The Vault
LARRY RICHARDS – AN ORIGINAL GRAND NATIONAL “OUTLAW”
Posted on: Thursday September 7, 2023
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The following is an excerpt from the 2018 release “The Bird & The Bear.” This chapter deals with the birth of the grand national division in 1990 at Chilton Speedway in Chilton, Wisconsin.
“The Outlaw” Larry Richards was an integral part of the growth of the division with his “Outlaw” Racing Chassis.
By the time 1990 rolled around dirt track late models had gotten very costly in Wisconsin.
IMCA modifieds were an affordable alternative for many drivers. However there were dozens of racers across Northeast Wisconsin who still had a yearning to race a fendered-car on a racing tire with some grip – not something on junk D.O.T. legal tires you scrounge out of the junkyard.
In the mid-‘80’s Regeth came out of a “semi-retirement” of sorts. “The Bear” ran a sportsman car that his son, Roger “Spuds” Regeth Jr. raced on the quarter-mile oval at WIR. In addition, Regeth ran on the dirt at Shawano briefly during that same time frame in a four-cylinder division called Pro 4 he also raced with “Spuds.” The four-cylinder class was developed by his buddy Terry Kralovetz.
Prior to the 1990 season a former crew member of Crooks Schultz race team, Steve Rudolph of Menasha, decided to reopen a tiny, quarter-mile dirt bullring at the Calumet County Fairgrounds in Chilton, located on the east side of Lake Winnebago.
The track had been open and closed several times between the ‘60’s and ‘80’s and for a time ran under the once powerful Eastern Wisconsin Stock Car (EWSC) banner.
Rudolph’s goal was to fill the void in dirt track racing for those who wanted to race a fendered car, with a body identifiable by the manufacturer. The division called the grand national sportsman was born. It was a class where a 1970 Chevelle could compete with a 1968 Dodge Dart. Or a newer style Pontiac Grand Prix. Or an Oldsmobile Cutlass.
The track operated in 1990 with the grand national class. The tiny oval drew drivers from a variety of tracks as far south as Wilmot Speedway in Kenosha, near the Wisconsin/Illinois border and as far north as Luxemburg. Hilbert’s George Sweere was the champion the first year. After the ’90 season Rudolph approached Regeth about building a car and coming out of retirement.
“We built a car and we came out in 1991 and pretty much blew everyone away, including Sweere,” Regeth recalled. “Sweere was one of the hot dogs at Shawano, too. I remember we went to Shawano one night and ran with them there. They called them hobby stocks there. We had fast time and won the feature. We had to laugh because after we dusted those guys so bad one of the gals who was on Sweere’s pit crew ran up the Shawano officials and complained. She said “You’ve got to do something with that 66 car because we had our big motor in tonight and Regeth still beat us!”
When it came to Chilton’s track Regeth loved it. “To me it was just like running Slinger when it was dirt although just not quite as banked,” Regeth said. “Larry Richards built me a good car. I paid Richards $2,600 for a brand new car. Bruce Mueller at B & B Race Engines gave me a motor to run for $2,000. Those grand nationals – they were an affordable race car, that’s for sure.”
In addition to Sweere Richards was one of Regeth’s main foes along with Milwaukee driver Jim Kroening and Mequon’s Wayne Strand, who would later take a year off and serve as flagman at Chilton. Regeth would even trade paint with his son Spuds Regeth, who also had raced a grand national.
“After I won the Chilton track title in ’90 the track promoter Steve Rudolph started recruiting all those other guys to come and race and it the level of competition really was raised,” said Sweere. “One of those guys was Roger Regeth. (Larry) Richards was another former late model guy. I had heard about Regeth and I knew he was the King for many years in the late models in the ‘70’s. I remember most of all that his equipment was very well maintained. He never seemed to break down or anything like that. Plus, his equipment was top notch, too. Roger ran me clean for the most part so I ran him clean, too. There was always a little bit of pushing and shoving on that little track at Chilton but was exciting. Your adrenalin kicked in when the green flag dropped at that place.”
“Roger and I had met a couple of time at RanderCar Racing before I started building him his grand national,” said Richards, who would wind up constructing dozens of grand national cars through his business Outlaw chassis in Montello, Wisconsin. “Roger didn’t want me cutting corners either when it came to me building his race car. It was the best of everything. I knew what a big name that he was so I figured having him wheel one of my race cars at Chilton on Friday nights would be a really good thing for my business.”
It was. Outlaw chassis took off. “I remember at one point half of the field in that class were cars that I had built,” Richards said. “And the best part was I got to race against him, too.”
Richards was one of the few who was able to beat “The Bear” at Chilton. “I remember that one Dirt Devil race he finished second to me and boy was he mad,” Richards said. “He gave me some crap about that. But he was tough. We’d even go down to Hales Corners and race and he’d get fast time and I’d be second right behind him.”
For years Richards fielded a black car with green-colored numerals 11. “He was so superstitious with that color green he didn’t even like me pitting next to him,” Richards laughed. “He was fun. He’d always kid around with you. He’d come up behind you and pinch you on the arm if you weren’t paying attention.”
For Mequon’s Strand the grand national class at Chilton allowed him to race against one of his childhood idols. “Roger Regeth was one of my drivers from a kid I loved from the 60’s down in the Milwaukee area,” Strand said. “I think Steve Rudolph introduced us and Roger and I always hit it off. He was a funny guy. You didn’t always know if he was serious or yanking your chain. A lot of people didn’t know how to take him.”
During Regeth’s rein of dominance at Chilton one season Strand was able to pull off the ultimate upset. “We were in a heat race and I was going door-to-door with Roger and I believe his son Spuddy (Spuds Regeth) was leading,” Strand recalled. “The three of us came out of the corner in (turn) 4. Roger went high and I went low. I snuck underneath him and won. That place went crazy, mainly because nobody had beaten Roger all year long. We snapped that jinx he had so to speak.”
That wasn’t the end of Strand’s gamesmanship with “The Bear” on that particular night. “Later that night in the feature Roger and I were running alongside of each other,” Strand said. “There was a big accident with 4 of us involved in it. Roger pulled up alongside of me and pointed to my right rear tire. I’m thinking I got a tire going down. But this was Roger Regeth. I wouldn’t put it past him to tell me I had a tire going down just so I would pit! I gave him the thumbs up but I stayed out there and raced. Even after the crash I wound up winning the race. Roger wound up with a flat tire in that one that’s why he lost. Afterwards in the pits he congratulated me. He asked me why I didn’t pull in the pits? He said “go look at your tires. I would get the inner liners from Mueller Bros. from their NASCAR tires. I’d run them as innertubes. The inner liner had bubbled through. Luckily nobody hit that tire and we wound up winning anyways. I thought he was trying to play games with me but he wasn’t. I knew he was such a crafty guy. He always had sort of a sly smile. I loved that guy and I had a lot of respect for him. Truth is that combination of Richard’s car building skills and Regeth’s talent – Roger was unstoppable really. That helped make him a force to be reckoned with.”
Regeth wound up winning 17 out of 20 feature races at Chilton that year. “We even brought the car to WIR and raced it on the quarter-mile that year with what they called street stocks then and we won six out of seven features,” Regeth boasted. “That car was wicked fast. I believe Mike Melius ended up with it eventually.”
“That grand national class took off in popularity because it was so affordable,” said Pete Vercauteren. Pete’s brother Gary owned a publishing company in town and was the chief editor of the local newspaper the Chilton-Times Journal. “Gary gave the track a ton of coverage in the local papers. “With sponsorship some of the drivers like Jerry Wenzel and others were able to round up, if they didn’t wreck they actually ended up making money racing at Chilton. It was incredible.”
After the 1992 season the Vercauteren brothers, during some time off in their hotel room in Daytona Beach, Florida during Speedweeks in February of 1993, came up with the concept of a new asphalt series – the Mid-American Stock Car series. “Essentially the idea was to take the concept of the steel-bodied cars that had been so popular on the dirt at Chilton and create a traveling series on paved tracks throughout the Midwest.”
Regeth was “all in” with the concept and promptly went out and won the first series race at Rockford (Il.) Speedway in April 1993. “Those cars were also cheap to put together and the prize money and point fund money was real good for a while,” Regeth said. “Hell at one of our races Jim Sauter came up and looked at my car and was asking me questions. After I told him what I had invested in the car and what we were getting paid in the beginning, he said “Heck, I’ve got to build me one of these things.”
During the first two years the series ran in ’93 and ’94 the Vercauteren’s were able to secure dates at legendary tracks like the Milwaukee Mile and Road America in Elkhart Lake. “I was winning one day at Road America until my transmission broke,” Regeth recalled. “I had a blast running it but they eventually cut the pay to win from $1,000 a show down to $500 to win. Hell, you can’t even afford your tires to run that anymore.”
After the ’94 season Regeth sold his car and still turned laps – but in the Les Stumpf Ford pace car at WIR on Thursday nights.