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00:00:11:06 - 00:00:25:08 Bob Baker Dirts flying, your cars making a little bit of noise and you're under control. It gives you a little bit of being, you know, on your own. Hi, my name's Bob Baker, and I'm the executive director here at the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum in Knoxville, Iowa. 00:00:25:14 - 00:00:37:21 Bob Baker Well Knoxville is known as the sprint car capital of the world for a couple of reasons. One of them is because we have the world's largest sprint car race here every year, the Knoxville Nationals, which is traditionally held on the second weekend of August. 00:00:37:21 - 00:00:46:14 Bob Baker It's four nights Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and also the weekly races that are held here every Saturday night, April, through the middle of August. Hi, my. 00:00:46:14 - 00:01:00:22 Chris Dunkin Name's Chris Duncan. My responsibility here at Knoxville Raceway is for track preparation, which involves shaping the track, putting water on the track, working right up till the time when race cars hit the track on race day on Saturday night. 00:01:01:01 - 00:01:20:07 Chris Dunkin We typically start on the track on Sunday morning, the day after race. We typically race Saturday nights, we start on Sunday morning. But if it's been a dry week, we'll start watering and we have two water trucks. We apply anywhere from 50, 60, 70,000 gallons of water on Friday night. 00:01:21:14 - 00:01:32:12 Chris Dunkin We typically go right up the dark. Be right back up here by 6 a.m. on Saturday morning. We go through that same process again. We typically dump as much water as we can on it until it starts running off. 00:01:32:20 - 00:01:36:11 Chris Dunkin And then you just kind of sit back and you wait and you watch and see what happens. 00:01:36:14 - 00:01:48:13 Aj Mottet My name is A.J. Mottet. I originally grew up in Kellogg, Iowa, a small town by Newton. But I was always my affiliation with Knoxville as I was always a racetrack brat. My grandfather and dad used to race. I was always wanted to race. 00:01:48:13 - 00:02:06:03 Aj Mottet I race BMX bikes and motocross and stuff like that. But things didn't work out for me to race sprint cars. But I always came down here with my family for the last 45 years, and when I turned about 30, this the Dingus Lounge kind of technically came up for sale and it was like a hidden 00:02:06:03 - 00:02:10:05 Aj Mottet secret, but I ended up buying it. It and here I am now, all these years later. 00:02:10:11 - 00:02:29:23 Bob Baker Sprint car racing is an authentic American. Traditional type of car racing started with big car racing in the thirties and forties and evolved into super modified racing stock car racing, you know, just different types of open wheel racing, the wing sprint cars, the non wing sprint cars, traditional sprint cars. 00:02:30:09 - 00:02:48:02 Bob Baker And the thing that makes the open wheel racing unique is there's no fenders around the tires and wheels like you would see on a stock car. So that's what makes it unique. What makes Knoxville unique is that starting back in 1961, a man named Marion Robbins had the idea to come up with a big race to help 00:02:48:02 - 00:03:05:07 Bob Baker make money to keep Knoxville Raceway an operation. And he coined it the super modified stock car championship. And actually a super modified stock car nationals is what he called it. And that became the Sprint Car Nationals, which became the Knoxville Nationals as we know it today, 61 years later. 00:03:05:10 - 00:03:22:17 Chris Dunkin And then when you get later on into the year, specifically the Nationals people come from all over the world. So the economic impact is huge financially. I mean, this racetrack brings in, I don't know how much money, but there is a lot of people that comes from all over the state of Iowa on a weekly basis and 00:03:22:17 - 00:03:24:11 Chris Dunkin even surrounding states. 00:03:24:15 - 00:03:37:20 Aj Mottet The dingus would just be the bar, just be another small town bar, which is a good bar. We have a lot of business non racing times. There's no we don't serve food. So it's it's unique because not too many establishments like that left around the country, let alone Iowa. 00:03:38:03 - 00:03:45:14 Aj Mottet The racetrack puts it over the top to compare to other things. It's like the state fair for businesses around the fairgrounds. 00:03:45:22 - 00:04:04:07 Bob Baker So everybody in the community shares in not only the parking revenue, but also the money that's brought to town by people on vacation as they shop in the Knoxville area and the surrounding communities like Pella, Des Moines, Iowa and all the other areas where people stay in bed and breakfast hotels go out to eat and just have 00:04:04:07 - 00:04:06:17 Bob Baker a good time for four days in August. Every year here. 00:04:06:21 - 00:04:18:04 Aj Mottet Just you take this racetrack away for about five years. It would be a hurting community because the tax dollars it brings in is ridiculous. And on top of that, you get to meet the people you get to meet through. 00:04:18:04 - 00:04:37:21 Aj Mottet Just everybody walks over here. It's from from people who are 21 years old who make enough money, just eat baloney and cheese sandwiches. Two billionaires from Australia and they're all the funny thing is they're all the same. You never know who has the money and who doesn't when they walk through because everything goes and most secrets are 00:04:37:21 - 00:04:39:03 Aj Mottet kept when they left the place. 00:04:39:09 - 00:04:53:15 Bob Baker I would encourage people, if you're coming to Knoxville for the races, stop by Saturday afternoon, go through the museum, have a little bit of fun and have some fun in Knoxville. There's lots of good things to do. There's the SlideWays track just north of our museum. 00:04:53:23 - 00:05:03:23 Bob Baker That's a lot of fun with our new putt putt course. There is the Peace Tree Brewery downtown, and there are several things you can do in Knoxville. You know, besides our museum, they have fun before the races on a Saturday night.
