The Vault
THE WIZARD – JOHN GREGORICH
Posted on: Wednesday January 5, 2022
Kewaunee, Wisconsin’s John Gregorich, a 1993 IMCA stock car national champion, was a 2017 inductee into the Luxemburg Speedway Hall of Fame.
THE WIZARD
Chapter from the 2016 release “Life In The Past Lane – The Next Generation”
The year was 1993. While Nirvana’s Heart Shaped Box was the
No. 1 song on the music charts, John Gregorich won twenty-three
IMCA stock car features and went on to capture the IMCA national
title. The Kewaunee hotshot also swept titles at the Luxemburg,
Sturgeon Bay, and Seymour Tri-Oval tracks along the way. Gregorich
was a 2016 inductee into the Luxemburg Speedway Hall of Fame. His
racing career didn’t last very long, however.
Gregorich started racing in 1988 and hung up his helmet at the
ripe age of thirty-three in 1997. He dominated action in a division
that was relatively new to the area in 1993. Gregorich, along with his
brother, Eugene, were thought of as wizards of sorts with some of the
race cars they’d design in their Kewaunee shop. Eugene himself was a
top wheelman, winning four straight IMCA modified titles at Thunder
Hill Raceway in Sturgeon Bay. In addition, Eugene also won track
crowns at Manitowoc and the Seymour Tri-Oval.
“I remember I had won the IMCA stock car titles at Luxemburg in
1990 and 1992 running with a Chevrolet,” recalled John Gregorich.
“The fast guys in that class were Keith Paplham, Jerry Wenzel, Steve
Swoboda, and Freddie Davister. Freddie was real tough back in the
day.”
Davister and Gregorich locked horns in 1994 when Gregorich was
the IMCA stock car representative at Luxemburg Tri-Star Speedway.
“I was the rep, and basically the frame on Fred’s car didn’t match
the body,” Gregorich explained. “I told him at Luxemburg he had to
change it or he couldn’t race it anymore.”
The following night at Thunder Hill Raceway in Sturgeon Bay, according to Gregorich, Davister threatened to take out both Gregorich and IMCA stock car representative Chris Christensen. Both of these division reps raced in that same division.
“Fred threatened to do that and sure enough, early in the race,
he took all three of us up into the wall at Sturgeon Bay,” Gregorich
recalled. “I was lined up right behind him and all three of us got piled
up.”
Gregorich lost his cool and threw his racer in reverse and wound
up jumping on top of Davister’s hood, kicking at his screen where a
windshield would normally be located. “I wasn’t real happy, and at the time was a little disgruntled,” he admitted.
Kewaunee, Wisconsin’s John Gregorich poses with his winning team in 1993. (Tom Herschleb photo)
“Chargin’ Charlie” Kroll of Algoma was another of Gregorich’s
archrivals. “Charlie and I had some battles,” Gregorich said. “In fact, I sold
my championship car from 1990 to Charlie and he won the title at
Luxemburg in ’91.”
Prior to the 1993 season, Gregorich, without a race car, sought out
a challenge. “Don Gagne owned Gagne and Sons Ford-Mercury in Algoma at
the time,” said Gregorich. “I found out they were looking to sponsor
someone to race locally. Don agreed to help sponsor us with motors and tires.”
Enter Kurt Gretz of Kewaunee.
“Kurt helped me build a car over the winter,” Gregorich said. “Ford
really didn’t make a car with a frame underneath it. Only the Crown
Victoria had a solid frame you could race with. We wound up taking a
Ford Thunderbird body, chopping it up, and putting it on that Crown
Victoria frame. That was our car. We still built all of our own stuff back
then.”
The Ford engines were an issue early in the year for Gregorich.
“We blew up the first two nights at Luxemburg,” Gregorich said.
“We had a 351 Windsor motor and it wasn’t real reliable. The rods
were weak and it was a heavy motor, which added extra front end
weight. Then throw in the IMCA claim rule of $325 and you had to
really get clever on building a decent motor without sticking too much
cash into it.”
Gregorich got his engines claimed by other drivers twice that
year and promptly recovered from his early-season engine woes.
The Kewaunee ace wound up winning a whopping nine out of fifteen
features on Friday nights.
“Kurt was a diehard Ford guy and he was great with setting the car
up,” Gregorich said. “We actually got the idea that fall to run Ford stuff
by talking with a couple of guys down at the Supernationals at Boone
(Speedway in Boone, Iowa) in ’92, and that’s when we decided to give
it a go.”
Crew member Jim McKuen of Algoma, another diehard Ford
man, was Gregorich’s engine man. With running three nights a week
Friday through Sunday, the car required as many nights worth of
maintenance during the week in the shop.
“That really started to burn me and the pit crew out after a while,”
said Gregorich. “It got to the point of you do nothing else but work
on race cars all the time. Other things in your life start to suffer then.
That’s what happened with me.”
Gregorich dabbled in an IMCA modified for a year and ran the
Mid-American stock car series on the asphalt for a couple of seasons
before hanging up his helmet.
“It got to be expensive, too, so I got out for financial reasons as well,” said Gregorich. “But we were fast. And if you want to be fast, you’ve got to work on those cars in the shop.”
“That particular year for John, all of the pieces were in place for his
national title run,” said former Luxemburg Tri-Star Speedway track
announcer Tom Wagner. “If you think about the best racers we’ve had
around here in the modern IMCA era, John Gregorich needs to be in
the conversation, even though compared to others his career was a bit
shorter. He was very smooth.”
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