Brainerd International Raceway hopes for return to glory starting this weekend

BRAINERD – The website for the Trans Am Series wasn't wrong with the reference, yet there was one word in the preview of this weekend's event that knocked a casual follower of motorsports back a peg.

The opening sentence started: "The Trans Am Series presented by Pirelli returns to historic Brainerd International Raceway.''

Historic?

All things Vikings, Twins and the rest from the late '60s — Bud Grant arriving from Canada, Rod Carew stealing home, Bill Goldsworthy of the expansion North Stars doing his first shuffles — are properly ancient.

Somehow, it seems not that long ago that sportswriters Tony Swan, John Gilbert and Charley Hallman were telling us about the big-time road races in the north woods on a track owned by an airline pilot named George Montgomery.

The response of many (including me) was: "I've watched the Indy 500, checked the results for the Daytona 500 and know of drag racing. But what's road racing?''

But try as us skeptics might, the buzz was hard ignore from 1970 to 1972, when famous gents such as Peter Revson, Mark Donohue and Jackie Stewart took part in Can-Am races, a short-lived circuit of open cockpit machines with fantastic power.

The Trans Am started here then, too. There were headlines when Donohue won here early-on. And it was quite the deal when Paul Newman won the Brainerd Trans Am in 1982, a first pro victory that came before the actor won his first Oscar.

So, yeah, I guess it's true — what started as Montgomery's Donnybrooke Speedway in 1968 and became racer/stock broker/investor Jerry Hansen's BIR in 1973 – is "historic.''

There have been ups and downs, bad times when Don (The Colonel) Williamson owned it from 1994 to 2006 and made more enemies than friends, and sad times, when Jed Copham, the Colonel's fully committed replacement as owner, drowned in Fort Myers in November 2018.

Kristi Copham, Jed's wife, became the boss and made it through 2019 with events already on the schedule. Then came 2020 and the pandemic.

"I was reeling,'' she said this week. "I didn't know how we would survive the shutdown. I didn't know what to do.''

One day last summer, Andre Serra, a Brazilian with a long history of testing race cars and instructing drivers, came to BIR for practice with a client, driver Alex Sajady.

"Kristi gave me a tour of the place,'' Serra said. "There was so much land, so much as a facility already. I thought, 'Wow, this place has so much potential to be great.' Kristi told me of her ideas, and some were the same that I had when seeing Brainerd for the first time.''

Initially, Copham talked with Serra about taking over BIR's Driver Performance School this year. Then it was agreed he would use his decades of racing contacts to help enliven this year's schedule.

Serra's home is in Fort Lauderdale. The plan was to start as an employee this spring. Then, faced with the full effect of a mostly lost season, Copham asked Serra to return in August 2020 to help organize the track's comeback from the pandemic.

"I worked 45 straight days, nonstop,'' he said. "One thing foremost for me was to get FIA certification as a track. That's what would allow us to get F4 and FR races here — young drivers in great racing machines that are the steppingstone to Formula One.''

The FIA is the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, dating to 1904. Certification is required from FIA for a track to host official formula-style and some other series of racing.

Following three FIA inspections of the track, that certification came through last week. The result: quite the racing card for BIR on Friday through Sunday.

The main event is the Trans Am, the favorite race of Jed Copham and named in his honor. There are also three other series here: F4 and FR — the minor leagues for the best racing in the world — and also the Sports Car Vintage racers that have already run at Sebring, Charlotte, Sonoma, Road America and similar tracks this year.

The ambition to remake BIR a more exciting venue continues at the end of July with the return of super bikes for the first time since 2004. The series is now called MotoAmerica and to get the bikes back, Copham was required to create a new large, asphalt pit area. That improvement costs about $400,000.

BIR's staple, the Lucas Oil NHRA nationals, are back Aug. 19-22, after not being here last season because of the pandemic.

Serra now carries the title as BIR's director of motor sports, as well as running the performance driving school. His energy for the sport and bringing back BIR's prominence is unmistakable.

"I wanted to take a step forward as a racing facility and in our driver school,'' Copham said. "I feel that Andre showing up one day is the bit of luck we might have needed to get started toward that.''

"Historic Brainerd International Raceway" is trying to modernize its history, and that starts this weekend with the mix of Trans Am cars and those rocket-looking formula machines.