Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Creating indoor oval a thrill for Gundaker
The end of last year’s inaugural VP Racing Fuels Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo., produced a few quiet moments of reflection from Kevin Gundaker, the former Dirt Late Model driver and current owner of Tri-City Speedway in Pontoon Beach, Ill., who oversaw the construction of the fifth-mile dirt track on the building’s concrete floor for event promoter Cody Sommer. | Complete Gateway coverage
“Not 20 minutes after the last checkered had fell, I went up and sat in the turn three and four cushion and just went back and thought about the whole weekend,” Gundaker recalled nearly one year later. “Then Cody came over, and we both sat there and talked for quite some time and it was like, ‘You know, we pulled it off!’ ”
Gundaker, 62, paused, no doubt shaking his head — and smiling — before he continued.
“And it wasn’t that we just pulled it off, but it was good,” he said. “What was so neat to me, all the naysayers said that it could never happen, the racing wouldn’t be good … well, we shut ‘em all up pretty quick. I know Cody’s proud of it, I’m proud of it and I’m sure the rest of the people involved were very proud as well.”
Indeed, as the time has arrived for the second Gateway Dirt Nationals this weekend, Gundaker can’t help but wax nostalgic about the historic Dirt Late Model weekend in the big-city facility that he helped young promotional wunderkind Sommer orchestrate in 2016. It was a monumental endeavor for Sommer from both a financial risk and logistical standpoint, but it was a winner in the court of public opinion not only because the crowd was huge and the overall presentation was solid but, perhaps above all, that little bullring the race cars slid around offered such entertaining, competitive action.
In the months since that memorable Dirt Late Model debut in the Dome, Gundaker has been serenaded regularly by people praising the event.
“We’ve heard everything from soup to nuts,” Gundaker said. “What a great race it was, how it couldn’t have turned out better on Friday, the electricity in the air. There were just so many storylines, I don’t think there’s just one that really stands out other than the finish Friday night, how Shannon Babb, basically the hometown boy, pulled off the (dramatic preliminary feature) win. We couldn’t have scripted that. If the fans weren’t up on their feet, they were dead.
“Let’s face it — you cannot get that atmosphere anywhere else but in that Dome. When Shannon made that pass on Bloomquist (on Friday night), you could hear the crowd over the motors. It gave me goosebumps. It was really something.
“And Scott (Bloomquist, the Saturday-night $20,000 finale winner), Shannon, Darrell Lanigan, Don O’Neal, Jason (Feger) … all those guys, they said they’d never been to a place where they had more fun,” he added. “It was just crazy. You’re on the top, on the bottom, in the middle. They were (racing) everywhere. They were all laughing and hee-hawing back in the pits afterward. They said they’d never had that much fun in a race car before.”
The magnitude of the event left Gundaker, a resident of nearby St. Charles, Mo., who has owned and operated Tri-City Speedway since 2005, feeling fortunate just to have been a part of it.
“It means a lot, especially because I’m from here,” said Gundaker, a native of the St. Louis area. “If this would’ve happened in, say, Indianapolis or somewhere else, yes, it would’ve been neat to be involved, but my roots are here. My family’s here. I’ve lived here all my life. So not only did we pull off the race of the century, so to speak, but it was in our backyard.
“I mean, Tri-City’s just 10 miles up the road. What a great deal for me.”
The specter of joining the staff of a megaevent occurring in his neighborhood intrigued Gundaker as soon as he was approached about his possible participation in 2015 — not by Sommer initially, but by his long-time friend Darrell Hoffman, the father of open-wheel modified standout Nick Hoffman.
“I didn’t know Cody at all before the Dome,” Gundaker said. “Darrell and I have been friends for years. They’re from the Illinois area (before relocating to the Charlotte, N.C., area), and I ran some of their motors back in the day.
“Darrell had an association with Cody, and they were at our racetrack one night with Nick (racing a modified) and he asked if I’d be interested in doing something like that (an indoor race). I said, ‘Well, sure. We’ll sit down and see what it’s all about.’ That got the ball rolling anyway.
“Tam (Gundaker’s wife Tammy) and I actually checked into renting that place (the Dome) about five years ago when the (NFL’s) Rams were still here (before moving to Los Angeles),” he added. “The costs were so astronomical at the time (even more than today) because we had a time-frame where they had to pull the (football) turf up and it had to be right back down for the next game. The cost factor was just unbelievable, and the time factor left us a real small window of opportunity to do it.”
Gundaker’s earlier investigation of the Dome made him realize that an indoor dirt-track race there was possible, albeit a titanic gamble, and late in 2015 Hoffman introduced him to Sommer to discuss Sommer’s vision during the Performance Racing Industry Trade Show in Indianapolis, during which Sommer promoted a midget race on a dirt track inside Bankers Life Fieldhouse.
“We got to sit down and talk a little bit up there and he kind of gave me a gameplan and a brief outline of what he was talking about,” Gundaker said. “I was definitely interested. I mean, that’s something that’s never been done since the Silverdome (the 1982 Dirt Late Model event inside the now-demolished building in Pontiac, Mich.), but the Silverdome was nothing to this magnitude. They weren’t capable of doing the things you could do today just because of equipment and everything else.
“The more we got into it,” he added, “it was definitely something I wanted to be a part of.”
Gundaker signed on to direct the construction of the racetrack and its manicuring during the race weekend for the 30-year-old Sommer, whose promotional vigor certainly impressed the veteran Tri-City operator.
“Cody’s got a lot of ideas, which is great,” Gundaker said of Sommer, who since last year’s Gateway Dirt Nationals added to his promotional resume by putting dirt on Manfield (Ohio) Motor Speedway’s asphalt and running a special-event schedule there in 2017 (with plans to host the uniquely-funded Dirt Million paying at least $100,000 to win for Dirt Late Models next August). “He thinks out of the box, but he’s also not afraid to listen or talk about how this will work, or that will work. He’ll ask what I think, but at the same time he kind of runs his own route. He thinks big, I’ll give him that — and he can back it up as well.”
The success that was last year’s Gateway Dirt Nationals was hard-earned, of course. Sommer and Gundaker played leading roles, but there was an army of staffers along with them that made it a reality.
“It was a big team effort,” Gundaker said. “There was no one person who starred above another. Everybody pulled together. It was all hands on deck, and we got ‘er done.
“It’s a big team between (race directors) Matt Curl and Kelley Carlton and Brad Hockaday, Michael Rigsby from DirtonDirt and the (pay-per-view and video) production they put on, the announcers … you go right on down the line, and it’s just a total team effort. It was Cody’s brainchild, but there was so much legwork involved with getting this going, so many people who pitched in, it’s just unbelievable.”
Sommer’s gang is all back again this weekend for the reprise at the Dome, and, after the nervousness and uncertainty of last year’s inaugural, there’s a sense of been-there, done-that for everyone involved. That feeling is likely strongest among Gundaker and his track-building crew, who aren’t heading into the unknown this time.
As Gundaker pointed out, “Well, we’ve got a notebook.”
From the day Sommer and Co. were allowed into the Dome to begin bringing a track to life — Dec. 4 — the entire process has gone infinitely smoother than a year ago.
“It started on Day One,” Gundaker said on Monday evening. “We had a gameplan going in, where last year they unlocked the doors and said, ‘Here you go.’ So last year the first morning we got in there was like a get-acquainted program, and this year we got there and I didn’t want dirt (brought in) until after like 2 o’clock on Monday because that way we could get the infrastructure set with the bottom row of barriers. Then we could move the dirt right to the barriers instead of moving it all two or three times like last year. That was a great help. We picked up a lot of time on that this year.
“I had drawn out a plan on the floor of where I needed to be, and we just took a big chalk box that we used for the start-finish line at the racetrack (Tri-City) and we made our radiuses and stacked our barriers right to those radiuses. After that, we were able to really go then. Last year, they had a lot of dirt already in there from Monster Jam and we had to work around all that. Everybody was tripping over each other … it was a little more tedious of a situation, so this year, with a totally clean floor when we got there, it went really good.
“We knew what we wanted going in this year,” Gundaker added. “Last year, we knew what we wanted, but how we were gonna achieve, we didn’t really know until we actually did it. After doing it, we’ve got everything on paper now — where to start, where to stop, where our entrances are — so everything was a lot easier for us this time. Last year, we didn’t get that hole (in the track to allow the trucks to dump dirt) closed up until (Tuesday) morning (two days before the start of competition), where this year, we got it closed up last Wednesday evening.”
The track was constructed with 400 truckloads of dirt transported from a stockpile six miles away in Cahokia, Ill., and 288 concrete barriers stacked two-high on the straightaways and three-high in the corners. Gundaker said he and his assistants, who worked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day last week and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. to start this week, made some minor alterations in the track-building procedure as well.
“We moved the exit and the entrance to the racetrack a little bit,” Gundaker said. “We were actually able to go out 10 feet wider on the straightaways, so we picked up 20 feet outside-to-outside of the racetrack. We picked up a little in length, too, and we actually got a little more dirt than we had last year so we were able to take some of that little belly (in the corners) out. We knew going in that we wanted another 30 to 40 truckloads of dirt more than what we had last year and things have worked out tremendously.”
With the track itself ready, it’s now up to Gundaker and Bob Lienemann, who handles track prep for Gundaker at Tri-City, to whip up a surface that will Dirt Late Model drivers to chase the increased $30,000 first-place prize in Saturday night’s finale. For Gundaker, the best part of that job is the fact that weather isn’t a factor.
“As you know, mother nature can be very fickle, and she wasn’t involved last year,” Gundaker said. “She got to stay home, which was great. The only thing we dealt with was a very no-humidity building, so, about what it amounted to, it sucked the water out of the racetrack. Going in, we didn’t know if we wanted a lot of water, a little water … it was just trial-and-error. We got a fairly happy medium, but there again, Bob and I, we sat down and talked a lot, we bounced ideas off each other, about do’s and don’ts and what we were gonna try, and so far, so good.
“We learned a lot last year. We’re gonna learn a lot this year, and we’ll learn a lot next year. That’s just the way it is. Every year you learn something that we should’ve done or shouldn’t have done.”
And Gundaker is hopeful that he’ll keep adding to his knowledge well into the future. As a born-and-bred racer, he wants to keep going with all his racing involvement — Tri-City Speedway, the Gateway Dirt Nationals, fielding race cars for his kids Gordy and Trevor — for many years to come.
“I look at it like, This is all I’ve known all my life,” Gundaker said. “I wouldn’t know how to change to do anything else.”
Ten things worth mentioning
1. Gundaker reported that great satisfaction with his 2017 season at Tri-City Speedway, a facility for which he holds a special affection. “Most people don’t realize, but that’s the first place I ever raced back in 1973,” he said. “So not only did I buy a racetrack, it’s kind of like a family member, so to speak. I’ve been going around that place for a long, long, long time … this was our 13th year we just completed (as promoters), and we had a great year. Our crowd stayed up all year, our car count stayed up. We had some really good races. Granted, Mother Nature got us for five (rainouts), but she got us for 14 last year, so that was better.” Tri-City’s biggest shows — Lucas Oil Series, UMP DIRTcar Summernationals — once again produced typically stupendous crowd turnouts for Gundaker, but he didn’t discount his weekly programs either. “We sure are happy with it,” he said of the track’s regular action. “We’ve got a great group of guys who come race with us weekly. It don’t matter what class it is, these guys are diehards at our place. They’re not just competitors there, they’re friends, and I really enjoy having them there every Friday night.”
2. While Gundaker hasn’t raced himself on a competitive basis since 2007, he still climbs in a Dirt Late Model now-and-then to test or just turn a few hot laps. His son Gordy, though, has suggested that maybe dear old dad should make a comeback so they can face off door-to-door. “He come to me about a year ago, got a little smack talk going on, and said, ‘Dad, Did you retire?’ ” Gundaker related. “I said, ‘Well, no, not really,’ and I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Well, I want to race against you.’ I thought, That’s cool, and he then he goes, ‘I want to race against you, and I’m gonna whip your ass.’ I’m like, ‘Whoa, wait a minute. We’re gonna have to talk about this one.’ I thought that was kind of comical.”
3. Father-son challenges aside, Gundaker likes what he’s seen of Gordy’s development behind the wheel of a Dirt Late Model. “I’ll tell ‘ya, this year he progressed so much,” Kevin said. “Being able to get out there on that Summernationals tour (for the second straight year) and see a lot of different racetracks and race with a lot of different racers, he really upped his game. I’m very tickled with that. Basically, when he first started to race, he was playing baseball because he had gotten a scholarship at Quincy (University), and our deal was, as long as he was playing ball, we didn’t race. I told him we can always race later … he got a very good education along and now we’re just two years into the Super Late Model deal, and I think for a guy who’s only been in it two years he’s doing a great job.” Coming off points finishes of third on the Summernationals and sixth in the UMP DIRTcar national weekly standings, Kevin said Gordy will switch to Black Diamond Chassis in 2018, return as a Hell Tour regular and perhaps chase the UMP DIRTcar weekly points crown.
4. After Gordy competes in this weekend’s Gateway Dirt Nationals with his trusty Pierce Race Car, that machine will be turned over to his little brother, 14-year-old Trevor, who will make his Crate Late Model debut in 2018. “He’s decided he wants to race so we’re gonna put him in the Pierce car we got now as a Crate Late Model,” Kevin said. “Little Trev’s ready to go. We ran some quarter-midget stuff and King of the Kart stuff with him. It’s all he talks about now, so I’m excited to get him behind the wheel of a car and let him wheel it a little.”
5. Yes, the Gateway Dirt Nationals is contested indoors so there’s no need to worry about the weather when it comes to the running of the races. But favorable conditions can make traveling to the event easier for race teams and fans — and with the race car fueling area located outside the Dome and all cars needing to leave the building to reach the staging area before each race, the absence of the sub-freezing temperatures, snow and ice that were seen last year would be welcomed by everyone. Forecasts currently show high temps rising from the high 30s on Thursday to the low 40s on Friday and low 50s on Saturday with no precipitation expected, which should eliminate the problems caused by freezing rain during last year’s action. “Oh, my gosh, that was crazy,” Gundaker said, recalling the situation created by icy roads outside the building on Saturday night a year ago. “We were actually in staging, I believe it was the C-main for the modifieds, and all of a sudden we didn’t have any cars and we didn’t know why. What it was, (the modifieds) couldn’t make the right turn back in the building — they were sliding (on the ice) through the intersection there at 9th and Cole! It was just absolutely crazy, but we wouldn’t never thought anything about that. Once we figured it out, they got salt down and we were able to keep digging. It was just one of those crazy circumstances.”
6. Austin Hubbard of Seaford, Del., will flash some Christmas spirit at this weekend’s Gateway Dirt Nationals. He’s making the haul to the Midwest to enter the event with his 2015 MasterSbilt by MBH car sporting a distinctive holiday-themed wrap, complete with cartoon cartoon Santas, Rudolphs, elves and gingerbread men in “dabbing” poses.
7. I liked the trophies that the Lucas Oil Series handed out to 2017 regulars during the national tour’s awards banquet last Friday night at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. Each piece of hardware was personalized with an image of the drivers’ cars.
8. Josh Richards of Shinnston, W.Va., offered an interesting comment about where he now finds himself after accepting his 2017 Lucas Oil Series championship during last Friday night’s awards banquet: “I never thought a few years ago I would be driving around with a camper, my wife and a cat in the back.”
9. During the final day of the Performance Racing Industry Trade Show in Indianapolis on Saturday, the World Racing Group gang came up with a fun way to dream about the warmer weather of February’s DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.: the staff members at the company’s booth all wore colorful Hawaiian shirts featuring the DIRTcar Nationals logo and palm trees.
10. December is, of course, a popular month for weddings among those in the racing world, and last weekend there were two notable ceremonies involving Dirt Late Model drivers. One was Billy Moyer Jr. of Batesville, Ark., who married the former Skyla Tosh on Saturday. The other was McKay Wenger of Fairbury, Ill., who tied the knot with his long-time better half Kelsey. The newly-hitched Wengers even included a racing theme to the festivities when they both waved checkered flags as they were introduced at their reception.
