Editor’s Note: This is the second of a two-part feature on Fred Brownfield and the impact his untimely passing had on the sport of sprint car racing.
Fred Brownfield’s death during the summer of 2006 rocked short-track racing and left a void that has never been completely filled.
“It was a complete shock to our whole sport,” Hall of Fame driver and National Sprint Tour competitor Danny Lasoski said. “He’s the top percentile. He was the full package. He wanted the best for everybody.
“I can’t remember exactly how it played out, but nobody was going to win. The end result was we mended, if you will, with the World of Outlaws. You have to have a couple of key ingredients to make a series. You have to have competitors that put asses in the seats. You have to have fans in the grandstands. And a promoter to stick their neck out. Everybody needs everybody. If you don’t have that nothing will be successful.
“I just see if he would have stayed on course the money that would have been in sprint car racing would have escalated quick.”
Approximately one month after Brownfield passed away from being hit by a race car while lining up drivers during the D Main of the Northwest Modified Nationals at Grays Harbor Raceway in Elma, Wash., on June 16, the assets for the National Sprint Tour were sold to Don Lamberti and Lonnie Parsons of Parsons Motorsports, Guy Stockbridge of Elite Racing and Steve Kinser.
“Larry Kelley was my uncle’s right-hand man,” said Joanne Cram, Brownfield’s niece. “He stayed very much involved, trying to keep the NST nationally going. His focus was seeing if we could get the National tour completed for the season because after my uncle died it was completely up in the air. Ultimately, with the new group taking it over, they were trying to get by race to race.
“My aunt and my cousins, they really were not super involved in the race side of things like myself and (Brownfield’s daughter) Carrie or my brother. Their grieving was away from racing. For me, I felt closest to my uncle when I could be racing. I could honor his memory when I could continue racing. I did an article for him for Sprint Car & Midget magazine. That was kind of my debut of professional writing.
“Now my son, J.J., is racing. It’s so fun to see it all come full circle.”
Lasoski outlasted Kinser to claim the lone National Sprint Tour championship.
“It’s a huge honor,” Lasoski said. “With Fred’s vision and his work ethic, he was putting together an organization that maybe wouldn’t have been as big as the World of Outlaws, but it would have been hand in hand. He was just an amazing man and a hard worker. He was a driver, but he was also a promoter. He knew what was best for the sport.”
Most of the top-level drivers who left the World of Outlaws for the upstart National Sprint Tour for the 2006 season mended fences and returned to Outlaws competition in 2007 as the National Sprint Tour folded.
“A month after he passed, they brought me on full time the rest of the year and I was going to be in 2007 if there was a 2007,” said Craig Murphy, who handled public relations for the National Sprint Tour. “My impression, and I was removed from the higher-up discussions, it seemed like right before he died things were really good as far as a TV deal and a sponsorship deal to go bigger and better. After he passed there was a real desire to keep it going. When we went into the offseason, it seemed like it was all systems go for making it work. Something happened and it didn’t work out. I couldn’t say what it was because I’d be speculating. The hardest thing wasn’t that I wasn’t going to do the traveling, but more of this was Fred’s thing and his thing was gone. He’d put so much into this and had so much success and it only lasted a year. Not only was he gone, but his crowning achievement was gone, too.”
Cram confirmed a title sponsor was going to be signed by Brownfield for the National Sprint Tour the week following his death, but the business backed out because of the uncertainty.
The Northern Sprint Tour was rebranded the Northwest Sprint Challenge Series and was operated by Northwest racing legends Dick and Shawna Wilskey for the 2007 season. Kelley and Greg Burgess teamed up to shift the region to American Sprint Car Series sanctioning in 2008 and the ASCS Northwest Region was formed.