Sugar River Raceway Presents the
2023 ‘Brodhead Historics’
Vintage Karting Event
July 13th, 14th, and 15th
We hope you’re making plans to join us. Here are the event details;
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Thursday July 13th is a vintage kart only practice day. Check in starts at 8 AM, practice hits the track from 9 AM through 6 PM. Lunch will be provided by K&J Chicago Eatery food truck from 11am-1pm.
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Thursday at 7 PM we run our weekly rent to race night; we call it ‘Turn Key Thursday’. This is an open to the public race event and all vintage attendees are invited. The race is for drivers 18 and older. Entry fee is $60/driver. We usually finish before 9 PM. Drive it like you stole it!
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Friday July 14th is practice, racing, kart show, and eating and drinking! We register starting at 8 AM. Practice begins at 9 AM and will run to 11 AM. K&J Chicago Eatery food truck will be available for lunch at the track from 11am-1pm. Racing begins shortly after Noon. Two rounds of heats will be run and we anticipate being done before 4 PM. Our kart show and judging starts at 4 PM and is staged along the home straight on the track. A beer, wine and cheese tasting accompanies the kart show. Dinner is served at 6:30 PM. Dinner is included for all drivers entered in the event. Dinner tickets are available for all other vintage event attendees.
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Saturday July 15th begins with check in at 8 AM. Practice will run between 9 and 10 AM. Our feature round of racing starts shortly after that and will wrap up around 11 AM. Awards presentation follows. And should there be a morning shower like in 2020 be assured that we will spend all day Saturday if needed finishing our feature round of heats.
Here’s looking forward to greeting all our old friends and meeting many new ones.
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Historic Go Karts
In 2014 We Wrote This;
Due to the unfortunate declining presence of the historic karts at vintage events, the Brodhead Historics would like to put a special emphasis on the oldest and most unique examples of these pieces of karting history.
What more appropriate place to run historic karts than on this historic track. We promise plenty of non-racing track time for this class. They will also be featured in the static kart show.
So dig’em out and help make this the largest display of historic karts on the VKA schedule.
In 2023 we still feel the same, let’s fill up our Historic Class!
What’s to Eat?
And what’s to drink for that matter. Are you the typical American? You plan most of your goofing off with eating and drinking bolted on? If you’re in this audience we know you like vintage go karts. Maybe you’re looking in on this article thinking about your first trip to Brodhead, WI? Assuming your a Foodie let’s tell you how we do Friday’s at the ‘Brodhead Historics’.
We pack Friday full of fun. We start with practice and a couple rounds of heat races in the morning and early afternoon. When the racing noise stops we roll all the vintage karts on to the front stretch creating an instant kart show. To up the fun quotient just a bit we add a beer, root beer, wine and cheese tasting event to our kart show. We also keep it local as the beer served is New Glarus brand brewed in near by New Glarus, WI. (and only sold in WI). We also serve root beer brewed in either Monroe or Janesville, WI. Both brands are delicious! And with Wisconsin being the cheese capital of the world all of the cheese will be made in our county, Green County WI. So add it up; kart show of amazing vintage karts, show judging, a few cold ones with some great cheese, great conversation, and some fun trivia and games conducted by Bill McCornack. It all equals a home run.
But it gets better! At 6:30 PM dinner is served. Last years menu had BBQ brisket and chicken with all the fixings to go with. Smiles all around. We’ll see you for dinner July 14th!
The Track
Sugar River Raceway was home to the 1965 IKF Nationals and the 1972 & 1981 WKA Nationals. Lots of regional races for both sanctioning bodies plus two to three WKA ‘Spring Olympic’ events have been held in the vintage era. The track was laid out and graded in 1959 and then paved in the spring of 1960. The track layout was based heavily on the Factory Go Kart track in Azusa, CA. My dad Don told me that was because early on in karting there was a suggestion that all go kart tracks should be the same so if you traveled cross county to compete in a National event, you’d be competing on a level playing field.
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The track was completely redone in 1972 before the WKA Nationals. The track was again redone in 2011 and 2012 when changes in grade, layout and repaving were completed. We celebrated our 50th in 2010 and the facility has been in continuous operation up to today. The track was built by Don Fairman the founder and also the designer and builder of the Blackhawk kart. For many years the Blackhawks were all built on site. There is a kart shop on site along with repair and service facilities. We run a weekly race program for kart owners as well as a rent to race program April through October each year.