Fourth Turn – Milwaukee Mile

Just an idea – and a borrowed one at that.

The late John Reiser, crew chief Robbie?s dad and an outside-of-the box-thinker if there ever was one, was discussing the state of NASCAR racing one day a few years ago in Charlotte. Robbie and Matt Kenseth had gone Cup racing, and John was about to hire a young Clay Rodgers to pilot the family Busch Series Chevrolet. The conversation turned to the condition of the Cup/Busch series and, of course, John had a thought.

He said that he and several other Busch Series team owners had been asked about what it would take to move some Busch circuit teams up to Cup Series competition, forming two Cup groups that would compete as a ?Red? circuit and a ?Blue? circuit, with 30-40 cars in each group.

The idea was to split the star drivers between the two groups, with each group appearing once per year at tracks with two Cup dates, and every other year at tracks with just one Cup race. Both divisions would join forces at a few races each year, such as the Daytona 500.

Reiser also saw the Craftsman Truck Series helping to fill the void left by the teams who moved to Cup, and perhaps a Busch-type series could continue with those BGN teams that didn?t want to make the move.

He viewed this plan as a way of satisfying the demand for Cup races by tracks such as Milwaukee, Kentucky, Pikes Peak, etc., who with the current schedule, have little chance to land a lucrative Cup date.

Little did John realize at the time, but with NASCAR?s current guarantee of the top-35 cars making the Cup field each week, and several top teams (read Toyota) going home after qualifying, ?The Plan? would allow for teams with major sponsors
to actually make the field each week and could have encouraged new teams and drivers to enter. It could also have prevented the legal hassles brought about by tracks seeking NASCAR Cup circuit dates.

Unfortunately, John Reiser died before this plan made any progress. Today it?s probably sitting at the back of someone?s file cabinet in Daytona, never to see the light of day.

But as we watch this weekend?s AT&T 250 at the Milwaukee Mile, just think – you could be watching a ?Red? series Nextel Cup race with Jeff and Dale Jr. battling Tony and Matt for the win. If only some progressive thinking had taken place.

Paul Gohde

Paul Gohde heard the sound of race cars early in his life.

Growing up in suburban Milwaukee, just north of Wisconsin State Fair Park in the 1950’s, Paul had no idea what “that noise” was all about that he heard several times a year. Finally, through prodding by friends of his parents, he was taken to several Thursday night modified stock car races on the old quarter-mile dirt track that was in the infield of the one-mile oval -and he was hooked.

The first Milwaukee Mile event that he attended was the 1959 Rex Mays Classic won by Johnny Thomson in the pink Racing Associates lay-down Offy built by the legendary Lujie Lesovsky. After the 100-miler Gohde got the winner’s autograph in the pits, something he couldn’t do when he saw Hank Aaron hit a home run at County Stadium, and, again, he was hooked.

Paul began attending the Indianapolis 500 in 1961, and saw A. J. Foyt’s first Indy win. He began covering races in 1965 for Racing Wheels newspaper in Vancouver, WA as a reporter/photographer and his first credentialed race was Jim Clark’s historic Indy win.Paul has also done reporting, columns and photography for Midwest Racing News since the mid-sixties, with the 1967 Hoosier 100 being his first big race to report for them.

He is a retired middle-grade teacher, an avid collector of vintage racing memorabilia, and a tour guide at Miller Park. Paul loves to explore abandoned race tracks both here and in Europe, with the Brooklands track in Weybridge England being his favorite. Married to Paula, they have three adult children and two cats.

Paul loves the diversity of all types of racing, “a factor that got me hooked in the first place.”

racingnation.com

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