The Scoop
BREAKING DOWN TNT SPEEDWAY’S JAN. ICE RACING BLOWOUT
Posted on: Monday January 6, 2025
Steve Kastning works on the former Scott Weisnicht No. 53 Firebird at TNT Speedway in Three Lakes Jan. 4.
Normally, my first race of the year I attend in Wisconsin (either as a track announcer, motorsports journalist or both) winds up being sometime in mid-April.
However, when TNT Speedway (located in Oneida County in Three Lakes, Wisconsin) announced late last year they would ice down their clay oval and host ice races January 4, 2025, I had to put that event down on my list.
Members of the Tilleda Thunder Ice Racing Club showed up in full support of the show at TNT Speedway Jan. 4.
Never mind the wind chill was 20 below zero when the first green flag flew. Never mind that most everyone in attendance was bundled up wearing several layers of clothes and faces covered. Fans and racers who took attended were truly your ‘hardcore’ race fans. It’s the one rare event in motorsports where the coffee and hot chocolate sales may have rivaled the beer sales for a day.
The ice racing community in Wisconsin has struggled in recent years to even be able to host races. The season is short enough as it is. A mild December and January can lead to sub par ice conditions on the frozen ponds and often there hasn’t been a season for the ice racers. An eight week season – mainly in January and February is usually considered a full year and is really contingent upon having enough good ice.
Cars lined up in the pit area prior to hot laps at TNT Speedway Jan. 4.
This event was run in conjunction with the Tilleda Thunder Ice Racing Club. The club itself showed up strong in numbers. But with recent ice racing seasons running very short schedules in January or February or often none at all – drivers several hours away towed north to this frozen oval in Oneida County to support the event. It was a great mix of the Shawano area drivers from the south and a scattered assortment of drivers from darn near every corner of the state.
Greg Alling towed from the Wisconsin/Minnesota border to compete on the ice at TNT Speedway in Three Lakes Jan. 4.
Heck, even in the spectator parking area I noticed a few cars with both Minnesota and Michigan license plates. With everyone’s faces bundled up, it’s hard to distinguish who’s who.
Greg Alling hails from Dresser, Wisconsin. Alling, a former WISSOTA dirt track racer, logged nearly 400 miles round trip from the Wisconsin/Minnesota border just to do some ice racing. “We were going to support this race last year, but Mother Nature had other plans and they had to cancel,” said Alling, who in recent years has done some ice racing in the winter months at ovals in Ashland, Superior and Rice Lake areas. “The track looks great today. It’s cold and the track should stay slippery. A slippery ice track is a good ice track.”
High school wrestler and 2nd-generation driver Chase Thomson and his dad Dan traveled five hours round trip from Neenah to race on the ice for the very first time.
Same goes for Neenah’s Chase Thomson. The teen racer towed north with his dad in his four cylinder to support the show and have some fun. “Jesse Schulte said he had some tires and asked if we wanted to come and race,” said Dan Thomson, Chase’s dad. “Our tow up here one way is about two and one-half hours. We’ve never ice raced before. I coach wrestling and my son wrestles and we just happened to have a weekend free so here we are.”
The car the father-son duo brought is one that’s been raced in enduros. “It’s not easy with tracks closing all over the place so we decided we had to come up and support this show at TNT today,” Thomson added.
Before the races started, one driver carried the black flag to honor a longtime stalwart in the ice racing community who passed away a year ago, Scott Weisnicht. Former IMCA stock car racer and ice racer Steve Kastning paid homage to Weisnicht by keeping his old, familiar orange No. 53 Firebird racing on the circuit.
Kastning, after collaborating with another racer Shawn Wagner, decided to keep Weisnicht’s racer rolling. It’s a car that has been racing several decades. It first saw action on Shawano’s dirt half-mile in the sportsman class in the early 1980’s and Weisnicht even raced it in the late model class for a season.
Since the ’80’s before Weisnicht passed, his car was a regular on the northeastern Wisconsin ice racing scene annually.
The divisions in ice racing are pretty much split up into either rear wheel drive or front wheel drive, studded or non-studded. The studded classes obviously go much, much faster than non-studded. And the time commitment with the studded tire class is a big one. Sort of similar to grooving and siping those IMCA tires on dirt!
And what happens is the studded tires kick up a ton of ice chunks. Those ice chunks, similar to what the “marbles” might do on a dirt track provide a little additional “bite” on the ultra, slick racing surface as the afternoon progresses.
One other cool part of the ice racing community is that outside of the divisions themselves, its sort of a “Run-What-You-Brung” mentality. You’ll see a wide variety of vehicles including trucks, El Caminos, four cylinder compact cars and everything else in between including Ford Fairlanes, Chevelles, grocery-getting station wagons and old Firebirds, too. Some true “Detroit Iron” as I like to say.
Hats off to both Brit Broman and his staff at TNT and the Tilleda club. Both the track and club are active on their respective Facebook pages and are good sources to dig into to learn more about their respective schedules in the upcoming weeks and months. Ice racing is definitely worth checking out and can most certainly scratch that proverbial racing “itch” before the dirt and paved tracks open in April and May!