Proctor Speedway’s Mid-Summer Mayhem Proves To Be Just That

Wes Vork-NSO

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Aug 13

Wes Vork-NSO

PROCTOR – Proctor Speedway’s Mid-Summer Mayhem proved to be all that and then some on Saturday night. A standing room only crowd of 3000 plus watched on as pretty much anything with a motor got raced and wrecked. The show included Proctor Pure Stock and school bus racing as well as waterless boat and trailer races.

The Mayhem event, originally scheduled for Aug 6 was postponed until August 13 because of rain. While rain threatened all evening, it missed the speedway and allowed for the full schedule of events to take place. Saturday’s date did clash a bit with ABC Raceway’s Pure Excitement 25, a $1000.00 to win Pure Stock in Ashland, Wisconsin. Because of that only 14 Proctor Pure Stock cars were on hand, low numbers did not prevent the stockers from putting on a whale of a show however.

Pure Stocks, who usually race in the last feature of the evening, well after track conditions have deteriorated, found the sticky track and very fast conditions much to their liking. Dustin Follett started on the pole and led for much of the race before being passed by Josh Loucks. Loucks held on to win the event, which went flag-to-flag without a caution.

Dale Honkala of Cloquet shook off a heat race spill, which saw his bus end up on its side between turns one and two to come back and win the feature race. Honkala was nicely out in front in the first heat race of the evening when he was struck in the left rear corner, putting the passenger side of the bus into the clay track. “When I felt the back of the bus start to lift, I knew there was nothing more I could do so I got the engine shut off and held tight to the steering wheel.” Honkala told Northland Sports Online.

A total of 16 busses competed in three heats before the feature race. While there was plenty of bumping and grinding the feature shook out to some actual racing with Honkala taking the lead for good after a restart. “When they tipped my bus back over (in the heat race) I told race officials if it starts, I’m going back at it because we came here to race.” Honkala commented after his feature win.

Jim Bianchi finished second while Curt Benassi finished third. Benassi Purchased the former Proctor Schools bus after it came out of regular service at the end of last year. The bus was decorated with 535 signatures from
Bayview Elementary School students and teachers.

The final two events of the evening were “waterless boat races,” which saw boats on their bottoms being pulled by cars or trucks without a trailer and trailer races, where vehicles were required to pull a trailer of some kind. Several colorful entries and a couple of vehicles ending upside-down provided the nightcap action.

Wes Vork can be reached at wes@northlandsportsonline.com