2020 has been a crazy year so far. Kobe died, covid, everything shutting down, and still no certainty of where things are headed. With all the doom and gloom going on let's take a moment and seek the positivity that the North Dakota racing community needs. Let's take a look at what could be considered a dream scenario that could only happen in our wildest dreams or so we think. What if I told you that we could be witnessing the pieces fall into place for the most memorable invitational season ever? Let's take a dive into what would have to happen to see an invitational season that would go down in the history books as the best ever.
So let's layout all of the pieces that will need to fall into place to make North Dakota the epicenter for invitational racing. First, there is Wisconsin and Minnesota and if they allow racing to take place. Now this based off the fact their numbers are worse than North Dakota's but let's just say that they won't allow racing to take place or put an extremely low cap on the number of competitors that you can have in the pits and the number of fans. Next would be if North Dakota allows racing and we responsibly open up and have no setbacks. Finally, it comes down to the drivers making the trip over to our state. If these three main factors fall into place we are going to legitimately have an invitational season that would rival the "good ol' days" of racing.
The first factor is the most important one with Minnesota and Wisconsin having racing restrictions of some sort. Why is this so important for our tracks? Well, logic tells us that if there is a restriction of entrants and fans the ones who don't make the cut have to go elsewhere. This is extremely true when it comes to Wissota as Wisconsin represents the far East of Wissota. If they can't race in either Wisconsin or in Minnesota the next closest location is North Dakota. We would benefit in receiving the majority of the Eastern competitors being forced to find a new location to race. This would flood our end of the year invitationals with drivers that we normally never get to see and this very well could be one of the only times that these drivers may head West during the invitational season. I myself have already been in contact with a few people out East seeing if they would be willing to come West and they have said it's a possibility. So that's the first piece that needs to fall in place.
The second key factor is that we need our tracks to open and to run flawlessly when it comes to health concerns. This probably is the biggest factor that every state is facing right now and it's the most fragile factor of all. It only takes one bad apple to ruin for the entire state and we need every track to be on board to following safe health practices and to be responsible. No track can be careless or lazy when it comes to reopening or we might as well dig our own grave for the year. However, we are staying positive here and let's say we get the green light to host racing and then to have fans. This instantly draws the attention of out of state drivers and fans which will benefit our tracks immensely.
The final factor is the out of state drivers and their willingness to travel to race. There was an old addige once that went, "Got racecar. Will travel." and if there was ever a time that we need it to be true it would be now. I truly believe a lot of drivers would make the pilgrimage to our tracks if they are out of options and in this scenario they would be. So you would see a huge fields of Wissota classes and some IMCA classes. The other factor to this would be is if the drivers could financially afford to do it but in our case let's just say that they could.
In the end you could see guys like John Kaanta, Jake Redetzke, Darrell Nelson, Kevin Adams, Skeeter Estey, and many more travel to North Dakota (I just randomly used these drivers.) If all the pieces fall into place I truly believe you could see car counts well over 400 cars at a race like the Seitz Memorial or the Stampede. This could truly be the biggest year for a record car counts during the invitational season. I wouldn't be shocked to see Midwest mod fields of 80+ cars, late model fields of 40+, and just insane car counts. What makes this all so crazy is that you could just switch the states around and it could work out exactly the same. Is it a distant dream? Sure. Is it possible though? Yes, in these crazy times it certainly is very possible. Stay safe everyone and we will see you at the track soon!
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