Offseason officially over with IMCA Frostbuster

At the NASCAR level over the last several years, the offseason has seemed to have gotten shorter and shorter. The season ends in November and starts in February, and with Silly Season in between, it never seems to end.

But for everyone working on their racecar in a garage and going to their regular job on Monday mornings, the offseason is never short enough - especially for those not fortunate enough to travel to Arizona, Nevada and California for winter specials at western dirt tracks.

Thankfully for those racers and more specifically the Iowa race fans who don't get to travel to see races during the winter, the offseason is finally and officially over. The racing season gets an emphatic start in Eastern Iowa with the annual IMCA Frostbuster special - a four-night, four-track event paying $1,000 to win each night for Modifieds starting Wednesday at Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa and will feature an appearance from NASCAR veteran and dirt legend Kenny Schrader.

Benton County Speedway (Thursday), Marshalltown Speedway (Friday) and Boone Speedway (Saturday) make up the remainder of the series, which is put together by the four promoters who come together to make it all work. They share a common message to the drivers after that long offseason to get the year started right.

'As a promoter, I preach in the drivers' meeting: it's been a long winter, you've got a little rust, but you've also spent a ton of money. You've got brand-new racecars, brand-new sheet metal,” said Marshalltown promoter Toby Kruse. 'I just ask them to respect one another, race hard, race clean; put a good show on for the fans. I really preach that, just in an effort that they can load up and race the next night. It's so expensive to race, so the better we do as promoters to keep it clean, we can keep more cars racing out there all the time.”

The payout for the event splits among a nightly and whole-event basis. The Modifieds race for $1,000 to win each main event, IMCA Stock Cars run for $500, SportMods $400 and Hobby Stocks $250. There will be a points system in place, and the top five drivers in each division will earn shares of $1,000 point funds at the end of the event.

Last year's Frostbuster was plagued by weather.

Originally scheduled for the first week in April, Kruse said there was 'three feet of frost in the ground” at the time and it was then pushed back a week. After it was pushed back, rain canceled the Benton County Speedway event in Vinton. As a result of that and other tracks' regular seasons starting, car count - including losing Schrader, who was originally supposed to run last year - suffered a bit.

This time around, though, long range forecasts look good for this week and Kruse believes everyone is good to go. Kruse work closely with Mike Van Genderen of Southern Iowa Speedway, Mick Trier of Benton County Speedway and Robert Lawton of Boone Speedway to make the event go smoothly at each track and having weather cooperate is always a key.

'Right now, all systems are go and things look really, really good,” Kruse said. 'I think we all do have a great relationship, and that's the key. You got to some other areas of the country, and even here in the Midwest, where promoters used to not get along. But it's like, we're all in the same business. If you work together, it's for the better of the sport. As we've done that over the last couple years, we've seen this Frostbuster grow from 100 some cars to two years ago we had 223 cars at Marshalltown. By working together, it's definitely healthy for everyone.”

Having Schrader back in the mix is also a boon for the event, drawing more people to the stands and more cars to compete against a well-respected and revered racer.

Schrader said he's picking up a new chassis from the Ankeny-based Victory Chassis company, a racecar he'll use at all his IMCA races this season. He's no stranger to racing in Iowa, and said especially with IMCA racing, this is the place racers go to prove themselves.

'If you want to run an IMCA dirt Modified - obviously you can do it all over the country - but if you want to see if you're any good or not, you need to go to Iowa and find out real quick,” Schrader said. 'Last time we were at Frostbuster, we had a first, second, third and fifth (place finish). We just don't run enough IMCA to really be on top of our deal, we figure, and we thought Victory would be an advantage for us because they've also got a lot of good people running their cars. Right there, in the heart of it, we thought they could help us get going.”

Aside from the competition and benefit to his own racing program, Schrader - who's one of the lucky few who doesn't really have to take an offseason if he doesn't want to - continues to run dirt races because of what this level of racing means to him and all of motorsports.

This was where he got started, and where he wants to finish. When fans and racers get bundled up - it's still April in Iowa, after all - to go watch and race in the Frostbuster, they'll see what he sees in the bedrock of American short track racing.

'Whether it's Iowa or Texas or anywhere, that local ¼, 3/8 or ½-mile dirt track is the backbone of our sport,” Schrader said. 'There wouldn't be guys to drive or work on the IndyCars or Cup cars if they didn't start out doing this kind of stuff. I'll lump asphalt racing in there too. Short track racing is the grass roots of motorsports in our country. I did it the whole time I was Cup racing, and now that we're not Cup racing, it just freed up some weekends to go do it some more. I'm having as much fun as I ever have.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8884; jeremiah.davis@thegazette.com