Class of 2024

For the past thirty years or so, no matter what division was racing and no matter which local track it was at, one of the favorites to win each and every night and particularly the special events when extra money was on the line, Tony Bahr was always one of the favorites to take home the trophy as the winner.

One of the most prolific winners ever at area tracks and one that always seemed to run extra well at special events, Tony was a master of whatever class he was racing in at the time and included everything from Midwest Modifieds to Late Models.

Influenced by his father Jim and other friends, Tony first started racing in 1992 at the Rice Lake Speedway. With his father still running the QQ on his race car , Tony's first race car bore the #55 but he would eventually become most recognized for driving the QQ himself, after his father stopped racing. But he also had great success driving the #89 for Dale White. By the way, the QQ identification on the race car came from Eau Claire County highway QQ, which is where the Bahr family lived.
Tony's first race car was a 1981 Dave Morgan built chassis that was put together by his pit man Curt Cooley with his first feature win coming at Rice Lake during the 1994 racing season.

And once he started winning, there was no stopping him as he ran up one of the highest feature win totals in Rice Lake Speedway history. And also nearly unmatched were the number of different classes in which he won main events.

As one of the very few drivers in track history to have won feature races in four different classes, he had great success in whatever class he was driving at the time. He won twenty features races in the Modified class between 1994 and 2007 driving cars numbered 55, QQ and 89. He also won ten Late Model features in the QQ and #89 between 2001 and 2006. He then transitioned to the Midwest Modified class where he won four feature races between 2018 and 2022 in limited appearances as he scaled back his racing. Throw in a lone Super Stock feature win in 2011 driving the Q6 car which was a second car for the Shane Kisling Team and his total of thirty four feature wins in four different classes is among the best ever at Rice Lake. Of all the wins at Rice Lake, Tony considered the Labor Day weekend doubleheader sweep with the Late Model in 2001 to be his most memorable.

The list of special event wins and achievements earned is very impressive. Among them would be five Punky Manor Challenge of Champions win in three different classes, two wins at the Red Clay Classic in Ashland, two Northern Nationals wins at Gondik Law Speedway, two Kyle Runkle Memorial wins, a preliminary night win at the Battle at the Bullring in Humboldt Kansas, a Super Stock special win and Dirt Late Model magazine also named him “Mr. September” in 2002. He also won the 2004 Trifecta award with titles at Rice Lake, Red Cedar and Eagle Valley. Throw in Season Champions in 1996 and 2005 in the Modified at Rice Lake, Midseason Titles in 1995 and 1996 along with Best Appearing Car awards in 1995 with the Modified and 2001 with the Late Model and Tony had the kind of successful career that most drivers just dream of.

Some special people that helped him out over the course of his career would include his wife LuAnn, Curt Cooley, Ken Anderson, Jon Ausman, Mark Hanson and Jay and Deanna Amundson. He also had some great car owners that included Dale and Tammy White, Bob Sekora, Willy Little, Jerry Brummond, Brian Ness and Mitch and April Shackleton. Sponsors that were with him for many years included: White City Glass, Louie and Irene Lane Trucking, Rookies Pub, Chippewa Valley Heavy Haul, Troy's Shop, Goulet's Garage, Ausman Property Management, CFR, Tim's Automotive, Champ Pans, Sportsman's Lodge and Documation.

Tony officially retired from racing at the end of the 2023 racing season at the age of fifty nine. He does have a Pure Stock waiting in the wings for his grand daughter Audie to drive once she turns 18. A long time Heavy Equipment Operator and Eau Claire native, Tony is now retired and lives with LuAnn in Haugen.

Ladies and gentlemen, Rice Lake Speedway Hall of Famer, Tony Bahr.

In 1935, the Gilberts family started Gilberts Motors in the tiny little Dunn County hamlet of Sand Creek. Ever since that time, the Gilberts name has been synonymous with automobiles, new, used and high performance. For Paul, who has always been a fan of racing, his personal involvement in the sport dates back to 1963 when Paul was one of five kids from Sand Creek that built a race car that was numbered #283. The car was driven by several different individuals, the most notable being Ron Ward who's success behind the wheel with that car and many others led him to be inducted in the Rice Lake Speedway Hall of Fame. Paul's first actual race that he drove in at Rice Lake was July 4th, 1980. His first actual time driving a race car dates back to his college days when he raced at age 20 at the long closed Eau Claire Speedway.

Paul figures that they might have had $500 total in that first race car he drove but as his racing involvement continued, they moved into faster cars that were more technical and of course, more expensive.
The 4th of July race in 1980 was a very significant date for Paul and for his involvement with racing at the Rice Lake Speedway. At that point, Paul had been retired from racing for seven years. However, Ole Goodremote and his three sons were building a 1970 Plymouth Baracuda to race in the Street Stock class at local tracks and had contacted Paul to see if Gilberts Chryler Plymouth would be a sponsor on the car.

Paul said he agreed to do so is they would allow him to drive the car a couple times. They brought the car to the Rice Lake Speedway on the 4th of July, 1980. Paul won the feature race that night, the first time he had ever driven at Rice Lake and as they say, the rest is history.
Following that win, he won seven times the following year and before he moved on from Street Stock racing, he had won a total of twelve feature races in the course of just five years. He then moved into the newly emerging Modified class started at the track in 1980 and he won three features in that class with a Chrysler powered car in 1983. He also won the Modified points title that year along with the Invitational. He then moved up to the Late Model class and won twice in 1986 in that class, making a total of eighteen feature wins in his career at Rice Lake.
All his Street Stock and Modified feature wins were with the #2 on his race car but when when he moved up to the Late Model class, Red Steffen was already using that number on the car he drove for Jack Erickson so Paul changed his number to #12 and that was the number he used the rest of his racing career.

There were a number of people that helped Paul along the way with his racing career and he gives special recognition to Ole, Mike, Chuck and Mark Goodremote, Joel Smith, Quentin Poppe and Ken Costley along with his son-in-law Jimmy Mars, who Paul says kept him going during the last ten years of his racing career.

Paul, who is also a member of the Red Cedar Speedway Hall of Fame, retired from active racing in 2001 at the age of fifty four. However, his retirement from active driving was hardly the conclusion of his involvement in dirt track racing as he owned race cars for forty four consecutive years, cars that won feature races at Rice Lake with such drivers as Mike Goodremote, Scott Gilberts, Jimmy Mars and Sam Mars behind the wheel. In fact, 2024 marks the first year since 1980 that Paul has not had a race car on the track. However, Paul keeps busy monitoring the career of his grandson Sam and even though he has sold his car dealership and retired, Gilberts of Sand Creek is still alive and well and he can still be found most days hanging around the showroom and shop, talking racing and greeting the many customers he delt with over the years.

Paul and his wife Lou Ann have been married for fifty six years and have three children, Kelly , Krista and Scott. Interestingly, Paul tells us that he wrote in Lou Ann's high school yearbook “I hope you like going to races.” He says” I don't know if she knew what she was in for, but it worked out good.” They still reside on the edge of the village of beautiful Sand Creek Wisconsin.

Ladies and gentlemen, Rice Lake Speedway Hall of Famer, Paul Gilberts.

Dick Hessler is part of the “Old Guard” that raced at the Rice Lake Speedway in the sixties and seventies when many of the classes that race at the track now weren't even in existence back then. . Cars were more stock back in those days and looked more like the cars that the manufacturers were building, but the competition was just as fierce to get to victory lane.

Dick started racing in 1963 or '64 when he was just twenty two years old and recently married to the former Darlene Fredrickson. Dick was a native of Rice Lake, having gone to the Rice Lake schools and the biggest influence in his getting started in racing was because his father Vere was already racing at the Rice Lake Speedway, or Rice Lake Speed Pit as the track was knows as then.

Much of his career, he drove with an interesting number on his race car, #13-2. His father's car bore the number #13 and when Dick started racing, he became the second member of the family to race, thus the #13-2 was born. Eventually, years later he took the number #1 instead.
He started right out in what was called the R.L. Stock class in those days. That class would fit somewhere on the scale now as being between the Street Stock and Super Stock class with the cars being full bodied and some of Hessler's cars, many of which were Chryslers, had rear fins on them that would rival some of the longest race cars ever run.

But he had great success with those cars. Among his honors were the 1972 Season Championship in the R.L. Stocks, the 1974 Points Championship and winning the Aquafest Trophy race in 1965.
The 1972 Season Championship victory is an especially interesting story. Dick started out the year racing a 1958 Plymouth numbered 13-2 but changed cars to a 1962 Dodge at midseason. This car was numbered #1 and since the points at that time went to the car number and not the driver, he had to start from scratch in track points. He barely had enough points at the end of the year to make the championship race but despite starting deep in the field, he still won the race. All together, he won nine feature races in that R.L. Stock class between the years of 1964 and 1974.

He was also on the ground floor when the new Sportsman Modified class was started at Rice Lake. The forerunner of today's open wheel Modified class, Dick won features in both 1980 and 1981 in that class which were the first two years that class was operational. He drove one of the most famous cars in the history of the Modified class at Rice Lake, the #2 car of Jerry Curnow, another member of the Rice Lake Speedway Hall of Fame. In fact, Dick won the second ever feature race contested in that class at Rice Lake, after Dave Adams drove that same car to victory on opening night. The car was voted Best Appearing Sportsman Modified in 1980.

The most memorable win for Dick at Rice Lake was believed to be the 25th anniversary race held at the track. An interesting story surrounds this race also. Held in August of 1974, the twenty fifth anniversary was actually miscalculated by the track officials of that day as they used the wrong year for the opening of the track and were actually two years off in their calculations. However, the race was still held as planned.
His father Vere owned his first race car and among Dick's long time supporters on his cars were Rice Lake Implement, Bob's Auto Salvage and Miller Beer.

Dick retired from racing at a very young age as he was only thirty four years old when he hung up his helmet in 1974. Dick was the middle member of a three generation, and counting, family. Besides his father Vere who showed the rest of the family the way of racing, Dick has a brother Brian who races Modifieds to this day along with a son, Mark, who is currently racing both Modifieds and Late Models successfully at area tracks as well as a nephew Jim Harris that races.

Dick was well known in the local area. He worked for UPS for many years and for many of those years he had the longest route so he was known by many residents and business people of the area. He retired from UPS in 2000. He was also known by the car club followers as he had restored a 1934 Ford three window coupe and successfully displayed that car at many shows.

Dick passed away on November 11th, 2020 during the height of the Covid Pandemic.
Ladies and gentlemen, accepting the award for Rice Lake Speedway Hall of Famer Dick Hessler is his son Mark.

It is a given that in the world of auto racing, particularly the short track version that we all love, it truly is a family sport. Whether it be actually racing on the track, working at the track or helping out in other capacities, generations of families have kept the sport alive and well throughout the area.

And such is the case with the Sirek family from Rice Lake. Tonight we present the latest example of that family support with the addition of Tammy Sirek to the Rice Lake Speedway Hall of Fame.

Twenty five consective years of doing any activity every weekend during the Summer is a lot to expect of anyone, but that's how long Tammy worked at the Rice Lake Speedway. While she never turned a wheel at the track in competition, her work was done behind the scenes but critical for the track to present a smooth and entertaining program every week. Asked by her brother Scott to help out at the track for awhile, twenty five years later she found that she had done just about every job that there was to be done to keep things operating smoothly every week.

She worked at the draw window in the pits, did lap counting and scoring by hand before electronic devices took over that task, set up and passed out the money to the racers following the races, sold track memberships, helped call sponsors to renew their committment to the track and helped hang schedules and event posters, much of this which was done when a club still owned and operated the track.

But Tammy's involvement, while significant, was only part of a greater family involvement with racing in Rice Lake. Her father Ralph, a 2016 inductee in the speedway Hall of Fame, prepped the race track for many years. Brother Scott was a President of the racing club as well as the flagman at the track. Another brother Terry, raced at the track and is one of the few drivers to have won the Little Dream race for Street Stocks. Daughter Jenny was a lap counter and worked the draw window as did her niece Amy. Her mother Dorothy may have had the toughest duty of all though, as she kept her son's flags washed and mended while each Spring performing the daunting task of cleaning out the Mouse nests in the pit building.

Her brother Chris helped out with track teching, her Sister-In-Law Carla also did lap counting and her niece Kimberly sold 50/50 tickets as well.
Tammy also helped out at other race tracks in the area. She counted laps for several years at the Red Cedar Speedway in Menomonie, helped Jerry Weigel open Monster Hall Speedway near Unity and then moved with him to Eagle Valley Speedway in Jim Falls.

Tammy now lives in Chippewa Falls with her boyfield Gary where between the two of them, they share six grand kids with another on the way in September. If you shop for cars in the Rice Lake area, Tammy's face is probably a familiar one to you as she has been the Office Manager for Don Johnson Motors for eighteen years.

Tammy wanted to give special mention to some of the people that worked the draw window with here over the years, including Jackie Johnecheck, Sharon Bush, Missy Rose, Debby Nelson and her daughter Jenny.

A 1986 graduate of Rice Lake High School, Tammy becomes the fourth female to be inducted into the Rice Lake Speedway Hall of Fame.
Ladies and gentlemen, Rice Lake Speedway Hall of Famer, Tammy Sirek.