The Vault
MATT KENSETH – “WHENEVER I RAN WIR THE DECK ALWAYS SEEMED STACKED AGAINST ME”
Posted on: Friday March 4, 2022
From the chapter titled “A Star Is Born” from the 2016 release “Wisconsin International Raceway – Where The Big Ones Run.”
Long before he became a Winston Cup champion, a boyish-looking Matt Kenseth worked at the parts counter at Lefthander Chassis in Roscoe, Illinois in the early 1990’s.
That’s where Green Bay car owner Mike Butz first met Kenseth – who back then was nicknamed “Matt the Brat” because he had achieved success quickly as a teenager – winning late model features in Wisconsin at the ripe old age of 17.
“Mike was down at Lefthander one day when I was working the counter and he was getting some parts,” recalled Kenseth. “He was building a brand new car over the winter. We struck up a conversation and he asked me if I was interested in driving his car at WIR on Thursday nights.”
The answer Kenseth gave Butz was yes. The rest, as they say, was history. The Butz-Kenseth duo, sponsored by All Car Automotive Centers dominated action from 1993 to 1995 @ WIR, winning late model titles in ’94 and ’95.
Like any driver who experiences success, there were the jeers and the cheers among the Fox Valley racing crowd. Moreso in the pit area Kenseth, from Madison, was viewed as an “outsider” – not at all a part of the Fox Valley “clique.”
“Pretty much anybody I ran against up there was a rival to me back then,” recalled Kenseth. “I really felt like they viewed me as an outsider. And with the Fox River Racing club running the weekly deal there at Kaukauna they didn’t like outsiders. I was from Madison. I got screwed over on a call one night. I don’t even remember the name of the club president at the time but as far as I’m concerned that club still owes me $200.”
WIR track announcer Joe Verdegan interviews Matt Kenseth in the mid 1990’s. (danlewisphoto.net)
“I’ll never forget I caught the leader on the last lap during a feature up there one night,” recalled Kenseth. “I went to pass him on the outside and took him for the win. He slid up into me and ran into my door and spun himself out. They disqualified me for winning that race. To this day I feel that is the biggest injustice I’ve ever faced in my racing career. I’ve always felt when I ran at WIR the deck was always stacked against me for some reason. Lowell Bennett was a great guy and a real clean racer to run against. Rod Wheeler – he was a good guy but we always had some battles and some pretty major disagreements with him.
Kenseth continued: “Kaukauna is a really unique track. It’s unlike any other half mile I’ve ever raced before. (Turns) 1 and 2 are a lot different than (Turns) 3 and 4. It took me awhile to get good there. There is a lot of character there at that place that you can use to your advantage no doubt.
“Mike and Patty were great to me we had a lot of fun together for a lot of years. We had a blast. It was a lot more fun than things really are now. I mean we took things seriously but we also had a lot of fun along the way. We won a ton of races together.”
Among Kenseth’s most memorable moments was a last minute decision to run a special at WIR. “I remember Mike called me up and asked if I wanted to run a Red White and Blue race one Saturday night – we had no intentions of going so this really was a last minute deal,” said Kenseth. “We weren’t even going to run it. We got there at the last second. No practice, barely had time to qualify. I was leading the deal with 25 laps to go. We never even had time to bleed the brakes. I held up the field and then I got spun and went spinning backwards on the backstretch. For some reason that race stands out among the other ones.”
Patty Butz: “When Mike was in the pits I was up in the stands and I sat with Debbie Roffers. It was 1981. Mike had just graduated from Bayport that week.
“My brother Roger Butz used to work for Gordie’s wife,” Mike Butz said. “Me and a buddy went in the stands. Gordie was just pulling into the pits. He started pitting for Gordie Sannes. That’s how I met Patty.”
Mike Butz pitted for Gordie for five years. The year he got married in 1986 and built a sportsman car for his brother Roger Butz. Things took off from there.
“In 1987 we went half mile racing with Thom Laimon,” Mike Butz recalled. “Gordie and Larry were friends with Thom. We just sort of branched out. Roger never raced a full year. The car was number 3 and Thom was our hired gun until 1991.”
Mike Butz continued: “Then entered Tom Carlson. I’d know Tom through running the ARTGO shows. Bruce Mueller from B and B engines got us hooked up together. Tom had his own ARTGO car. We’d help pit for Carlson in ARTGO. We ended up second in points. We won our first feature with Tom. We could have won a title with him. He didn’t show up one night. It looked like rain. This was before cell phones. We never got a hold of one another and he just never came from his home near LaCrosse. We blew up on a Tuesday special. Tom took for granted I wouldn’t get a new motor done but we did.”
In 1992 Kevin Servais was the hired gun for the Butz’s. “We wanted a local driver and we got together with Kevin,” said Patty Butz. “That was a hard year because Mike had committed to Kevin Servais. That’s when Mike went down to Lefthander and met this little cornball of a kid was working the parts counter at Lefthander named Matt Kenseth. If you ask Wayne Lensing (Lefthander owner) and he was probably sleeping in those racing seats when he wasn’t taking inventory of the driver seats. He had asked Mike if he could drive his car up here on Thursday nights. Mike said ‘I can’t I’ve already got a driver in Kevin Servais.’
“Matt would come to Kaukauna and he’d be talking to us. When I first met Matt we stopped at Bruce Muellers. He was there with Joe Wood. Joe said ‘that one guy is Matt Kenseth.’ He had a Metallica shirt on and some ripped up jogging pants. He was still pretty much a kid.”
“We wouldn’t be where we were as car owners if it wasn’t for Bruce Mueller,” said Patty Butz. “Bruce did so much to help us out especially in the beginning. In 1993 when Matt came to WIR he struggled at first. Every week the nose would be taken off the car. He was learning and it was a work in progress that year. I remember the spring opener. He got in the lead. He was coming out of turn four and hitting the outside turn 4 wall. He had a good lead and he ended up bending the car up a little bit. He said “Sorry Uncle Mike”. He won a couple of features that first year.”
It was in 1993 that the Butz’s won their first title with Kenseth.
“We knew he was already talking to different people about getting something going down south and he was also running a car those years for Fred Neilsen, too,” said Mike Butz. “There were times he’d get up to WIR late for qualifying and I’d just have Jeff Van Oudenhoven shake the car down for me and get the temperatures up. Then he’d pop in, and go out and set fast time.”
“No one liked him on Thursday nights because he was an outsider,” said Patty Butz. “He didn’t have an Appleton or a Fox Valley phone number. Some fans would get a Hot Shot racing card from him and they’d rip it up in his face. A lot of those are the same hypocrites who wear Matt Kenseth gear now they he’s won in NASCAR. The drivers didn’t like him either. He learned the “slide for life” move from Joe Shear, and he wasn’t afraid to mix it up with the other drivers.”
“I remember one night he kept his window net up with his helmet on because there about 15 people who ran over to the car and they all wanted a piece of (Matt),” said Patty Butz. “It was sort of funny because Gene Wheeler spent a lot of money on Rod (Wheeler’s) car so he thought I was just some country boy who had no business running up there near the front as a car owner. We were always getting into it with the Wheeler’s it seemed. One night I had to step in between Mike (Butz) and Gene (Wheeler). I was the one who ended up getting hit because otherwise Mike would have hit Gene.”
“Matt was a quick thinker,” Mike Butz said. ” He’d react quickly. You’d try lipping off to him and he’d have a comeback immediately. He was really good at giving feedback. Back then if you found out something big you kept it to yourself. I learned a lot with Carlson running ARTGO in 1991. I was a new kid on the block and I learned a lot that year to be honest. I’d go back into the hotel room and write stuff down in the notebook.”
In 1996 Eddie Hoffmann, a stud from Chicagoland, started out the year for Butz. “Some of the locals didn’t like the fact we had Eddie Hoffmann run our car and he was aggressive and a front runner,” said Patty Butz. “Some local car owners we raced against called and complained to our sponsor All Car Automotive and whined that Hoffmann wasn’t a good fit for them and a bunch of other nonsense.” So the Butz’s got pressure to remove Hoffmann and Kenseth came back to wheel the car on occasion at WIR yet in ’96.”
Terry Baldry won the last ever ARTGO race with Butz at Oktoberfest.
In 1997 Butz got together with Terry Baldry, the winningest driver in Fox River Racing Club history. Five titles with Baldry. “The guy was smooth as silk,” said Mike Butz. “Terry has a lot of respect for other drivers. He had one bad night in the opener in ’97 when he got together with somebody else and rolled. Terry walks into the pits and hands me the rear view mirror. He said “This is about all that’s left of the car. He came back the next week and won the feature.”
Top guys who wheeled his equipment. Matt Kenseth, Andy Hanson of Minnesota was a close second. “He was my main sponsor for a time and when the stock market crashed after 2008, it failed.”
Terry Baldry is right up there as one of the best who’s ever driven for me,” Mike Butz said. “I also won a lot of races with Jeff Van Oudenhoven. We won four MARS titles together. We won at the Milwaukee Mile with Jeff and I-70 Speedway in Missouri too.”
The game has changed since 1995. “The biggest expense is motors,” Butz pointed out. “They are really expensive now. Sponsors are hard to find. Some of the bigger ones I’ve had over the year was $25,000 or $30,000 but you can’t find those ones anymore. It’s the racers own fault. They keep voting all these rules in with this new technology and the costs keep going up and up. It’s tough. It’s a domino effect. If we want to keep racing going in Wisconsin you’ve got to control costs.”
The list of drivers who’ve wheeled Mike Butz race cars is long and distinguished. Those drivers (in no particular order) include: Roger Butz, Thom Laimon, Tom Carlson, Kevin Servais, Matt Kenseth, Eddie Hoffmann, Curt Wausch, Danny Gracyalny, Joe Wood, Terry Baldry, Jason Schuler, Lowell Bennett, Gordie Sannes, Brad Mueller, Doug Mahlik, Jeff Van Oudenhoven, Ryan Mathews, Andy Monday, Neil Knoblock, Josh Bauer, Andy Hanson, Kyle Calmes, Adam White, Dalton Zehr, Jacob Goede, Boris Jurkovic, Ty Majeski and Chad Butz.
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