2022 Banquet Highlights

---

 Beaver Dam Raceway recognizes the importance of family support while being involved in racing at the short track level. Racing is a challenging sport and success is only possible with the support of a lot of families. In our grandstands and our pit areas we see a lot of great families working, cheering, and supporting the drivers. We honor one of those families each year with this award. 

 We started the Golden Wrench Award to recognize those individuals behind the scenes that work on the cars we all enjoy watching. While the driver receives the accolades, it is these people that spend their nights behind the limelight; building, tuning, and making both their car and driver winners. One of the early winners of this award stated while receiving the award, ”I didn’t think anyone noticed”. We do notice and appreciate all members of the pit crews and their efforts. We recognize one of these each season that has achieved the respect of all the crews with the Golden Wrench Award. 

 Tom Rosera was a long time member of the Wisconsin Motorsports family, and that is how we think of ourselves, a family. Tom a level of dedication that was a rare gift in today's society. Whether crawling under a car to verify it's legality or debating the finer points of a rule in a staff meeting. Tom always ended his nights at the racetrack covered in clay, satisfied in the knowledge he gave his best effort to fairly enforce the rulebook. He was a guiding force in creating the rulebook we still use today. Even though he had retired from active inspections, he assisted in the off-season updating our rulebooks. He always provided insight and even sometimes a little humor. He was a very special member of our family and is greatly missed.

In Tom's honor, we present the Tom Rosera Memorial Award to a member of the Wisconsin Motorsports family. A racetrack is run by many people. They create the persona that becomes the track. Their character shows through the good times and sustains when things don't go just right. We are blessed with a great staff at Beaver Dam Raceway. It is tough to single out any one person, but we look for someone who has the same convictions of high character that Tom had. 

 Beaver Dam Raceway is owned by a group of men. There were five in the beginning, Scott Boyd, Lee Merkel, Glen Hepfner, Bill Muche, and Larry Henkel. We lost Larry some years back to illness. He was much like the others, a successful businessman who has a passion for this sport. He was a quiet, behind the scenes type of guy who enjoyed being at the track and was perfectly comfortable in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. If you didn't know him, you would never have guessed he was one of the owners.

His passion for racing was a lifelong affair with him and included being involved with the Blue Flame land speed record holding car. Hence the shape and color for the award that is given in his name. Larry's passion was for fast cars, good looking cars, and high character people. We give this award to honor Larry's passion for those traits. 

With all the serious awards out of the way we recently started doing Fun Awards. If someone does something funny, unbelievably strange, or just something Kris can make a joke about - she creates awards.