When Bo Lundquist towed across Iowa to the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals, he didn’t haul his hobby stock. Instead, his trailer carried the sport mod of his late father, Dennis. The car last ran in 2013.
Dennis passed away weeks before on August 14. The plan all along was for Bo and his brother, Rick, to bring the car to the Super Nationals and race it with their father in the stands watching.
Dennis, 72, battled diabetes, survived stage 4 liver cancer twice, and recovered from septic shock five times. He was being treated at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. Doctors had removed his toes and outfitted him with a special boot to help him walk.
“Before going into the hospital, he watched us work in the garage every night,” Bo, of Sioux City, Iowa, said. “He supervised us, and we loved it.
“[Our father] was in the hospital all summer. He called us four or five times a day to see how we were doing. He was adamant about knowing everything about his grandson Austin’s progress as a driver.”
Dennis’ car, a 2002 Harris, sat on jack stands since 2013.
“The car just sat there,” said Bo. “Dad would wax it and wipe it down once a week.”
The Lundquist brothers, who own Ghost Chassis, made improvements to the car in anticipation of racing it again.
“This year was different,” Bo said. “All we wanted to do was take my old man’s car and race it to make him proud. I had the pleasure of racing with him in the sport mod division for five years at Interstate Speedway and Park Jefferson International Speedway in South Dakota.”
Bo and his wife, Deb, were in the process of updating their house so his father could move in with them when they received a call from the hospital.
“They said he took a turn for the worse — he got MRSA,” said Bo. “All he wanted to do before he died was to see his car race again.”
The car made its return to the track during the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals at Boone Speedway in Iowa. With his father’s sport mod, Bo Lundquist finished 20th in the A-main on Monday. A transmission failure ended his night on the first lap of the heat race on Tuesday.
“That old car showed it had some fight in it, just like our dad,” Bo said. “It gave those $30,000-$40,000 sport mods a run for the money.”
The Lundquists seek to put on a memorial race for Dennis next season at Interstate Speedway.
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.
