LUXEMBURG, Wis. – The Luxemburg, Wis., race track is like many others, located at a fairground, covered grandstands, third-mile clay oval, and races on a particular night of the week. But there is something that sets the track apart from others.
The track called The ‘Burg Speedway has a group of five promoters who run the track for free.
The five also hold other jobs with a wide variety of professions. Joe Orsini is a production supervisor for a company that manufactures industrial air dryers. Andrew Stenard travels around the country, mostly in the winter, setting up networks for various companies. Lydia Kaye works at an accounting firm. Jordan and Britney Parma handle the family farm. But during racing season, they add running a race track to their schedule.
“At the end of the 2019 season the county opened the contract up for bids,” explained Orsini. “It sounded like there wasn’t anybody who was going to step up with a bid. The five of us had helped out at the track in 2019 just trying to keep the track alive because it was our favorite race track. Lydia kind of reached out to all of us and asked if we were interested in keeping the track open and doing the promoting.
“We put in a bid for running the track, and there wasn’t really any other interest, and we ended up signing a one year contract to promote the races in 2020. The track has seen dwindling car counts, and even worse, dwindling fan counts for a few years. But 2020 was a successful year and we ended up signing a three year extension.”
Fan count had dropped to 200 or less, but the group had about 1,000 per race last year. They averaged 132 cars each night, much higher than the prior year’s weekly turnout. That is an amazing turnaround and Orsini explained some things they did to lead to the improvement.
“The big change is we moved racing from Friday nights to Sunday nights,” said Orsini. “Historically the track had run on Friday, but in 2019 when the track was without a promoter, the track in Seymour switched from Sunday nights to Friday. That made three tracks in the area running on Friday nights with Gravity Park in Chilton. As a group, we felt the only way the track could be healthy and survive was change to Sunday nights and that helped a ton.
“We’re the only track running on Sunday nights now and we also reached out to the drivers and solicited their input on what we could do to make it better. We listened to what they had to say and we just try to make a fast moving program. Even towards the end of the season when we were getting 140 cars we were done at 8:30 with a five o’clock start time.”
All five of the promotional team have roots in dirt track racing. Jordan Parma has raced IMCA hobby stock and street stocks and is moving up to an IMCA stock car. Kaye’s husband, Matt, races street stocks and Stenard’s brother raced street stocks and his brother is the promoter at the Sturgeon Bay, Wis., track. Orsini raced hobby stocks and is building a stock car.
At a racing show in the area in January of 2020 the promotion team met with drivers and explained how they don’t have a big budget but are just trying to keep racing alive in Luxemburg. They asked the drivers to give them a chance and support them. There were some early season issues.
“We had some struggles early in the season,” Orsini admitted. “The biggest problem was track prep which was something new to all of us. We changed who was doing the track prep four weeks into the season and things turned around. Drivers told us they wanted to see us succeed. It’s long been one of the best tracks in Wisconsin and has such a good history. Luxemburg was one of the hardest to win a feature at, one of the hardest to win a championship.”
On race night, each of the five promoters has a particular duty. Stenard handles the scoring and helps with sign in, Orsini announces and helps with track prep, Kaye works the concession and front gate areas, Britney Parma is in charge of pit concessions and the kitchen, and Jordan Parma helps with tech and is the race director.
“We talked about doing this and there was a lot of apprehension, but we decided we all loved that track so much we didn’t want to see it wither away and we thought we were the best chance to see it survive,” Orsini said. “We’re not doing this to make any money. Any profit the track made last year we are putting back into the track for better equipment and improvements. We were able to get a new water truck after last season and we’re looking at a packing vehicle that will do the job faster. We’re doing this because we love racing and we love that track.”
Luxemburg, Wis., is lucky to have the five promoter team. They are doing something that is never easy, the track improved dramatically last year, and to top it off, they do it all for free.