Thrills, danger and dirt: one big family watches Saturday night racing

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Sabrina Paxton's last name.

You can have your golf, your hunting and your fishing trips with your buddies. John Baker will take every Saturday night at the quarter-mile banked, clay oval track at Springfield Raceway. Baker lives for the skull-drilling grind of engines for 20 laps of thrills and danger. Shredding through Turn 3 and gunning it to 85 miles per hour on the straightaway.

And he’s not even driving.

Baker, 55, is a fan who faithfully follows the action from a hard stadium bench above the track’s tricky Turn 4. A tattoo on his left arm peeks below his shirtsleeve, “I Love My Family Like I Love Dirt Racing.”

Baker shared a recent Saturday night at the races, as he does most weekends, with his equally race-serious sister, Melinda, 58. Grandpa took them to their first races at the old Fairgrounds Speedway. Their mom Donna Little is there, too, as usual.

The Springfield Raceway on the city’s north side attracts hundreds of spectators most Saturday nights, from the May Mechanics’ races to the November Busch Light Turkey Bowl. They come from as far away as Ava and Joplin and beyond. On any given night, fans can watch 90-100 drivers compete in seven classes of cars, and machines that resemble cars. There’s a competition for everything on four wheels — slick $100,000 models to $300 compacts on Walmart tires.

It’s not exactly NASCAR. Not terribly upscale. It’s butts on bleachers or bring your own lawn chair. The sound system cuts out on occasion. It’s brats, burgers and hot dogs, free admission the weekend of your birthday, and the announcer will lead the singing. Sit too close to the safety net, and you might connect with a clump of Ozarks clay.

Melinda Baker embraces it all.

“It’s my release from the stress of life,” she says. “I go there and I love being with my brother and we laugh and smile. I like the loud noise, the excitement of the track. I even love the food sometimes.”

She adds, “If the late models are there, whoo-ee! Just bring a mask.”

Don’t forget the earplugs.

Humble touches aside, this is a place of serious fandom wrapped in small-town nice.

There’s a lot of visiting across stadium aisles with the same people who sat there last week, and the week before.

“We’ve made countless friends – drivers and spectators,” Melinda says. “Now we all look for each other. It’s kind of a little family there.”

Gene Collier, 78, pushed through some health problems to be there every week.

“It’s a hidden gem in Springfield, that’s for sure,” Collier says. “It’s just in my blood. This is my home away from home. This is a second family to me. You can’t find it anywhere else. You can’t find it on the golf course.”

His buddy Tracy McFarlin, 52, drives from Ava to Springfield every Saturday. Never a racer, “I’m just a professional spectator.” After his marriage broke up, he says, “This place probably saved my life, in all honesty. These are all of my friends here.”

Grassroots America plays here

John Baker says dirt track racing still attracts “grassroots America” — the fans and the drivers they come to see.

“They do their own work and turn their own wrenches and get up and go to work on Monday morning,” Baker said. “We pray before a race and stand at attention during the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’”

Everyone and everything seems connected here. Andrea Hanson, from Aurora, spies the No. 14 car entering the track, jabs the air and shouts, “We used to babysit your momma!”

She’s there to follow the driver of the No. 82L car, her 40-year-old son Christopher Luttrull. He’s been at it since high school.

If you’re not with your kid in the stands, you’re watching your kid racing on the track. Or your dad. Your sister’s husband. Your daughter.

Eric Tinderholt, normally driving the No. 53 car, is a spectator tonight. He’s in the pits with No. 53Jr., his 20-year-old daughter, Mack. The Branson hairdresser also answers to the nickname “Edward Scissorhands.” Her other claim to fame, Rookie of the Year. Little girls look up to her.

Just an Intimate Party with 300 of Your Friends

Work at the track gets underway hours before gates open to spectators at 5:45 p.m. “Country Boy Can Survive” wails from the loudspeakers. Drivers trailer their machines along a chat driveway to the pits, an expansive field where they’ll stage cars and tinker with engines. A $40 ticket means grandstand admission plus access to the pits, the drivers and their cars.

Such easy access makes race night a more intimate affair for spectators. It’s a chance to get to know the drivers, though many of them have long been on first-name basis.

“Jackie” is driver No. 21 Jackie Dalton, Melinda Baker’s favorite.

“He is a super, super nice guy,” she says. “Jackie always comes out into the crowd, and he’ll talk to you and give you his autograph. He’s won so many trophies, when he wins one, he’ll pick out a young person in the stands and give it to them.”

John Baker offers eyes on the ground for his driver friends.

“I’ll text them in the pits and tell them ‘Up your tire pressure,’ or ‘Something’s missing on your car.’”

Like the time driver Jacob Long didn’t realize the deck lid went flying off the back of his car.

‘Super fast and really fun‘

Fan favorites or not, drivers say they keep coming back to Springfield Raceway because of the track – smooth, banked and fast; no ruts or chunks.

Jason Pursley is a longtime driver who races at the larger Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland — considered “The Diamond of Race Tracks.” Pursley gives props to the smaller venue.

“Springfield is one of my favorite tracks,” Pursley said. “The shape of it and the way it’s prepped is really good. It’s super fast and really fun.”

On the track, he’s No. 38C. Otherwise, call him Mr. Pursley, superintendent of Skyline Schools in Hickory County.

Drivers and fans credit raceway owner Jerry Hoffman, who took over an existing track with a partner in 2006 and later bought it made major improvements like banking the track so racers can stack up “4 wide, 5 wide” across the straightaway and corners.

“I grew up around racing. I raced, myself, and I built race cars,” Hoffman says.

He insists on having a track he’d want to drive on and insists on doing it himself. Hours before the first qualifying races, the 50-year-old is driving laps around the oval in a Mack water truck, spraying down and grading the track. A crew member follows behind to pick up rocks. Across the track, two EMTs – Hoffman’s safety crew – ready their 4-wheelers for emergencies. Flag man Keith Foreman eyes his sunbaked perch above the track. Announcer Robert Dalton practices one-liners to loosen up the crowd.

The gate opens around 5:45 p.m. and spectators trickle in: old-timers, teens on first dates and toddlers in pink noise-canceling headphones. An Oklahoma couple is honeymooning there — the groom is a dirt track racer back home. Seniors and veterans, high school seniors, youngsters and babies get a break at the gate. Kids stage foot races on the grass. Dads hand off paper trays of cheese nachos and pop. You can drink beer, but you have to sit in your own section. Ava “professional spectator” Tracy McFarlin, who helps around the track, has found a preacher for the invocation — one of Hoffman’s EMTs who’s also an ordained minister.

And when it’s time, everyone stands for the National Anthem, hats off, hands on hearts.

Hot laps, heats and features

First come the “hot laps,” basic practice laps. Then the heats, when drivers compete to qualify for their main event. The featured races go well into the night under stadium lights.

“I love the sound of the motors, especially the late models,” says Clever resident Sabrina Paxton. “When they begin, the louder it gets and the more vibration you feel in your body. I love that feeling.”

It’s not just the speed that excites Melinda Baker, it’s that intoxicating scent of — is that? — Yes — cherry.

Manufacturers may add cherry fragrance to a lubricant used in high-performance cars that run on methanol. All Melinda knows is that it smells “wonderful.” Her words.

“When they come out and do hot laps, you know instantly if somebody has it in their car. You get excited because you know it’s going to be a fast race,” Melinda said. “It’s all like, ‘Yes! You smell that? We got some speed comin'.’”

From those first hot laps at 6:45 p.m. to the featured races that go way past 11, the grind of engines lets up only when a car stalls or careens the wrong kind of sideways, and the yellow flag goes up. Fans leap to their feet and crane to see through dust and crushed metal.

“There may be some wrecks,” Melinda says. “We don’t like to see them tear up their cars…but we get super excited about it.”

Ray Burns of Springfield and Nixa friend Dennis Bittle have been coming to the races for at least 20 years.

“If they’re not running here, we go to Wheatland,” Burns says. “We don’t care, we go for the fun, for the enjoyment of watching people tear up their $150,000 cars and then cry about it.”

It’s been a good day at the Springfield Raceway that ends under starlight at the Watson Metal Masters Victory Lane and photos with trophies and teammates. Maybe some T-shirt sales and autographs of drivers who come from your hometown.

One Saturday night down, many more to go, and fan Lisa Spellman will be back.

“There are other tracks,” she says, “but this one is ours.”