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The Kwik Trip Late Model field at the Fairgrounds Speedway, usually in the 30-driver range, and at one point 40 cars this season, provided too many obstacles. Not only the sheer number of drivers, but the talent-laden field — veterans like Steve Holz-hausen, Kevin Nuttleman, Andy Burgess, Mark Lamoreaux, Mike Belling and Rick Wateski — provided too much competition.
Then there was the inversion factor, where the previous week's winner and the fast qualifier of the current week were placed in the middle or back even farther in the starting lineup based on a number (8) plus the roll of a die. Tracks like the Fairgrounds Speedway that did this, they simply couldn't produce a regional champion, could they?
Not every year, no. But this year was not an ordinary year for Menard.
Menard, who won six of the 18 feature races that were held this season and finished among the top five in all but two of those races, got a call from NASCAR on Wednesday informing him that he was indeed one of eight regional champions in the Dodge Weekly Racing Series.
Menard, who earned $45,000 for the honor, becomes the third regional champion to come out of the Fairgrounds Speedway since the track became a NASCAR-sanctioned facility in 1989, and the first since Stoddard's Paul Proksch captured the Mid-America Region in 1997. Menard, who lives in Eau Claire, Wis., and is the Chief Operating Officer for the Menards home improvement chain, now becomes eligible to be a national champion. That honor, and the additional $100,000 that accompanies it, will be announced later this month.
"It is pretty cool, for La Crosse especially with the competition that is there," Menard said. "It wasn't something that was on our radar entering the season. To have the year that we had and the lack of problems that one could have had, it bodes well to the performance of the team, how strong our team really was."
Menard, who put an exclamation point on a memorable season by winning the final two races of the regular season, finished with a Competition Performance Index of .8056, which turned out to be significantly ahead of second-place finisher Tim Karrick (.7594), who races out of the Lakeside Speedway in Kansas City, Kan. The Competition Performance Index, or CPI, is a mathematical formula which takes into consideration the number of starts a driver makes, the number of drivers in a feature race, the number of wins a driver earns, and the number of top-five finishes he earns.
Karrick also had six wins in 18 races, but he had three less top-five finishes (13) than Menard. The car count at the Lakeside Speedway might also have been different than at La Crosse, which typically features one of the largest Late Model fields at any weekly race track in the Midwest. That factor, plus the fact that Menard only finished out of the top five twice (he had two sixth-place finishes), couldn't but help his regional push.
Fairgrounds Speedway manager Chuck Deery said he petitioned NASCAR to move the track out of the region it was in the previous year and into the Midwest Region this season in order to even the playing field.
"After I had some meetings with NASCAR last year, I just knew the region we were in last year put us at a competitive disadvantage," Deery said. "The drivers, they had a point in saying it was almost impossible to have a region champion out of La Crosse because the way we do things (inversion) puts them at a disadvantage. This year, NASCAR put us in a region where the other (seven) tracks run things similar to the way we do."
Menard said he is still putting in perspective the tremendous season he had at the Fairgrounds Speedway, where he won the two longest races of the season — the 50-lapper and the 100-lapper — and led the points for 15 of the 18 weeks. Being a track champion at La Crosse, then being one of eight national regional winners, will be hard to top.
"It hasn't even sunk in yet. It means so much. To put it in perspective, to be an asphalt (racing) guy and to beat all those drivers at the dirt tracks, it takes a lot to beat the dirt guys," Menard said. "It goes back to our team, with Toby (Nuttleman) and Andy (Burgess). I will take some of the credit, but a lot of it goes to those two guys."
Jeff Brown can be reached at (608) 782-9710, ext. 403, or e-mail at jbrown@lacrossetribune.com
