paid the five car owners who sustained the brunt of the damage in the crash each $200. It was a mistake. Others, whose machines had suffered blown engines and other expensive but unspectacular misfortunes,felt slighted. A tongue in cheek question in the pits the next week was, ”How high must one flip for the added allowance?” Larson was never again so generous. Buzz Beck took over the facility in ‘75 and the sprinters continued to run strong with Stevenson,Richert and Hop in torrid action. Its closure to commercial development after the ‘79 season was a major factor in the demise of MSA as a significant racing club. The “travelling” dates were really a kick - especially when the sprinters were in an area where such cars were rarely or never seen. Hot-laps were followed by open mouths,screaming children,and the hysterical babble of those who have seen a miracle.
The MSA group made stops at places like Rice Lake,Wisconsin,where the bellow and roar of 600 h.p. engines echoed back from the hills and big stands of pine that surrounded the one-fifth mile dirt oval. The field caught its tail in three laps and the main event was like a hoard of hornets in a tiny jar. Hutchinson,Minnesota’s McLeod County Fair hosted the car’s for three years in late August. Sprinters hadn’t churned the sandy dirt here since Frank Winkley pulled the IMCA set into town in the late fifties. The half mile was lined on the backstretch by willow trees and by cattle barns in three and four. Half buried tires lined the inside-the treacherous things put Pat Willis and Ron Shuman on their heads on a Sunday afternoon in 1974. Racing here was a photographer’s dream. The intense afternoon sun reflected off chrome and brightly painted racers as they emerged from billowing clouds of black dirt. The narrow turns kept the cars bunched and allowed lenseman close to the action. The MSA made no attempt to sign dates at Hutchinson after 1975. The fair board insisted on a $2.50 top ticket price and even with good crowds the purse wasn’t worth risking life and limb-if such risks can ever be given a dollar value.
Minnesota National,a three-eighths mile paved oval south of Minneapolis,invited the club down several times for “Speed Sport Spectaculars”. The sprints ran in conjunction with late models, hobby stocks,karts,cycles and whatever else the promoters could assemble. The term “spectacular” certainly applied to the open cockpit events. Many drivers found the switch from dirt to tar difficult and showers of sparks were common in the first few appearances of the MSA.
The track management there hyped the initial races with the entry of SCCA champion Jerry Hansen. His exotic Formula A rear-engined road racer was not only superior to even the finest sprint cars-it was a whole different realm of auto racing and the MSA men protested. The promoters insisted on Hansen’s entry for its publicity value but smoothed things over by paying Hansen from a separate fund. He would also start all events from the rear. That only made things more embarrassing. The low orange number 44 lapped the entire field after a dozen laps. He toyed with the cars in the second 20 lap heat but the ploy was obvious and the humiliation was even greater. Hansen was scheduled to run against the group yet another time on a different evening. Time has blurred the reason why the sprinters gave in again. Perhaps it had to do with the original premise of the club-to race anywhere for anything and apparently,against anything. This time,however Hansen didn’tmake it through the maze of scrambling sprinters. He got run over. It wasn’t intentional and he wasn’t injured,but the cheer from the dirt track contingent in the stands expressed a common feeling. Rear-engined cars are not sprint cars. They may run faster than the uprights but the image that is unique to sprints is not theirs and they do not belong. Further shows were run without the gimmick and Kettering,Richert,Ron Larson,Joe Demko and Bill Dollansky waged some good wars on the tar. The only other pavement date for the MSA was at the prestigious Minnesota State Fair in 1978. The whims of the powers that be and a concern over an adequate field prevented a return. Although visiting talent like Wolfgang,Goodwin,and Mack posted impressive wins at some big money dates in the first years of the MSA,the circuit became the property of Barry Kettering. He won close to forty main events and was after the club’s fourth season championship when he was killed at Fairmont in 1976. Barry was good on dirt or pavement-on short tracks or on big ones. He was smooth and professional and when the conditions were to his liking he could be a real charger. He rarely took unnecessary risks-unlike Dave Skari or Darryl Dawley, contemporaries of Ketterings who also died in sprinters. Perhaps that is why Kettering’s death was such a shock to many. His image as a suburban businessman with a family and his pipe in mouth friendly manner seemed to render him immune from the ever-present possibility of death. It is ironic that the end came to the careful, well prepared driver via an apparently broken seatbelt during a routine flip-the kind that a hundred drivers a season step out of unscathed. Few of the club’s members knew how influential Barry’s manner and style and devotion to the sport were in advancing the MSA’s image and reputation. Promoters, fair board members,and fans found it hard to believe that this intelligent,reasonable man with the pipe and three-piece suit was the suit was the same person who manhandled the famous red and white number 57. Barry once towed his washed and polished racer down to a small track near Austin,Minnesota on a free Saturday night to promote a series of upcoming MSA races. During the intermission of the stock car program he strapped himself in, rumbled out on to the track,and made a few reconnaissance laps. Then he stood on it,spraying clay into the darkness and terrifying the locals,many of whom had never seen the ultimate in dirt track machines. Going into three,Barry hit a rut and bicycled it up to the top before bringing it down and hitting the power again for a final pass in front of the grandstand. Barry’s fee for the advertisement was gas money,$20. When Barry went over the wall at Fairmont in his last race everyone,and racing in particular lost a great friend. Surely the MSA lost a great deal-much of its competitiveness,its professional image,its fun,its spirit. Bob Hop dominated the MSA points race after Kettering’s death. In fact he took four championships -sharing the ‘78 title in a controversial split with Steve Schweitzberger and Lyn McIntosh.
When North Star closed down after the ‘79 season the club was left without a home track. Enthusiasm among officials and competitors flagged and the last season title was won by Bill Dollansky in a schedule of less than two dozen dates. The fact that MSA is no longer active is neither a sad situation nor an important one. It served a function-organizing owners and drivers into action at a time when the thunder was dying off in the warm summer skies over Minnesota.
New promoters and clubs are already gearing up to fill the void left by the MSA. Sanctioning groups come and go as they always have,but the sprint car and its special kind of driver will persist here-doing what they have done for decades-quickening the heartbeats and tightening of the throats of those of us who watch-letting us in-if only as spectators-on the sound and fury of life on the ragged edge.
~ Thanks For The Memories! These were the best of times, watching it all grow and expand!!! Knoxville Nationals 2015 was fantastic!
ReplyDeleteMaybe this isn't the right avenue but I'm trying to find Phil Dullinger from Track Master Photos. My dad, Rocky Thompson raced a #303 Station wagon modified back in 1984 and rolled it at Princeton speedway in MN. See, he has no pictures of this car on the track at all except one. He wanted to make this car into a poster. If anyone out there knows how to connect me with Phil or track master photos, please contact me. 320.248.7979. Thanks a ton.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this isn't the right avenue but I'm trying to find Phil Dullinger from Track Master Photos. My dad, Rocky Thompson raced a #303 Station wagon modified back in 1984 and rolled it at Princeton speedway in MN. See, he has no pictures of this car on the track at all except one. He wanted to make this car into a poster. If anyone out there knows how to connect me with Phil or track master photos, please contact me. 320.248.7979. Thanks a ton.
ReplyDeleteI grew up watching my dad,Bob Hop.i have to say I’m glad he’s my dad.very hard worker and a great sprint car driver!spent many long nights in the garage working on the car to get it ready.had some great people that helped him!god bless them all.thanks Glenn!
ReplyDelete