Ryan Varner sped his black Chevy around the Shakopee track Sunday afternoon, getting a feel for how well his tires would grip the corners.
The 20-year-old from Minnetonka is in his fourth season racing at Raceway Park and was running second in his class heading into the final day of races. But there won't be another season for Varner — or for any other driver. After nearly 60 years of cars thundering around its paved oval, Raceway Park has held its final races, ever.
"I can't get enough of it," said the young man who started racing go-carts when he was 6. "It's just such a sad day here. Everybody knows each other, helps each other. It's too bad."
There was a time when a trip to Raceway Park stirred passions for the squeal of tires and the rumble of revving motors. On Sunday, it seemed almost that way again as race fans stood in long lines waiting to get into the quaint track that made racing up close and personal for generation after generation of Minnesota motor sports enthusiasts.
It's too bad the lines weren't like that more often in recent years, said race announcer Kevin Busse. Maybe, then, this day wouldn't have come.
"It's nice to see," he said of the folks waiting to get in as drivers took test laps. "But another part of me says, 'Where've you been?' "
For Busse and the other unabashed race fans, this tiny track that got its start in 1956 ignited a lifelong love of the sport. Busse visited as a child and, 18 years ago, became the announcer. "It's been a dream job," he said of calling races every Sunday and summer holiday ever since. "I saw it once and I was hooked."
That was a common refrain Sunday. Whether it was coming from "old-timers" who used to race here in the 1960s and 1970s and brought home title after title — Don Belkengren, Ron Olson and Rick Stine — or youngsters like Varner, Drew Yeoman and T.J. Christensen, competing at Raceway became an addiction that trumped almost everything else.
