It’s Wednesday night! That means one thing to those in the farming community of Alta, Iowa, and surrounding areas. It’s race night at Buena Vista Raceway. Locals affectionately call it by its acronym — BVR (pronounced like the animal). The track’s legendary action breaks up the midweek monotony in the farmlands.
The 3/8-mile dirt oval offers thrills nearly every lap — as witnessed here with David Smith (inside), Justin Nehring (middle), and Donavon Smith (outside) in IMCA stock car competition.
“Sometimes you are the meat of the sandwich, sometimes you are the bread — it changes lap after lap, week after week,” said Nehring, 35, of Storm Lake, Iowa. “You’ll be driving and it feels like you are going [into the turn] all by yourself. Suddenly, there are cars on the top and bottom of you. It is a really weird feeling when they come up alongside you so fast.”
Nehring earns a living by driving a truck and farming — but he makes sure to make his Wednesday workday a tad shorter to race at Buena Vista Raceway.
“The track is way different than other tracks in Iowa,” Nehring said. “It’s tighter and faster.
“You drive full-bore down the backstretch, let off [the gas] for a second or two, and then you get right back on it. The driver who gets off the throttle later in the turn pulls alongside you. The key is to stay on [the gas] longer, and get back on it sooner than the competition.”
Nehring competes weekly against the Smiths, a clan that fields more than half a dozen of cars at Buena Vista Raceway. He enjoys the battles with the family.
“One week, they beat me,” said Nehring. “The next week, I may beat them. [Some races,] neither of us may win. That’s the fun of it.”
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.
