With native sons winning two of the three NASCAR championships in 2003, Wisconsin's reputation as a stock-car hotbed is racing in clean air.
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| Matt Kenseth is just one of the racing stars from the cheese state.(AP) |
Just what is it about Wisconsin that has earned such a special place in racing circles? (And no, there's nothing in the cheese or the bratwurst.) The answer seems to be a combination of steady work, intense competition and family.
"Racing there is a little slice of Americana," said Matt Golin, producer/director of Four Bangers, a documentary about 4-cylinder racing at Lake Geneva Speedway.
"I just think stock-car racing feels very true to Wisconsin and its culture. Most of the people are real working-class people and they identify with the sport."
With more than 20 paved ovals, most offering action five or six nights a week between April-September, there's ample opportunity for a driver to hone his craft in various divisions. There's also no lack of competition, a big reason non-native Badgers such as Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin opted to race among Cheeseheads as young drivers to gain valuable experience.
"Bobby Allison said this is where he got his education as a NASCAR driver in short-track competition," said Rev. Dale Grubba, whose duties as a Catholic priest did not prevent him from writing a book entitled The Golden Age of Wisconsin Auto Racing.
"Dick Trickle ran 124 programs in one year -- that's a lot of seat time. Matt and Travis probably ran only 60-80 programs year."
Kenseth, who this year joined Kulwicki as Wisconsin's only Winston Cup champs, credits his home-state racing with making him one of NASCAR's best drivers in traffic.
"When you qualified good up there, you had to start (the race) from the back," said Kenseth, who often had only 50-70 laps in those races to overtake the field. "In the South, when you qualified good, you'd started on the pole and maybe led every lap.
"Up in Wisconsin, you had to learn how to pass cars and race with traffic."
Robbie Reiser, Kenseth's current crew chief, is another veteran of the Wisconsin circuit.
"I think the biggest thing (about Wisconsin) is probably it's a family sport up there," Reiser said. "All of the guys that do a lot of racing up there, their fathers raced and their kids raced. And all of us had to build equipment from square one. We had to pay for it, race it, work on it."
"My dad made me a deal when I was 13," Kenseth said. "He would buy me a race car and drive it if I would work on it and keep it up. Then, when I turned 16, I could drive the car. It was hard work, but it was also a great experience and really prepared me to do more than just steer the car."
For most of Wisconsin -- except Milwaukee, home of baseball's Brewers and NBA's Bucks -- the state sports calendar can be divided into two parts: Packers season and stock-car season.
"As a person like me interested in auto racing," Grubba said, "I couldn't have found a better place to live."
And guys such as Kenseth and Kvapil couldn't have picked a better place to learn how to drive.
