By Greg Soukup
Last week I spoke to Tige Jensen, who is returning to race a sprint car at Eagle Raceway after a few years away from it. I thought that in order to complete the story that I should have a conversation with his new car owner, Ivan Tracy from Waco, Nebraska.
Ivan has been around the sport of auto racing for quite a while now. "I raced for a couple of years in high school. I raced a '55 Ford Hobby Stock. Back in those days the gear heads always hung together. I went to school in Sutton, and Delmar Friesen was racing, and it just kind of happened that I started too".
I then asked about how he got into being a car owner. "Road rage!! I found out at an early age that I wasn't cut out to be a driver. I was a good driver, but I just felt like I was on the interstate and every time somebody bumped me I felt like 'OH! I gotta get that guy!!!'. So, I just kind of got out of driving. I had a car with Roger Klone out of York, and we raced it at the York track and at the track in Aurora. That was at the beginning of the Late Model era".
He got into sprint cars after that. "Phil Durst was a buddy of mine, and I used to hang around Jim Shuman's shop a little bit. Phil was always in there, messing around. He had bought a Trostle sprint car, and had always helped Joe Wade in the Late Models, but Joe had gotten out of the Late Models. Phil said 'We're starting this sprint car deal at Midwest Speedway. Why don't you put a motor in my car and we'll have Joe drive it?'. Well, by the time I got the motor ready, he gave me the car and said 'Why don't you just take the car and you can be a car owner?'. So, I put Joe in the car and that's where it all started".
Ivan has had a lot of very good drivers in his cars over the years; most of them extremely familiar to the local racing crowd. "In 1984, after Joe left, I put Bongo Bonrud into the car, and he drove for me for a while. Then Rex Hendrickson drove it for about a half of a year. Towards the end of that year, Ray Lee Goodwin Junior was driving his black 04 and he blew the motor up. So, I put the 04 number onto my white Nance sprint and he finished out the year and won Rookie of the Year. He ended up driving for me for another 4 years. We won track championships in Savannah, Missouri, plus got feature wins at Eagle Raceway, Midwest Speedway and Beatrice. Then Ray moved clear over by St. Louis, which made it pretty much impossible for him to race. I just kind of bummed around for a while until Regan Kitchen needed a motor for his #51 car. I put together a motor and we put it into his car. We ran a couple of shows and then ran the Wheatshocker Nationals. The steering linkage broke and he ended up hitting the wall and going end over end and actually hit the flag stand that sits high above the track. It ended up leaving a nice tire print on the side of the flag stand and knocked the 2 guys out of it. I brought the car back to my shop and pretty much just took off what wasn't broken because the car itself had broken into 3 pieces. I had gotten hooked up with Rick Stuart out in Phoenix who was building cars for me, so I put Regan into my car and he ended up driving for me for 19 years. I also helped Regan's son Ryan Kitchen for 3 or 4 years. I just owned the motors, not the cars though. That was it for quite a while, and I more or less put everything away and stayed away from everything until last year. I put an Eagle together with a Racesaver engine that I built. I wanted to race in the IMCA Sprint Racesaver Nationals, but you had to have raced in 3 Racesaver races to be eligible. So, I was thinking about my choices when Tim Fricke's name came up. I'd known Tim forever because he used to race with us back in the days when Regan drove for me. Anyway, we ran the Nationals and then I took the car back to my shop and winterized it before heading to Arizona for the winter".
I wondered what led to him getting Tige to race his car this season. "While I was in Arizona I got to thinking about Tige Jensen or he must have been thinking about me. So, I called him and asked if he'd ever thought about driving a sprint again and he said 'I'd love to, if I had good equipment'. I said 'What about driving my black 12?', to which he replied 'Well, YEAH! That would be great'. When I got back to Nebraska we got together, got his seat put in and got the cockpit all set up for him. So, we're ready to go. Unfortunately, when Eagle has their practice day Tige will be in Cabo. So, I talked to Toby Chapman. He wasn't going to be taking their car out, so he agreed to go out and hot lap it. So, we should be all ready to go when the season starts".
I asked what he was hoping to accomplish this year. "The main thing is to get Tige back in the groove. He's got a young son, and I've got young grandkids now. We decided that if one of us has something going on Saturday night that we'd leave the car parked. We aren't going to race for points or anything like that. We're going to race as much as we can at Eagle. I really don't know Tige that well, and I don't know what kind of set-ups he likes. I've got a fairly aggressive/neutral set-up in the car now. We'll just see what happens from there. It usually doesn't take too long to get a driver comfortable. I've watched so many drivers that I can adapt a set-up that will help them get along with what they think they need and what they don't think they need. We're just playing it by ear this year though. We don't have anything planned".
I think this will be a great combination! I believe that they could make a run at the points if they chose to do so. But, we'll all just have to be content to see the team whenever they can make it out to race the high banks of America's Home Track.
