Published: April 29, 2017
LaMonte goes full-time in 2017
Driver hasn’t raced full schedule at
Slinger since 2008
ndettmann@conleynet.com
262-306-5043
Gary LaMonte and his crew figured now was
good.
For the first time since 2008, LaMonte will
run a full season in the super late model division at Slinger Superspeedway,
which opens its gates for the 70th season of racing Sunday afternoon.
Qualifying starts at noon, racing at 2 p.m.
“We don’t have a lot more years left,” LaMonte
said. “We thought we’d give it a shot.”
It’s taken three years for LaMonte to get to
this point. Three years ago, he and his crew began to build a new race car.
Already a low-budget team, time was precious
for LaMonte and his team.
In 2006, LaMonte competed for Rookie of the
Year at Slinger in the super lates. About halfway through that season, he got
into a big crash, just about destroying the car. The repair bill was $12,000.
In 2007, he sat out parts of the season
because of a concussion.
So in 2008, and for the next several years
that followed, LaMonte raced part-time at other area tracks. From 2010-14,
LaMonte didn’t make a start at Slinger.
In 2015, he made nine starts at Slinger and
showed some flashes of being competitive. He had five top-10 finishes and two
top-five finishes — both being a fifth-place finish.
In 2016, LaMonte and his crew rolled a new car
off the trailer.
“We’re a small team and it took us two years
to build it,” LaMonte said. “We decided it was a two-year process to build the
car and we could only afford to run only 10 races a year.”
In the 2016 season opener, LaMonte led a
race-high 45 laps in the 75-lap feature eventually won by Dennis Prunty.
LaMonte finished fourth in that feature. Also on that day, he was secondfastest
in practice, and turned the fast lap in his heat race and in the feature.
That was the start of one of LaMonte’s best
years at Slinger in more than a decade.
He made 10 feature starts and outside of a
19th-place finish in the second race, LaMonte’s worst finish was eighth. He had
six top-five finishes, including winning two of the final four races for his
first two super late model feature victories of his career.
“It was huge,” LaMonte said. “It was great for
my crew, it gave me a lot of confidence.”
So much confidence it was a big reason why he
decided to give it a full-go in 2017 and try to win a championship in Slinger’s
top division.
“Motivation was, I now have the equipment I
feel I can win every time on the track,” LaMonte said. “You only have that
advantage for so long. We figured we had a short window.” LaMonte thought he
could’ve won two or three more races than he did.
LaMonte last won a championship in 2004,
winning Slinger’s midwest sportsman title. He also won the 2001 legends
division title and the 2003 sportsman championship at Lake Geneva Raceway.
The strategy to win the championship is simple.
“You have to finish,” LaMonte said. “I feel
like if I can win four or five races, set fast time four or five times and
finish the rest without bad luck, I think that’ll be enough (to win the
championship).”
But that’s if someone else has something to say
about that. Chris Blawat is the defending track champion in the division and is
expected to challenge for a second straight title. Todd Thelen, co-promoter at
Slinger, believes Steve Apel, the three-time champion (2013-15), will be
stronger this year, and Apel knows all too well about the importance of
finishing races.
Apel held a 97-point lead on Blawat on Aug. 7 —
five races left in the season. A pair of finishes outside the top 10 by Apel,
coupled with five straight topfour finishes by Blawat in that span catapulted
Blawat to the championship.
“Luck is huge,” LaMonte said.
Others figured to play a factor in the super
late battle include Brad Mueller, who has a new car owner and engine, and Alex
Prunty, last season’s Rookie of the Year.
In 2016, eight drivers won a feature in the
super late model division — the most since there were eight in 2010 — after
back-to-back seasons with
five drivers winning a race in each season.
“I think it’s good for the fans to see
different people in victory lane,” Thelen said.
This year, Slinger added a division to the
program — Super Beez.
“Our entry level had became top heavy,” Thelen
said. “It was getting harder for entry-level racers to keep up.”
The Super Beez will be 4-cylinder cars, but can
have Hoosier racing tires, and can open up the suspension and engine. The Heros
Bees will still be at the track, but the stipulation is a driver in that
division can’t go faster than a 15.2-second lap. If they do, they are
black-flagged. If they do it a second time, they are parked for the evening.
Thelen said it’s helped get some new racers
into the track for this season and fulfills a request several years in the
making.
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