Slinger Nationals Winner Looks for Momentum at Dixieland

This hasn’t been the season Luke Fenhaus expected.

Part of that is good.

The 17-year-old high school senior-to-be won the Slinger Nationals, one of those titles any Super Late Model racer in the country would love to add to his collection. Then four days later, again at Slinger Speedway, Fenhaus battled wheel-to-wheel with Tony Stewart and Marco Andretti on live national television in the Superstar Racing Experience, ultimately finishing second to Andretti and drawing rave reviews. All of that would have been hard to predict.

But the disappointments have been noticeable, too.

Fenhaus has been shut out in the weekly Sunday night shows at Slinger, the super-fast Wisconsin quarter-mile where he routinely sets the fast time in qualifying, and he has yet to win on the ARCA Midwest Tour, a series in which he is expected to contend in every race and fight for the championship. He has finished second in both.

“It feels like forever ago,” since the Nationals on July 6, Fenhaus said.

“We’ve had winning cars for multiple races. Just sometimes track position is hard. It goes green for 75 laps usually and it’s hard to save those tires and try to go to the front at the same time (after a deep invert at Slinger). It’s hard to win a weekly show. Those guys run harder than anywhere.”

Luke Fenhaus speeds down the back stretch on his way to victory in the feature at the 42nd Slinger Nationals on Tuesday, July 6, 2021, at Slinger Speedway in Slinger, Wisconsin.

None of this is to say he is having a down season, just a sort of a strange one.

The Nationals win and SRX performance in the two biggest races he has run are lifetime memories, and there’s still a month-plus of the regular season in the Midwest, plus some year-end specials.

The next big one on the calendar is Tuesday night, the Midwest Tour’s Gandrund Auto 250 — an event long known as the Dixieland 250 — at Wisconsin International Raceway, a rough D-shaped half-mile in Kaukauna, finishing 12th in 2019 and 17th last year.

“Kind of up and down,” Fenhaus said. “Last year we were fast in qualifying (third), fast in practice, a little bit in the race we were quick but we had a shock go bad and that kind of screwed our setup and our whole race.

“We’ve ran fast there. It’s kind of like these other tracks. We’ve got to put a whole race together.”

Luke Fenhaus is joined by Tom Roberts, director of the Kulwicki Driver Development Progam, in victory lane after the 42nd Slinger Nationals.

Ty Majeski is the two-time defending champion, and another two time winner, Johnny Sauter, is scheduled to compete. His wins in 2010 and 2014 victories came immediately before and after a three-year break for the event. Rich Bickle, whose countless short-track victories include the ’89 race, is entered as part of his farewell tour at age 60; he and T1 Racing will be shaking off the effects of a hard crash Sunday at Slinger, where he got turned and rode the back stretch wall.

National travelers include Jesse Love, Sammy Smith and Casey Roderick. NASCAR Cup Series race winners Aric Almirola and William Byron are set for their WIR debuts. And then there are Wisconsin International Raceway weekly competitors and the Midwest Tour regulars, such as Casey Johnson, who won the 2017 race after Kyle Busch was disqualified; and Austin Nason, who nearly won the Redbud 400 last month at Anderson (Indiana) Speedway.

“I really like that racetrack,” Fenhaus said. “It’s a fun racetrack. We’ve just got to stay on top of our things and just be patient and work through the field and do the best we can.”

Although Fenhaus hasn’t won as many times as he might have expected this season, he’s picked a good pair to win, the Slinger Nationals and the $5,000 Icebreaker 100 at Dells Raceway Park in Wisconsin Dells, the first big event of the season for Wisconsin Super Late Model.

Fenhaus is among the seven finalists in the Kulwicki Driver Development Program designed to help up-and-coming racers. The winner will pick up more than $54,000, which would go a long way for Fenhaus and his small family-run team.

There is a subjective component to the competition — community engagement and work toward keeping alive the legacy of Alan Kulwicki, the late 1992 NASCAR champion — as well as the on-track side. Winning matters.

Fenhaus would like nothing more than regain the momentum he had in early July, first winning the Slinger Nationals and then capitalizing on the added prize — entry in to the SRX race — to catch some more national attention.

Stewart called Fenhaus “the most composed 17-year-old kid I’ve ever seen,” ranked him ahead of many of the young drivers in the NASCAR Camping World Truck and Xfinity series and said he hoped some owner would give him a call. Evenrham tweeted his congratulations and praise with the message, “anytime you need an old crew chief’s help just give me a call.”

While nothing has come directly from the performance, making Hall of Fame contacts can’t hurt.

“Just right now I’m focused on winning with my Super Late Model program and making that program the best it can be and try and win that Kulwicki (Driver Development) Program. That would be the biggest thing on my agenda right now.”

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