John Heinz (57) encountered a platter of problems during the opening laps of the IMCA stock car feature at Iowa’s Marshalltown Speedway. Starting 19th out of 24 cars, Heinz began his quest toward the front. Before he could make some significant progress, Heinz wound up in this precarious situation. Heinz said he tried to avoid a wreck when Kevin Rose (22K) collided with him. Both drivers emerged from their cars without injury, but their nights ended early.
“I tried to stop,” Rose, of Waterloo, Iowa, said. “I would have turned him completely over if I kept on driving. I spent all of the next day repairing my car’s sheet metal damage — luckily, that is all that was damaged. It could have been worse. I raced the next two nights.”
Heinz said the impact bent his rear end and damaged the body. Nevertheless, Heinz never saw red.
“There is no blame,” said Heinz, of Green Bay, Wisconsin. “Things like this happen in racing. Cars get jammed up and there is nowhere to go.”
Heinz traveled six hours to race at Marshalltown on Thursday and Friday. He intended to make it a vacation. The restaurateur operates a 24-hour restaurant, The Blackstone.
“I usually work six days a week, taking a day off for racing,” Heinz said. “I decided to race in Marshalltown to support promoter Toby Kruse. I know him because of the great work he has done at our local track, 141 Speedway [in Francis Creek, Wisconsin].”
John Heinz repaired his car in time to make Friday’s feature at Marshalltown. He then returned to the Badger State to race Gravity Park Speedway in Chilton, Wisconsin, on Saturday. After the busy weekend, Heinz offered advice for drivers.
“You can’t avoid some wrecks, but you can look more than one car ahead of you to see what is going on,” Heinz said. “Like ketchup starts to pour slow, so can an incident on track. Then, it can soon be all over you before you realize it.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
