Clay County Fair Speedway is putting on the $250,000 Challenge on May 20-22 in Spencer, Iowa. Feature winners for the IMCA stock cars and sportmods will receive $25,000 each. It’ll be $2,000 to start. One catch, though. Interested racers need to sign up by January 7.
Register after that date and racers will earn $15,000 to win, $1,200 to start.
Track promoter Trent Chinn teamed up with Mike Van Genderen to put on the show. Van Genderen also promotes Stuart International Speedway in Iowa.
“There’s never been a race this big for sport mods and stock cars — and fully sanctioned by the IMCA,” Chinn said. “If they prove they want to race for good money by signing up by January 7, we’ll give them the show they want and will follow up with more.”
The entry fee is $300. To register, click here.
Within the first day of opening registration, Chin said he received entries from 11 states, with racers from as far away as Louisiana, Colorado, and North Dakota.
The features will start 24 cars. The $250,000 Challenge at Clay County Fair Speedway will have heat races, with winners and those leading in passing points making it into the qualifying features. There will also be B-mains, with its winners going to the feature, and last chance qualifier, with the top two finishers going to the feature.
“We have 60 acres of parking available, enough for 1,000 haulers,” said Chinn. “Our grandstand holds 6,000 people, and we hope to fill it.”
So, why the short notice to enter and be eligible for the more robust purse?
“If you don’t have a sense of urgency for an event, drivers won’t enter,” Chinn said. “We have no cap on the number of entries. We need the commitment from the drivers now. The more entries we get, the better this event will be.”
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.
