For the first time in 19 years, Mountain Dew Bloomfield Speedway will run IMCA-sanctioned races. That includes the return of IMCA modifieds, starting with the Southern Iowa Frost Out on March 29-30.
Modified driver Chris Zogg won a pit pass on the track’s Facebook page and will haul three hours to race there in Iowa.
“I went to the track to watch back in the early 2000s,” said Zogg, of New Liberty, Iowa. “It was a really cool track. I saw Mike Van Genderen was preparing it. The photos showed the track looks perfect — wide, smooth and slick, which is what I like.”
Van Genderen has earned a reputation not only for his track prep work but also for his abilities as a promoter. Mountain Dew Bloomfield Speedway is one of four Van Genderen promotes. He boosted the number of shows at the track to 10 this year. Van Genderen said this will be the most there since its heyday during the 1970s.
“I liked just about everything at Bloomfield Speedway when I raced there years ago,” Van Genderen said. “I won five stock car features in a row there. The track is a perfect shape – flat with a slight banking, racy, and wide.”
The increased number of shows at the track has attracted interest from other racers, such as Kelly Shryock. Shryock won’t make it this weekend, but the dirt oval remains on his radar.
“I’m excited to see the track back with a full schedule,” said Shryock, of Fertile, Iowa. “It’s one of those old fairgrounds tracks — kind of flat and fun to drive on.”
Likewise is the case for Greg Cox, who will sit out while recovering from a bad wreck last September.
“I ran there since 1992 — most of my career,” Cox, of Kellogg, Iowa, said. “I will be back to support the track. The past 10 years [has been] hard to find someone to promote the racetrack. The Davis County Fair draws big crowd — racing should do well.”
This weekend at Mountain Dew Bloomfield Speedway will have two complete shows, on Friday, March 29, and Saturday, March 30. IMCA modifieds, stock cars, sport mods, hobby stocks, and sport compacts will make up the classes for the weekend.
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.
