The WISSOTA street stock championship came down to a battle between the Brauer Brothers: Braden (34JR) and Kolton (KOL34). Braden beat his younger brother Kolton by just 17 points. The one-two finish should come as no surprise as their father, Jeff, won many races and championships, including three track titles at Deer Creek Speedway.
“It was super-duper cool that we got done what no other brothers did,” said Braden. “We’re the only ones in history to finish one-two. It is an incredible accomplishment. We made our dad proud.”
This year, however, the Brauer Brothers had to race without their father and rely on other members of the family.
Their Father’s Influence
In 2019, Jeff, won at Deer Creek and did 60 push-ups to raise $2,400 for the DAV and veterans. Nowadays, he stays close to the family’s home in Eyota, Minnesota, as he battles brain cancer.
“He’s the only reason it all started for us,” Braden said of his father. “Without my dad, I would be nothing in the racing world. For the first few years of our careers, he did most of the work on the race cars we had. He believed we could be great, and he showed me the way to early success.”
The Brauer Brothers obviously learned something from their old man. Braden won 35 features, Kolton 24. Kolton also won track titles at Granite City Motor Park, KRA Speedway, and Madison Speedway.
“He was always in our minds,” said Braden of his father. “He wasn’t there, but his knowledge and dedication to winning was there — he instilled those things in us. My brother and I just had to remind ourselves how bad our dad tried to make us a success — we could not fail.”
While the brothers readily help each other, they didn’t always race at the same tracks. They spent Thursdays and Sundays together, but split up on Fridays and Saturdays.
“We figured out it did not make sense to race against each other and take wins from each other,” said Braden. “So, we split up two days a week.”
What It Is All About for the Brauer Brothers
Braden’s crew consisted of his girlfriend, Nora Kramer, her family, Scott Huinker, Alex Wright, and Greg Wright. Their mother, Janine, helped out Kolton.
“It’s all about family,” Nora said. “It was tough for Janine leaving her husband at home with cancer while she traveled with her son, hoping to make Kolton’s dream come true. Jeff raced for 25 years in the street stock division until 2003, then Midwest mods until 2007 and super stocks until 2021, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer.”
The season took its toll on the Brauer Brothers and family and friends.
“It was exhausting for all of us,” said Braden. “The amount of work to achieve a national championship is astronomical. Dividing time between family, work, and racing means that family and work get sacrificed for racing. We were gone racing two days of the work week, every week, which hurt us on the money side. We had plenty of all-nighters getting the cars ready.”
However, all the hard work was worth it in the end. While Jeff didn’t travel to see his sons race, he did watch from home.
“He said he wanted to see me or Kolton get a championship in his lifetime,” Braden said. “We brought him to the WISSOTA banquet so he could see we won the championship and second.
“Our dad has always been a very stoic person. With his condition getting worse, he shows less and less emotion and has a hard time communicating because he has a tumor. If he was normal, his reaction at the banquet would have been different, but there was virtually no reaction to us winning the championship. At the same time, though, we could kind of tell that he was happy and relieved that he saw us get it done this year.”
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.
