Passion overpowers expense
Slinger drivers say stock-car racing is a lifestyle
SLINGER – Chris Blawat owns two businesses. Sort of.
By day he is a residential and commercial painting contractor. It pays the bills for him, his wife and their two daughters.
On nights and weekends, he puts in hundreds of unpaid hours, takes ridiculous risks, invests heavily — and continually – in new equipment, and in the end might generate enough income to break even. If it’s a good year.
When he steps back and looks at it objectively, looks at the time and the sacrifices he and his family and friends make, Blawat can see the second business makes no sense. None whatsoever.
And so he considers hurtling a race car around a quarter-mile track — in a crowd — a hobby. He has to.
“It’s true,” says Blawat, owner of CJ Painting in Eagle and a stock-car racer. “But once you get in the car and get hooked on it, it’s just something you do.
“Other people play golf or go fishing. We work on the car so we can race it.”
Billed as “The World’s Fastest 1/4 Mile Oval,” Slinger Speedway turns 70 this year. It is one of at least 30 short tracks in Wisconsin and hundreds around the country that host races on a regular basis. Some, such as Slinger, are paved; many are dirt.
Such top national drivers as Dale Earnhardt, Matt Kenseth, Mark Martin, Alan Kulwicki and Rusty Wallace have raced at Slinger Speedway. This season, which opened the last Sunday in April, will run through Labor Day, typically with multiple races in four to six divisions packed into about three hours.
Each Sunday evening is something of a reunion for the colorful characters who can’t envision any other path.
Most virtually grew up at a racetrack — Blawat’s father, Tom, competed at the defunct Hales Corners Speedway — or they went as a spectator and became infatuated.
They are, at times, friends, willing to lend a piece of equipment or help in the pits. Other times, they are angry rivals, spitting venom when the push-andshove on the racetrack goes too far. They live with the inherent danger. A crash two seasons ago left six-time champion Conrad Morgan with a fractured sternum and concussion-like symptoms that lingered for most of a year.
Money is a constant issue. Racers advertise their family business on the car or hustle sponsorships from the likes of PMF Landscape of West Bend, Wiedmeyer Express of Kewaskum, The Roadhouse Saloon in Rubicon or other friends, or patrons of the sport. Every sticker on the car means a little more money to keep the enterprise afloat.
But in the end, what keeps them going is the speed and adrenaline rush, the challenge, the competition, the camaraderie.
“My wife got me into a racing school for our first wedding anniversary, 22 years ago, and she’s kicking herself ever since,” says Gary LaMonte, the track’s defending super-late model champion.
He lets out a hearty laugh. But LaMonte does gives his wife, Sandy, credit for pushing him to finish last season after an expensive crash, a decision that gave him his first title.
LaMonte works in maintenance for Founders 3 Real Estate Services, taking care of 23 facilities for the mentally disabled for the State of Wisconsin. He is 46 and lives in West Allis.
After work, LaMonte usually puts in another five hours on his race car each night, doing regular upkeep and trying to figure out ways to make it faster.
LaMonte has six guys working on his car each week, including a brother who has helped for 20 years and his 78-year-old father, who does all the bodywork.
“Pretty much a family affair for us. Which most racing is,” LaMonte says.
At this level, family also usually means enthusiastic free labor.
“Yep,” LaMonte says, “a little food, a little beer.” Steve Apel, the champion from 2013-’15, lives 21⁄2 miles from Slinger Speedway. He started going to the track with his father, Mark, a longtime crewman, and figures he has not missed a race day in 26 years. He’s 28.
Apel sells automation systems — robots — for Pewaukee-based Acieta, comes home to wife Liz and their toddlers, and then puts in about 30 hours a week working on his car. As many as 10 friends help him whenever they can.
“It’s challenging,” says Apel, who started racing gokarts when he was 14.
“When I was growing up, I didn’t think I could race super-lates with Conrad and guys like (seven-time champ) Lowell Bennett, who’ve been racing since the ‘60s and ‘70s. To race with those guys is pretty neat. … They’ve been there before, they know how to handle the car, there’s a lot of respect back and forth.
“It’s enjoyable. There’s some nights that aren’t so enjoyable, but we try to take the good with the bad and move on.”
Parked across the aisle from Apel’s spot is the Frankenstein of a truck Fred Winn modified with castoff parts more than 30 years ago to carry his car. A semiretired mechanic from Milwaukee, he started working on a crew in 1972 and driving in 1974. Winn is 64 and a lifelong bachelor with no children.
He has never been a champion at Slinger and never will — a top-five finish in a feature is victory for him — but he gets all he can out of a budget a fraction the size of the front-runners.
He can’t imagine doing anything else on a Sunday in the spring or summer.
“It’s a lot of hard work, and some days — because I’ve been doing it so long — some days, you’re like, forget it,” says Winn, who rode off the track in an ambulance Sunday after a crash. “But … a lot of people are sitting around in their rocking chair, can’t get out of their rocking chair. I think it keeps you young. I really do.
“So much work and adrenaline and thinking and planning. Everything. The hardest part is the money. Always has been.”
Don’t wreck anything
To put together a brand new front-running car — a purpose-built chassis, engine, suspension and body — costs upwards of $75,000. Good second-hand equipment can be had for maybe half that. A gently used enclosed trailer to haul the car goes for another $10,000.
Then add another $600 to $1,000 a week for tires, fuel, pit passes, incidentals and the prorated cost of an annual engine rebuild.
“That’s if you don’t wreck anything,” Apel says. Apel has yet to break even, he says, but with help from sponsors — and even his parents — the costs are manageable. Blawat finished in the black in 2016, when he won his super-late model championship, and 2009, when he won in the second-tier late model division, he says. LaMonte figures last year he “came close.”
“It pays $800 to win,” Winn says.“Obviously I’m not here to be a millionaire.”
Early last season LaMonte’s new engine exploded, and late in the year he crashed badly. Together those two events cost him $12,000, he estimates. After the crash, he considered parking his car for the final two races.
“But the wife put her foot down, said, ‘It’s my car too; you’re getting your butt out there,’ ” says LaMonte, who returned to finish first and second. “Thank God I ended up listening to her because we ended up winning the championship, thanks to her.”
Before LaMonte got completely engrossed in racing, he helped coach youth sports. If he weren’t at the track, he might do that again.
But he’s not planning on climbing out of the seat anytime soon, and when he does he expects he’d work with a team.
Winn isn’t going anywhere. This is a big part of his identity. If the driving or the economics become too difficult, then he also imagines he’ll put his time to use helping another grass-roots racer.
Apel will miss some Slinger dates this season, but only to travel to other racetracks. The sport is part of his DNA, and for his sons, being at the racetrack is as natural as being in their living room.
Blawat figures his racing days may be numbered. Between soccer and dance, his daughters’ activities are going to win out at some point. A vacation trip might be appealing too — and easier on the budget — but they still love their family trips to the track.
When people get to talking with the LaMontes and find out he races, sometimes they’ll tell them it sounds like a nice hobby.
“My wife says, ‘It’s not a hobby. It’s a way of life,’ ” LaMonte says. “That’s it. It’s what we do. … That’s what all these other people do.”