The Scoop
MEET THE MICHONSKI’S – SLINGING ICE & CLAY SINCE 1976
Posted on: Monday January 13, 2025
Dan and Elliott Michonski pose next to Elliott’s ice racing “Grocery Getter” at TNT Speedway in Three Lakes in January, 2025.
Whether it’s chewing up the ice on the frozen ponds in Tilleda, or slinging clay on Shawano Speedway’s half-mile, the Michonski family can boast four generations of racers who’ve been making left hand turns on both surfaces for close to 50 years.
The family’s team, based in Leopolis, Wisconsin in Shawano County, recently started off the year early at TNT Speedway in Three Lakes. The third-mile, clay oval was iced down and a trio of the family members – Dan, Nate and Elliott Michonski took part in racing action on a bitter cold Saturday afternoon.
Elliott and Dan wheeled a pair of eye-catching “Grocery Getters” – now hard-to-find station wagons while Nate dusted off the four cylinder car he last competed with in an enduro towards the tail end of the ‘2024 season.
Despite 20 below wind chills that day, the Michonski was all smiles before the races, eager to continue a family tradition that got jump started in 1976. “Our dad Ben Michonski started ice racing in 1976 but our family’s racing roots go deeper than that,” said 45-year-old Nate. Ben “Shorty” Michonski, who’s the grandfather of Nate and Dan, wheeled race cars in Chicagoland beginning in the 1960’s. That essentially kicked off the family’s addiction to the sport of speed.
And the racing bug has bitten the entire family hard ever since. Stock car racing even drew youngster Elliott (Dan’s son) into the sport as a young teen. “When I was little, I’d sit in the van by the snowbanks and watch dad and everyone else race on the ice in the winter months,” said Elliott, the fourth generation of Michonski racers. Elliott was a rookie in the IMCA stock car division in 2024, where he placed second in the rookie-of-the-year standings at the family’s home track, Shawano Speedway. “It’s nice to keep the family tradition going. There’s a lot of good people in the sport.”
Elliott’s dad, Dan, started his racing career in the late 1980’s wheeling a studded go kart on the frozen ponds around Marion and Tilleda. “Yeah, we’ve been at this for quite a while,” Dan quipped. “Nate started racing in 1994. Our ice racing seasons are pretty short compared to the dirt track stuff. In the past, when the weather cooperated, a full season for us would be eight weeks pretty much in January and February. The past couple of years we’d be lucky to have even one race.”
A bundled up Nate Michonski dusted off the four cylinder he races on dirt track enduros and raced it on the ice in Three Lakes, Wisconsin in January, 2025.
These days, dirt tracks often wind up being dry slick for the feature races. Often, that can be an advantage of sorts to drivers like the Michonski’s who have vast experience on the sliding around on the ice. “The dirt track changes as the night of racing goes on and on the ice it even changes more,” Nate said. “When you’re ice racing, you have to watch the surface just like on dirt. If you take a non-studded car, for example, that races after a studded division has been out there, you’re going to have a lot of traction to work with. As more cars start running that same line, that track will again start to polish off and you have to start looking for other spots on the track that have some bite to them. You really have to pay attention on the ice even more so than on the dirt.”
Dan’s “Grocery Getter” has one very catchy slogan on the roof.
With the ice racing seasons going less than half the nights of your average dirt track season, a typical ice racing car has a longer “shelf life” per se than a dirt car chassis. “Dan has a wagon he raced more than ten years on the ice,” Nate said. “On the ice, you just don’t have the amount of speed like you do on the dirt so you can get a lot of years out of an ice racing car. So those cars seem to last for quite a while.”
With ice racing, a driver really can master one key factor that can also make them a better dirt tracker and that’s throttle control. “It really does help when it comes to gas and brake control,” Dan suggested. “When you encounter a dry slick dirt track, that ice racing experience really does come into play. You can put those ice racing laps to good use during the summer months.”
On dirt, race cars have screens to keep bigger stones and rocks from clobbering a driver in the cockpit. “With the ice racing you want those windshields in for a couple of reasons,” Dan pointed out. “Us rear wheel drive racers on the ice like those windshields. It helps with the spray of ice chunks and also helps keep it a little bit warmer in the cockpit, too.”
When it comes to tire choices on the ice, if a driver opts to go the studded tire route, installing those studs on a tire can be a time consuming task, similar to siping and grooving dirt track tires. “Hoosier makes a D 10 tire which we race on the ice,” Dan said. “That’s the same tire essentially that sprint cars often run on their front left. Then on a warmer day when the surface turns to slush, we put on an American Racer tire that seems to always work better on those conditions.”
When the ice and snow melts, you can catch Dan (1m) and Elliott (101) Michonski wheeling IMCA stock cars on the dirt in 2025. (seeking photo credit)
Once the snow and ice melts, you can most likely catch the Michonski’s wheeling their IMCA stock cars at the half-mile at Shawano and on occasion bouncing around from track to track. The Michonski family still has two of their own “M-Pire chassis at their disposal. “We also bought a G-Force race car a couple of years ago. That’s the car Elliot is racing. I’ll keep playing with the two home built cars yet. We always like having a backup car available. The plan this year in addition to running at Shawano is to try and get Elliott to Seymour more. Last year, he made the show and they had 30 cars and it was a pretty tough field. That’s our game plan with the dirt this year, anyways.”
Among the marketing partners that keep the Michonski’s race cars rolling are Custom Fab & Body, Rusty’s Auto Repair, The Wright Place Bar & Grill, Olson’s Rural Electric Inc., Bumper To Bumper, The Old Ranch House Saloon, K & E Sales and Service, Stephanie Design & Photography, Hein’s Appliance and The Blind Man.