Randy Winter ended a seven-year winning drought on June 4. He won the IMCA sport mod feature at Minnesota’s Fairmont Raceway. He can thank his wife, Laura, for providing him with the motivation for one of his most memorable wins in 40 seasons of racing.
“I’m not that good at the pill draw, so I asked her to do it — and she drew pole position,” said Winter, 57, of Winnebago, Minnesota. “When she gave me the No. 1 pill, she said, ‘Don’t screw it up this time!’ Her words were in my mind the whole race.”
Winter, a welder by trade, has raced a sport mod for 11 years. Prior to that, he steered an A-mod for 25 years. He started out in the sport by driving a street stock in 1981.
“I never won a championship and won a fair share of features over the years,” Winter said. “I finished second nine times since I started driving sport mods, and I hoped and tried to win every week. Having a long drought is not good for any driver.”
Winter’s low-budget team consists primarily of him and his wife. They race every Friday night at Fairmont Raceway and then bounce around from track to track for Saturday racing.
After trying to separate himself from the field, Randy Winter had to fend off driver Jared Boumeester.
“[Boumeester] was right there for the last three laps,” said Winter. “He caught me on the turns, but I was able to pull away on the straightaways.”
The win caused a large group of Winter supporters to storm victory lane, which include modified ace Kelly Shryock. Winter numbered his car No. 3 to honor Kelly Shryock’s father, Bob Shryock, whom he had raced with. (For more on Bob Shryock, see “Bob Shryock: His Biggest Fan, His Son, Kelly”.)
“We have no family of our own,” Winter said. “It was fantastic that fans, friends, and drivers were celebrating for us. Kelly [Shryock] was so excited — that meant a lot to us.”
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.
