The engine in the USRA modified driven by John Nemetz blew up in spectacular fashion. The incident occurred at Monarch Motor Speedway, in Wichita Falls, Texas. The one-liners Nemetz heard after added further insult to injury.
“You smoked the competition!”
“That was quite a big smoke show. Did you do it with mirrors?”
“Now, that’s what we call Texas mosquito control!”
“I just had to roll with it,” Nemetz, of Iowa Park, Texas, said. “People like to joke about the strangest things, especially in racing.”
Nemetz’s USRA spec engine started to fail while he battled for third in the feature.
“I saw all the photographers taking pictures, but I had no idea my car was smoking so much,” said Nemetz. “Then, I went into the turn, got back on the throttle, and it shut down. I thought I was out of fuel.”
This marked Nemetz’s second blown engine of the season. His first engine broke a rocker arm. His second was in the process of being gone over by his engine builder.
“I’m installing my third engine right now,” Nemetz said. “That blown one … it turns over, but I’m too scared to start it.”
Nemetz, a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership, moved up to the modifieds from sport mods this season. He has yet to win in a modified, but he’s still having fun.
“My modified career is nothing to write home to mom about — yet,” said Nemetz. “I like driving a modified a lot more than a sport mod. A lot of knowledge goes into making a modified fast — you have the power and when you get the handling right, you can really enjoy the speed and the feeling you get in the turns. There’s nothing more fun than when the car jacks up on the bars.”
Ultimately, John Nemetz reminds himself that he’s doing well compared to the rest of the world.
“This year has been a bad year for everyone — blown engines are a small problem,” Nemetz said. “Covid-19 has been hard on everyone.”
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.
