Four new members for stock car Hall of Fame

The Northwest Montana Stock Car Racing Association will induct four new members to its Hall of Fame on Aug. 22 at Montana Raceway Park.

The ceremony will take place prior to the super stock 100-lap main event, according to Mike Thoennes, chairman of the board for the NWMSCRA.

They new inductees are: John and Sharon Slack, Cory Wolfe and Jim Seymour.

Thirty members have been enshrined in the HOF since 1996.

John Slack, who owned a logging and road building business for more than 30 years, was instrumental in taking auto racing to the next level in the Flathead Valley. In 1990 he put his crew to work building Montana Raceway Park, an engineering marvel with it’s high banked, wide turns. His wife Sharon handled the promotion side of racing.

The Slacks, along with help from other family members, turned MRP into one of the of the top 10 racetracks in the country, according to a listing by USA Today in 2000.

The Slacks made every Saturday night at MRP a friendly-, family-style event with creative promotions like youngsters riding in stock cars or competing in a bicycle race on the track during intermission.

On the track, the Slacks created a good mix of car classes, raised the payouts, started running fast and slow trophy dashes so everyone had a shot at bringing home a trophy.

They also raised the bar with an elegant banquet at the end of the season.

Gene Fincher, a friend of the family, suggested the Slacks should hold a big-time event at MRP every year. The Montana 200, now in its 25th year, draws racers from all over the U.S. and Canada.

The Slacks also acquired a national qualifying race for the NASCAR Legend cars known as Legend Thunder and started the Rumble In The Rockies race for Late Model NASCAR type cars. NASCAR has held eight sanctioned races at the track.

Thoennes said the Slacks, and their family, are excellent examples of “small town” entrepreneurs succeeding on a national level. “Their contributions to stock car racing in the Flathead Valley are unequaled.”

Wolfe is well-known in the Pacific Northwest. He started racing dirt bikes in 1970 and switched to stock cars in 1984 at Big Sky Speedway.

In 1987 he won the Mission Valley Super Stock High Point Award and the Dirt Bike 250 Pro Class Championship for the state of Montana.

He continued to enjoy success in stock cars, winning the Silver Bullet Super Stock Series Championship in 1989. Two years later he finished second in regular season points and the Budweiser Series season points.

Wolfe competed in his first Montana 200 in 1992, finishing 10th out of 36 entries. In 1993 he placed fourth in the 200 and finished second in Late Model Season Points.

In 1994, just three years after building his Ford with Brian Bosnick, he won the Montana 200.

He has competed in every 200 since, but last year was involved in a wreck towards the end of the race that seriously injured his back.

Wolfe says he has recovered physically, but the car was damaged too much to repair to race this year. He could be back racing next year.

Wolfe was voted 1993 Northwest Late Model Sportsman of the Year and won the “Cory Wolfe Late Model Challenge Race” at Mission Valley Speedway in 2008-2009.

Seymour’s first experience with racing was at the age of 3, watching his dad Bert drive at the old Tri-City Speedway. His job was to wash his dad’s car for race night.

He grew up in the pits, hanging around his dad and fellow Hall Of Famers Gary Thacker and Lum Owens, his godfather.

Seymour got a taste for competition in 1972 at age 13 at the Winter Carnival in Whitefish. He won a 12-13 age bracket snowmobile race, then moved up an age division and won that one, too.

He raced snowmobiles for several years until a car accident in 1978 left him badly injured.

As a third generation mechanic in his family, he accepted an offer as a field mechanic in California in 1986. His neighbor had a dirt modified race car and suddenly those competitive juices were flowing again. Seymour worked as a mechanic on that car, which competed on tracks in Sacramento, Modesto and Lodi.

Seymour moved back to Kalispell and in the winter of 1990 built a Nostalgia race car, which he ran for three years. He sold that car, but stayed active in racing as flagman in turn three at MRP.

In 1996-1997 he served as Head Tech Official at the track.

Seymour switched gears after that, serving as the crew chief for Wade Curtis, who won three season championships in four years in Limited Sportsman.

Seymour served on the Board of Directors of the NWMSCRA from 1991-97, was President in 1998 and has served as President of the HOF since 2010. His favorite memory is inducting his father into the HOF in 1998.

With his induction this year, Bert and Jim Seymour become the first father and son to be inducted into the HOF.

The nwmscra.com website lists all the HOF inductees along with their biographies.