The Vault
MOTHER NATURE STINGS SEYMOUR SPEEDWAY PROMOTER PANSKE IN ’16
Posted on: Sunday November 5, 2023
(The following is the Green Bay Press Gazette motorsports column from August 15, 2016.)
Dave Panske has no idea what he ever did to tick off Mother Nature.
The Seymour Raceway Park promoter had seven of 13 planned races – more than half scheduled – canceled this year due to weather-related issues. That combined with dismal attendance and low car counts forced Panske last week to cancel the balance of the season’s schedule, citing massive financial losses that drained the track’s checkbook during the course of the year.
Panske, from Oshkosh, has been involved with the Seymour track, located at the Outagamie County Fairgrounds, since the club NEW DIRT took over promoting the weekly, Sunday night races beginning in 1984. He has served as a club board member, track photographer and historian, a scorer and even announced a time or two.
After the club dissolved last winter Panske rolled the dice and took a huge financial risk, taking on the role as an independent promoter of the track he’d been a part of for decades. Panske came up snake eyes. “With the rainouts we had we just could never get into a routine for the fans or the drivers it seemed,” explained Panske. “Traditionally the week after the fair was usually one of the worst nights for attendance. And we didn’t race two weeks prior to that. It was a just a bad, bad situation that kept getting worse.”
While Panske admitted the first night was “attended well” weekly fan attendance steadily decreased. So did the car counts. This year Panske trimmed the number of weekly divisions run at the third-mile, clay oval from five to three, bringing in a guest class on occasion. “Everybody said “well you only have to pay three classes now instead of five,” said Panske. “But our three main classes (IMCA stock cars, northern sportmods and street stocks) we had the highest payout of any local track around. The total amount of drivers purse money remained pretty much the same.”
In the end, that high payoff wound up being another nail in the coffin for Panske. The biggest hit the track took was on July 4th. The track hosted the IRA sprint cars, along with a modified special which also featured a very hefty $22,000 purse. “The IRA show is expensive enough as it is – it was an $18,000 price tag to bring those guys in,” explained Panske. “To make matters worse we only had 17 modifieds show up. We wound up paying out $13,333 to those modified drivers. The worst part of that was we only had 479 paid adults that night, so we took a huge financial hit. We needed 800 paid adults to cover the purse. Even Steve (Sinclair, IRA sprint car series promoter) was upset that more of his diehard sprint car fans didn’t show up that night. We’re still scratching our heads on that one.”
For many years the IMCA modifieds were the headlining class on Sundays at Seymour. Panske made the bold move to discontinue running them weekly due to a low car count. “We did have a three-race series set up for those mod guys but the first one got rained out,” said Panske. “I was really disappointed with the mods that night. It was the 4th of July. We handed out flyers at all the tracks, so they all knew about it and there are plenty of those cars around. That was very disappointing.”
One of the things that occupied a bulk of Panske’s time this year was tying up loose ends with the dissolving of the club. Some of those loose ends are still not wrapped up. “That was a big issue was the past club stuff like unemployment compensation with the state and such,” said Panske. There are a couple of issues that aren’t resolved. The state of Wisconsin isn’t the easiest to work with on some of this stuff. They’d ask you for something. You’d send something in and they wouldn’t get back to you. That part remains very frustrating.”
Among the scheduled races that were canceled was a Corn Belt Clash late model special that was slated for August 28. “The series promoters understood fully where I was coming from as does the Fair Association after I met with them,” said Panske. “We’re going to give it a go again next year and I’ve still got the backing of the Fair Association. Some of the input I got from people after we announced we were closing wasn’t all negative, either. We just put new clay on the track. We may change a few things for next year, but we will be up and running again in 2017.”
SPEEDZONE FUTURE – The future of the Oshkosh Speedzone remains uncertain. On Tuesday night Winnebago County supervisors voted down a resolution that would have essentially kept the three-eighths mile clay oval intact for a promoter to operate at the Sunnyview Expo Center. According to Speedzone promoter Jeff Lemeisz the Christian Rock Festival Lifest can decide the fate of the track and if they want to keep it or not. Speedzone will finish out the 2016 season, which includes the George Scheffler Memorial late model special August 26.
STURGEON BAY UPDATE – It appears there may be a ray of hope for the return of racing at Thunder Hill Raceway in Sturgeon Bay in the future. Door County’s Airport and Parks committee passed a resolution last week to allow a group of racing enthusiasts from Door County to submit a new bid proposal to host weekly racing at Thunder Hill Raceway in 2017. As part of the plan the track would be resurfaced with new clay. Promoter Bryan “Woody” Wodack withdrew from promoting weekly racing at John Miles Park this year after 13 seasons.
TUNDRA NOTEBOOK- Menominee, Michigan’s Dalton Zehr finished third in the TUNDRA super late model series event at State Park Speedway in Wausau last Sunday. Clintonville’s Wyatt Blashe took 6th, WIR regular Casey Johnson of Cambridge finished 7th, Appleton’s Jordan Thiel placed 8th. The race was won by Wausau’s Mark Mackesy. The next TUNDRA series event will be Monday, September 5 at Golden Sands Speedway in Plover.
ARCA MT UPDATE – Seymour’s Ty Majeski captured the ARCA Midwest Tour Mid-Summer Showdown at Marshfield Motor Speedway Saturday. The victory was the fifth of the year in the series for the Roush-Fenway Developmental Driver. Zehr placed third while Suamico’s Chad Butz placed eighth. The next event for the ARCA MT will be September 3 at the Dells Motor Speedway.