Never Stop Driving #48: Dreamers

Anyone who thinks automotive enthusiasm is dying should have stood with me in a muddy field this past Sunday. A trio of cars flashed by, bouncing through the divots of an improvised race course, the tires made slick by the slop filling the treads. Each driver wore the reflexive and joyous grin of a child.

I was in Jackson, Michigan, some 90 miles west of Detroit, trying to salvage my son Sam’s nascent racing season. Last summer, we’d spent many Saturday nights at the banked eighth-mile dirt track that’s next to the muddy field, running a pair of primitive race cars called micro sprints. Two months ago, the track unexpectedly announced that it would not run micro races this year.

That caught me, as the saying goes, with my pants down. We so loved our time at Jackson Speedway, which is conveniently located less than an hour from our home in Ann Arbor, that I bought two newer micros, with plans for an even bigger 2023 season. I had not yet sold the original cars so when the track posted the announcement on Facebook, four micros were crowding the Webster family garage. What to do, what to do? The next closest venue is some 200 miles away which meant selling the two older cars locally was going to be more difficult than I expected. Furthermore, Sam and I now faced long, gas-consuming tows and hotel overnights, but when you share a passion with your kid, you dive in.

Long story short, we’ll still race this year, but not locally or as often as we hoped. In April, Sam practiced at two dirt tracks near Fort Wayne, Indiana. For some reason, micro sprint racing is nowhere in Michigan but everywhere in neighboring Indiana. The two tracks were just 30 minutes apart yet both had healthy crowds of participants and spectators. I’ve come to love local short-track racing for many reasons but mostly because of the family atmosphere. These tracks are so often the community centers of small towns.

Meanwhile, Jackson Speedway is evolving, but to what is not yet clear. This past Sunday was an open house, a come-bring-your-ideas meeting with the new group that’s running the track. They’ve changed the name to Midwest Motorsports Complex and created a theoretical map of the property’s future that includes motorcycle tracks, a 2.7-mile road course, car condos, and a clubhouse.

Someone had taken a grader to our cherished dirt track and removed turns one and two. After talking to the new operators, I knew we would not be racing micros there this summer. A few of my fellow micro racers, who had also come to lobby, soon left. I stuck around. Only a few gray beards like me were among the 20 or 30 people on hand. Someone drifted a modified Nissan 240SX around the tight, concrete kart track.

Stu King’s one of the folks trying to make a go of the place. As near as I could tell the current owners, a group of five, want to sell. The potential buyers, King and his group, aren’t sure if they want to buy so they all agreed to experiment this year and see what happens. King, who gave me a ride around the newly cut dirt road course, brings a passion for rallycross. Another partner, John Craddock, owns Café Racer, a motorcycle repair shop, which will bring in the two-wheeled crowd.

The model for this venture and a name I heard several times is YouTube sensation Cleetus McFarland, who owns a Florida track where he creates many of his videos. I’ve never met McFarland, so I can only admire him from afar: He’s a motorsports P. T. Barnum, spreading the joy to younger generations via unpretentious cheap racing. We’ve covered his events several times via a Larry Chen video, an article on a burnout contest, and another on a Crown Vic race.

The McFarland model for track ownership requires a full-time obsession for generating content, a cash runway to live off while you build an audience that generates dollars. Then you buy a track. Or something like that. There is no one model in today’s digital world.

Oh, man, if only I was 30 years old, didn’t have kids, and had some savings, I’d live in a trailer at the Midwest Motorsports Complex and make a go. I once proposed a similar idea only I wanted to turn Detroit’s City Airport into a car Shangri-La. Later I created a test track at the airport. While I’m sad we now have long drives to race our micros, Jackson could well turn into something we like even more. It just might take some time.

There was a lot of contagious enthusiasm in the small group. Everyone had ideas and who could say what would or wouldn’t work. I suggested we run my own pet obsession, off-roady single-seaters called Crosskarts, and the crowd lit up. We could do a group buy, I said, as I know people who import them from Europe. Three raised their hands. I later learned that a new Crosskart costs about 50 grand. When I shared that news, my once airtight plan went poof.

Have a great weekend!

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