For many of the all-time greats in any endeavor, success comes easily. Then, there are the rest of us mere mortals.
Scotty Neitzel knows all about this. For more than 35 years he has sat behind the wheel of a sprint car. He’s won races and championships, and by any measure there is a lot to be proud of.
“I took my racing pretty darn seriously and wanted to accomplish some things,” Neitzel said. “Maybe for a guy who was a natural it would have been easy. I just wasn’t that guy. I wasn’t a natural talent, I had to work hard to become a decent racer.”
Neitzel is more than just decent, and this year he has every intention of getting back to victory lane.
He lives a stone’s throw from Wisconsin’s Beaver Dam Raceway and his love affair with racing began when he was young. His father, Harry Neitzel, was deeply involved in the sport but proclaimed he was done driving when cigar ashes got in his eyes while giving a modified a whirl.
Harry Neitzel focused on ownership, purchased a sprint car and hit the road with his friend Rick Lemanski. When they loaded their 1960 Chevrolet with gear and pointed their ride toward the action, Scotty Neitzel was usually with them.
“That was quite an experience for me,” Scotty Neitzel said. “I was getting to travel around like I did and got to know people like Rick and Cathy Ferkel.”
Neitzel’s first encounter with the Ohio Traveler was memorable.
“We were standing in line at the old Santa Fe Speedway,” he remembered. “I think it was in the early 1980s. My dad and Rick are counting change to buy pit passes for the guys. Rick Ferkel wanted to know what was taking so long and we said we didn’t have enough money to get everybody in.”
With a laugh, he recalled Ferkel saying, “You have to be kidding. Here’s 50 bucks, pay me back sometime. We raced together for years after that, and we would even stay at Rick’s house when he was racing somewhere else. It was an amazing time. People like Ferkel helped others survive, grow and learn.”
There came a point when Scotty Neitzel was ready to start racing. He figured his dad saw this as an effective way to keep him out of trouble, but there was also a limit to how much help he could offer. Then there was a breakthrough, albeit a small one.
“One night I came home from my job and there was a bent up sprint car laying on the ground,” Neitzel said. “Rick and my dad said we will get you started. It was one of their old cars that Joe Roe had raced. They said that was the most they were going to do for me, so I dragged that sucker inside.”
In retrospect he understands this was a straightforward way to test his true resolve. Neitzel took it to a local racer named Kenny Biertzer to see if the piece was salvageable.
“I told him I would pay him someday,” Neitzel said. “But I don’t know if I ever did.”
With a serviceable frame he begged for cast-off parts from an official who ran the scales for the Interstate Racing Ass’n. Once he had some semblance of a car cobbled together, Lemanski pointed to a 355-cubic-inch short block stashed in the corner of the garage. A mechanic at a local service station put the engine together. For better or worse, he was ready to go.
In the fall of 1988, Neitzel headed to Canton, Ill., to compete at the Tom Knowles Memorial winged sprint car race. He was a pure rookie. No one expected him to set the world on fire, and he didn’t. What he did, was get the necessary seat time. It took a while to strike pay dirt, but on July 4, 1994, Neitzel scored his first win at his hometown track.
“It could not have been any more of a storybook win,” he said. “We were just kind of getting going. I was getting more competitive, and it looked like I was going to win a race. Joe Roe was a guy I looked up to and he helped me a lot. I remember he pulled me aside once and said, ‘Boy, the faster you go, the slower you get it seems. Slow down and find some patience.’”
As fate would have it on his big night when the white flag was displayed, Neitzel was right behind Roe who was tucked in behind a lapped car. This was his time.
“I stayed up on the top and drove around him and got the win,” Neitzel recalled. “There was going to be a big fireworks display, so there was a huge crowd. Gary Schlafer, who owned the track, picked me up and carried me around and presented me to the crowd. It was crazy. I see those pictures now, and I look like I just climbed out of the gutter. I was so dirty. Now you have to manage yourself better because everyone watches you.”
The fact that he had nipped Roe, a man he admired, made it even more sweet.
“I remember after that night Joe came up and shook my hand and said, ‘I’m all done helping you now kid,’” Neitzel said. “But he still helped me. His team put a pillow in his car the next day because they said he was sleeping.”
Neitzel became a force in the IRA, but it was clear that Roe was only one of his roadblocks on the path to victory lane.
“People ask me how many races I have won and we haven’t won as many races as some guys, but we have won our fair share,” Neitzel said. “I often tell people it is amazing that I won any races at all. I lived through the Bill Balog, Joe Roe, Kim Mock, Travis Whitney and Donny Goeden eras. That group of guys probably won 300 races, so it is a miracle the rest of us picked up anything else along the way.”
Twenty years ago, Neitzel claimed the IRA championship, and then backed it up the next summer. He has been near the top of the standings every year since, including a fifth-place finish in 2023.
“I lost three really tight championship battles before I won two and then I lost one to Balog and one to Joe Roe by a handful of points,” he recalled. “So, we should have gotten a couple more, but it is what it is. The guys we raced with were tough and points racing is hard. No one likes to race that way.”
If anyone can understand what can go array in these situations, it’s Neitzel. It is easy for him to recall the run to his 2005 title.
“The year I won the second one I remember saying I’m nailing this baby down tonight,” Neitzel said. “It was at Beaver Dam, but I think I wrecked all my equipment trying to do it. We had to figure it out the next week. That was a little uncharacteristic of me but that’s what happens when it gets in your head a little bit.”
A memorable moment occurred in 2001 when Neitzel ventured to Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway for the 1,200-Pound Nationals. He recalls chatting with Ohio’s Dean Jacobs about how much it would mean to win a big race at this prestigious place. It nearly happened.
He was running second in the feature on the final night when his fuel cell ran dry. That was painful enough, but when presumptive winner Kenny Jacobs was light at the scale, the loss cut to the bone.
The truth is that Neitzel’s situation mirrors that of many of his IRA brethren. He has never had the luxury of being a full-time racer. In his primary job, he serves as materials manager for a manufacturing company.
What also complicates his life is his stake in R&H Equipment. His father, and his current crew chief and godfather Rick Lemanski started the firm years ago given the difficulty of finding specialty parts in their area. After Harry’s passing Scotty and Rick soldiered on.
Today, they focus on repair work, serve as a dealer for Maxim chassis and arrange for a parts truck to be available for local 360 sprint car dates. This role sometimes puts him in a real quandary. Neitzel feels a responsibility to share his knowledge with others even if this works against him later in the evening. Sure, it is a related industry, but the shop can still be a drain on his time and energy.
“Sometimes racing feels like a job,” he acknowledged. “When I am doing speed shop related things, I have to get to the track early, hand deliver parts to people, pass out invoices and try to collect money. That interrupts race day and affects my focus. The most peaceful time is when I put my helmet on and we are one lap to green. It is an amazing feeling and I love it.”
Neitzel is 54 years old now, but still very much all in. He is thankful that his wife, Brenda Lee, is still willing to be a part of his journey.
“We have never said we aren’t racing this weekend because we are going camping,” he said. “She has always supported me.”
Having greater backing would certainly help his cause as he continues to chase victories and championships.
“I have never had a lot of big sponsors,” he said. “I still don’t. But some of that was my own fault. I was never good at going out there and getting them. I was too busy to do that, and it meant that I had to go out and tell someone how great I was. That’s just not my personality. I can’t do that. I have tried to get other people to write some advertising proposals for me and I was like, ‘holy balls,’ that’s not who I am either.”
The goals that inspire him now are more modest, but most importantly, are clearly attainable.
“Going into this year I just want to win some races,” he said. “That is really all I want to do. Could we win a championship? Yes. If I can win some races and we get the car to where I am comfortable it is possible. It just takes so much focus all summer, and not just on race day. With all I have going on I don’t know if that is what I am here for anymore.”
Because Neitzel is realistic that doesn’t mean he isn’t fired up. He is particularly excited about the scheduled IRA events in Indiana.
“I was at Bloomington when I was 15,” he said. “But never raced there and I was at Terre Haute a long time ago. There is so much history at those tracks.”
Perhaps more than anything there are several classic events on his schedule he would love to put on his résumé.
“We have won some special events like the Sue Theil Memorial at Beaver Dam,” he said. “But there are a couple left on my list. I have never won the Frankie Filskov race. I won the 360 portion, but not the 410. Frank was one of the hot guys when I started in the IRA. He was a tough son of a gun. I would also like to win the Jim Wipperfurth race at Beaver Dam. He passed away in the pits and I was at the hospital when the family got the news. His son was a racer, and his daughter was involved but they stepped away, but we are still close. I get emotional just thinking about it. I also want to win my dad’s tribute race.”
Just thinking about getting in victory lane excites him.
“The great thing about winning is when you are standing out front and you see those yahoos on your crew come running out and you see that look on their face especially if you really pulled something off,” he said. “That is remarkable.”
Neitzel understands that while he gets most of the glory at these moments, arriving at this hallowed ground was not a solo effort.
“I have never done this alone,” he noted. “There have always been people who have supported me. Rick Lemanski, my crew chief, is 77 years old, and he has only missed two of my sprint car races.”
Neitzel has no idea how long he will stick with racing, but there is no reason to stop now.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be a superstar,” he said. “I just wanted people around me to say that I was a guy who did a solid job and did something for the sport.”
Even if he never turns another lap in anger, he can rest assured that this line was crossed long ago.