Racers and fans know Buddy Ray Jones as “Woody.” Jones pays homage to the lovable character from Toy Story with his first suit and the paint scheme on his sport mod. The Council Bluffs, Iowa, driver uses the motif to generate attention for the Holiday Horsepower Drive.
Jones; his wife, Rachael; and other racers founded the cause. Since 2006, the Holiday Horsepower Drive has visited Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska, during the holiday season. They bring gift baskets for premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and boxes full of toys for children staying at the hospital.
With the Covid-19 pandemic postponing this year’s Holiday Horsepower Drive, fellow sport mod driver Jeremy Down, of Nebraska City, Nebraska, proposed a match race with Jones — Team Jeremy vs. Team Buddy — at Adams County Speedway in Corning, Iowa. Both teams collected donations for a 50-50-style raffle. The team that finished highest in the sport mod feature “won.” That meant 50% of what the winning team collected in donations went to the holder of the ticket matching the randomly selected stub and the other 50% went to the children’s hospital. The other team donated 100% of its collections to the hospital. Jones won, but the real winners were the children. The duo raised $462.50 for the hospital.
“Racing is all about the kids — giving them a connection, and opening doors to new experiences,” Jones said. “That’s how I found out about racing back when I was a kid living in a trailer court. I heard the thunder coming from Eagle Raceway [in Nebraska] and convinced my family we had to check it out.”
Buddy Ray Jones hopes to do another match with Team Jeremy soon, where once again they hope to share their love of the sport with the kids.
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.
