The Scoop
MAD MERT & THE KEVIN SERVAIS TRIBUTE PAINT SCHEME
Posted on: Friday June 24, 2022
New Franken’s Duwayne “Mad Mert” Mertens poses next to his IMCA stock car sporting the Kevin Servais throwback paint scheme from the early 1990s.
Duwayne Mertens has had a history of sporting unique throwback paint schemes on his race cars over the years and his 2022 machine is no exception.
In the past the New Franken, Wisconsin native, who’s nickname is “Mad Mert” has donned the designs of “Herbie The Love Bug” and former ASA and ARTGO pavement standout Scott Hansen with his past lettering schemes. For this year he switched his car number from 53 to 11 to accommodate one of his childhood racing heroes who just happens to be a family friend and another New Franken native – Kevin Servais.
Servais was a former mini champ racer who later battled in the pavement late model ranks in the early 1990s at Wisconsin International Raceway in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. Servais also traveled to other Midwestern racetracks where he’d often compete with the ARTGO “Cars and Stars” circuit from time to time. For quite a few years Servais was the mini champ track record holder at 141 Speedway in Francis Creek when the track was still a quarter-mile, paved oval.
Kevin Servais raced pavement late models in the Midwest in the early to mid 1990’s. (Hotshot photo courtesy of Dan Lewis photography)
“Actually, my dad Dave was friends with Kevin and was on his pit crew when I was a kid,” said the 40-year-old Mertens who is now in his 18th year of racing. “I was 11 years old and I remember I was always hanging around the race shop. I would stare at that late model but I was scared to touch it.”
As a little tyke Mertens was in the stands weekly at WIR in the early ‘90s where he’d cheer on Servais on Thursday nights and he collected the racer’s hot shot cards every year. Mertens saved all of his cards and they came in handy when it came to deciding upon which of Servais’ cars to replicate.
“When I picked up the car it already had the red paint on it very similar to the car Kevin ran in 1992,” Mertens explained. “I actually traded my sportmod to Dave “Demon” Budzban for this stock car.”
Mertens cuts his own vinyl for his race cars and has done so for some time. But Servais’ cars back in the day were hand painted by a local legend Ace Eckola known as “Sign Wizard.” “I remember watching Ace paint quite a few race cars in his garage,” Mertens recalled. “With some of his cars if you stood far enough away from them they almost looked like they were vinyl stickered cars. With the red already on there we went with this paint scheme.”
Mertens cut his own vinyl stickers for the Kevin Servais tribute car.
One would think there would be a difficult challenge as Mertens’ racer is an IMCA stock car that runs on the dirt tracks while Servais’ late model was a pavement car. “My body is an ’05 Chevy Monte Carlo and it’s sleek enough so I was able to get pretty close to what Kevin had,” Mertens said. “From an aerodynamics standpoint it’s pretty close to a pavement car.”
The car itself has quite a bit of history to it as well. It’s an old Benji LaCrosse stock car. “Laurel Ettien raced it for quite a few years and later Budzban got a hold of it and ran it,” Mertens poined out. “20 years later it’s still pretty much the same racecar with the exception of some front-end updates and a little bit of work done to the rear end of the car.”
Mertens has battled in multiple dirt track classes over the years including IMCA modifieds, northern sportmods and hobby stocks, street stocks, sport trucks and now in an IMCA stock car. “I’d say the sportmods and the stock cars are both real tough classes, but the stock car class would probably be a little tougher in terms of the competition,” Mertens admitted.
The tribute car was a surprise to Servais – sort of. “I first told (Kevin) when I was almost done lettering the car,” Mertens said. “In fact, I already had the yellow 11 numbers on the car. It was a nice surprise. I talked to his sister about doing the number. When it was finished with the entire paint job with the numbers and everything, he said he almost wanted to cry when he first seen it. It was that cool to him.”
Servais was actually in Arizona over the winter when Mertens sent him photos of the car. “First thing I said was that car is too nice to be racing on dirt,” joked Servais, who hung up his helmet after the 1995 season. “Before that he had called me and asked me about sponsoring his race car but I had no idea that he was up to doing the whole paint scheme. It’s a pretty cool deal what he did and honestly caught me somewhat by surprise.”
If you want to catch the Kevin Servais tribute race car in action your best odds are up in Sturgeon Bay Racing at The Hill Raceway or Sunday nights at The ‘Burg Speedway in Luxemburg. “We’ve struggled with the handling of the car a little bit,” Mertens admitted. “But we’ll keep on digging and searching for more speed.”
Crew members who assist Mertens with his race machine include Chris Vandermeuse, Steve Grizzly, Dave Van Dyke, Shannon Guelette, Slim Jim Bailey, Little Jim (Colton) and Randy “Wheels” Jacobs.
Merten’s team of marketing partners includes Jed’s New Stein ‘N Grill, M & B Transit, Hobbytown of Green Bay, Crow Motorsports, Noble Wolf Transport, Rass Excavating & Materials, Champion Trenching, Recycle Door County, GP Trucking of Luxemburg, Graveyard Auto, Demon Race Engines, Superior Plastering, Race Hill Farms and Ambiene Photography.