The Scoop
Jesse Aho
Posted on: Wednesday September 23, 2020
Meet a driver from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula whose racing career was launched after meeting his wife, who was already a championship dirt track racer in her own right. We go to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for this week’s “The Scoop” driver profile on Jesse Aho.
It’s not often a driver gets involved in stock car racing by pitting for his track championship winning race-car-driving wife.
But that is precisely what happened in the case of Toivola, Michigan’s Jesse Aho.
Pronounced (AY-ho), Jesse met Shaina Truscott (now Aho) when she was battling for 4 cylinder and street stock championships at Adventure Mountain Speedway in Greenland, Michigan in the early 2000’s. “I started out pitting for her and eventually we both raced together for years,” said Aho, who’s 38-years-old and as of 2020 has been racing for 15 years.
After Jesse and Shaina started having children the couple decided to scale back to just one race car with Jesse getting the nod. After battling in the hornet class for four years Aho jumped up WISSOTA’s Midwest Modified (or commonly called a “B” Mod) and began collecting feature wins and track championships at Adventure Mountain and Eagle River Speedways. Six of Aho’s crowns came at what he describes as “the bullring” of Eagle River Speedway.
If you follow racing at all odds are you may very well know the Truscott name as well. Aho’s brother-in-law, Michael Truscott of Chippewa Falls, won the $20,000 B Mod Nationals at Mississippi Thunder Speedway in Fountain City, Wisconsin a few years back. Together the team calls itself LLR Motorsports. You can keep tabs of their racing efforts on their website llrmotorsports.com.
Because of where Aho is located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Eagle River is what’s considered his “home track” which is a 75-mile trip one way. “We normally put between 12,000 to 15,000 miles just driving to tracks which adds up to maybe 30 shows a year for us,” Aho said. “To add to that we’re in the Eastern Time Zone so with a Tuesday night race at Eagle River we may roll into bed close to 2 a.m. some night and we still get up bright and early for work. Between Eagle River Tuesdays and Saturdays at ABC Raceway in Ashland, Wisconsin those are our two “weekly” tracks we battle at and we like to hit specials in states like Minnesota and North Dakota, too.”
As if traveling with his race car weren’t enough, Aho’s regular job requires international travel all over the globe. “I am the vice president of operations for a manufacturing company,” Aho explained. “With that I travel internationally to China and Italy fairly frequently. It has made for some challenging times when we’re racing for points and chasing track championships. It can get complicated with we’re traveling all over the world to airports and changing time zones and what not.”
Aho has raced through a handful of changes at Eagle River’s D-shaped, third-mile oval during his tenure there as a competitor. “When I started racing Eagle River we all pitted inside the track and it was more narrow than it is now,” Aho said. “Pat and Patti Zdroik have done a great job giving us a great racing surface there. They’ve widened the track which usually gives us two grooves on a fairly flat, smooth surface. They’ve got a nice fan base there every week and it’s a lot of fun. We used to race Tuesdays there, then switched to Fridays with different promoters and now we’re back to Tuesdays. It breaks up the work week a bit for us.”
The twist with Eagle River is there is no sanctioning body for the racing program there. Aho’s car is dubbed a “B Mod” and competes against cars that are legal in three different sanctions: WISSOTA, IMCA northern sportmod and USRA B Mod. “At Eagle River is really expands their car counts there and the competition level as well,” Aho said. “Our first three or four weeks at Eagle River this year proved that as we had cars legal in all three sanctioning bodies pick up feature wins. For Eagle River Speedway it works.”
Aho also enjoys racing at ABC, where the track layout differs from Eagle River’s bullring. “Ashland is another fantastic track and the straightaways are a bit longer there as it’s a true third-mile,” Aho explained. “You can stand on the gas a little longer at Ashland. At Eagle River you’re on-the-gas and off-the-gas more frequently.”
During his 15-year career Aho has chalked up 80 feature wins and 11 track championships along the way. Six of those titles came at Eagle River. In 2020 Aho wheeled an MB Customs B Mod constructed by fellow racers Jimmy Mars, A.J. Diemel and the rest of the staff at their Menominee, Wisconsin shop. “Those guys do build a quality product for sure,” Aho remarked. “This WISSOTA Midwest Modified is a great class. I remember when WISSOTA first introduced this class going they said it was going to be an affordable one. What happened was a lot of people came down from the A mods and we also had a lot of drivers bump up from the street stocks to run in this division. It’s very competitive. It’s really grown in WISSOTA country it’s pretty much the division with the highest car counts anywhere you go up this way.”
In addition to track titles, Aho’s picked up special event wins at Eagle River and ABC and also TNT Speedway in Three Lakes. TNT promoter Toby Rott promises racing will return to the Three Lakes oval in 2021 and efforts are also underway to resurrect racing up at Greenland, which has sat idle for some time.
Aho relies upon his family and friends to keep his racing program up-and-running. “Truth be told if it weren’t for them I’d probably have to pack it up and quit,” Aho admitted. “My crew chief is my Dad Dave Aho, who was also a street stock racer who had many wins back at Eagle River years back. Scott Rubich is another loyal pit crew member since the beginning of Aho’s racing career.
As for any thoughts to move up to a different division in the future? “We’ve had aspirations to go A mod racing down the road,” Aho admitted. “But I’ve got three boys (Cooper, Carter and Blake) and they want to into micro sprint racing. Maybe I’ll have to limit my role to crew chief down the road. We’ll see how thing shake out.”
Aho’s team of marketing partners includes LLR Motorsports, Keweenaw Chevrolet of Houghton, S.G. McKinnon Logging, Auto Pro Glass & Tire, Dalbeck Logging, Pats Motorsports, Krupp’s Mini Mart, Van Straten Mfg., Fastlane Motorsports, Brian Aho & Family, Chubbs Performance, CMD Race Shocks, MB Customs, Don & Pam Aho, Don Muzzy Construction, Plutchaks Carquest, Vollwerth’s Meats, Mom, U.P. North Custom Apparel and Buzz Sign & Graphix.