La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway: Defending champ Holzhausen ready for 'tough' title race (2024)

WEST SALEM — Bangor native Skylar Holzhausen was dominant in his return to full-time driving competition at La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway last season.

Holzhausen captured the NASCAR Kwik Trip Late Models championship with five feature wins and 16 top-10 finishes. If that’s what Holzhausen can do after a year off in a car that was built just prior to the start of the season, imagine what he can accomplish with an offseason to perfect his car.

“We had the motor went through and hopefully it holds up well,” Holzhausen said at an open practice session on Saturday. “It hadn’t been touched in a couple of years. So hopefully that’s going to have less issues and less attrition. Hopefully that’ll help out. We’re just making some changes and trying some things to make it better.”

As confident as Holzhausen is in the small changes he’s made coming into the season, he knows other teams are also making changes to try and capture a title of their own.

“There’s been a lot of changes, guys doing a lot of different things,” Holzhausen said. “It’s going to be tough again, maybe even tougher. If we can just keep up what we did last year, we’ll be good.”

Holzhausen begins his title defense on Saturday at the West Salem track’s season opener event. Qualifying begins at 12:30 p.m. with racing set for 2 p.m. with racing in the Late Models, Sportsmen, Hornets, 6 Shooters and Mini Van divisions. Those who can’t make it to the race track can watch on lacrossespeedway.tv.

Before the green flag waves on the Fairgrounds season, here’s the drivers and storylines to follow.

THE CONTENDERS

Steve Bachman from Sparta finished second in the Late Model standings last season, albeit 100 points behind Holzhausen. Bachman has a third-place points finish sandwiched between two runner-up seasons over the last three seasons.

Bachman won a pair of features in 2023 and announced midway through the season that a new Late Model would be entering their stable, allowing them to run bigger events with a backup car.

Adam Bendzick’s first full-time season at La Crosse saw him finish third in the standings and be named the Late Model’s most improved driver, but failing to capture a feature win.

The driver from Prior Lake, Minnesota practiced Saturday with a Tesar engine, which previously had helped him to several feature wins during his career at Elko Speedway. His dedication to another full-time season in La Crosse is evident in sponsorships with Comfort Inn Onalaska and the Country Boom music festival.

West Salem’s own Mike Carlson followed up a 2022 championship with a win and a fourth-place point finish in 2023. His car is nearly untouched from last season while his dad, Steve Carlson, brings a nearly all-new car after a crash during Oktoberfest last season.

Brent Kirchner, who finished fifth in the standings, hopes his season starts better than it did in 2023. The Stoddard native missed the first race of the year due to an engine failure but rebounded with five podium finishes and 13 top-10s.

SEARCHING FOR A WIN

Michael Hagger of Hanover, Minnesota won the 2022 NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series state title in Wisconsin thanks in part to his two feature wins at La Crosse.

Haggar followed with a disappointing campaign at La Crosse, managing just three top-10s. He’s putting last season behind him, instead looking at the positives he can build off of.

“The good news from last year is we didn’t have any crash damage,” Hagger said. “We spent a lot of time during the winter just going through these cars and finding more speed. We made changes we didn’t have time to throughout the season that we think will make it better. I think we found a little bit more speed.”

Hagger added that his goal for this season is to “just win as much as we can.”

Westby native Tony Bagstad won two Dash races in 11 appearances last season, but never broke through with a feature win.

Onalaska driver Jerimy Wagner had two podiums and 11 top-10 finishes but didn’t take home a feature victory in 2023.

West Salem’s Cole Howland had his season upended by a crash on opening day. Howland won a Late Model feature in 2022.

ELKO X-FACTORS

Former NASCAR Weekly National Champion and multi-time Midwest Regional Champion Jacob Goede is always a threat when he visits La Crosse on the off-weeks for his home track in Elko. In 38 features between the Fairgrounds and Elko last season, Goede won nine features and nabbed 27 top-five finishes.

Goede is likely to be a factor on opening day and in the month of June at La Crosse, but he’s not making the detour across the Mississippi River alone.

Several other Elko drivers participated in Saturday’s open practice, including Chad Walen, Billy Mohn and Jeremy Wolff.

Walen from Prior Lake, Minnesota got a podium finish in his one La Crosse feature last season before winning four Elko features. Elko native Mohn finished just behind Walen in the Elko points with one feature win.

Jeremy Wolff — a former Elko Thunder Cars series champ from Chaska, Minnesota — won in one of his four La Crosse feature appearances last season.