This year Mike Nichols set the all-time record for IMCA national championships, winning his 13th stock car title. Now, due to work, he’s leaving the state he scored all those accolades in, Iowa, for Texas.
“My wife, Anita, and I always talked about moving south,” Nichols, soon to be formerly of Harlan, Iowa, said. “My house in Iowa was listed and sold in a week. I don’t have a house in Texas yet. I’m figuring out where to store my three stock cars, toter with a 44-foot trailer, and everything that goes with the racing operation.”
This year, he won 30 features. Nichols raced four nights a week. Thursdays at Park Jefferson Speedway in South Dakota. Fridays at Crawford County Speedway in Iowa. Saturdays at Shelby County Speedway in Iowa. And Sundays at Interstate Speedway in South Dakota. He won track championships at all four. In total, he has 657 feature wins and 51 track championships in IMCA competition since 2002.
That four-day weekly race schedule won’t be possible in Texas.
“If Iowa is the number one place to race, Texas has to be number two,” said Nichols. “The difference is that Texas has racing strictly on Friday and Saturday, not all week long like in Iowa. Texas has a longer season, though. I still may not be able to race 58 nights in a season like I did in Iowa.
“Racing two nights a week will be okay with me. I’m ready to slow down a bit after more than 30 years of racing. Anita was ready to kill me when we raced seven straight nights in one week this past season.”
Moving to the Dallas-Fort Worth area will provide new racing scene for Mike Nichols. His closest tracks will be Heart O’ Texas Speedway in Elm Mott and Kennedale Speedway Park.
“I’ll be racing with Keith White, who has been racing in the stock car division for a long time,” Nichols said. “He’s won a lot of races in Texas. At least I have one friend down there.”
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.
