nlra_web.html

NLRA Crowns Mike Balcaen as the 2010 NLRA Tour Champion

Mike Balcaen file

Age: 45 (birthdate April 25, 1966)

Hometown: Winnipeg, Manitoba

Family: Wife Kim ("a very supportive and understanding person that really 'gets' racing; I call it a luxury to have that much support from somebody"); their daughter Amber is 18.

Occupation: Auto broker; also runs a race car parts business

Chassis/engine: Victory Circle with Millar and Hatfield powerplants.

Crew: Steve Boulanger, Harry Kalus, Tom Howards, Lance Burton

Sponsors: Sylmak Inc., Snap-On, AssociatedAutoAuction.com, Balcaen Victory Circle B1 Race Cars, Electra Sign, Atek Parts, Imrie Demolition, Terraco, Ohlins Shocks, Bert Transmission, Kirkey Seats, Champ Pans and Brackets, Sweet Mfg., Wilwood Brakes, Beyea Headers, Arizona Sport Shirts, BSB Mfg., Weld Wheels, Speedway International Racing Fuels, Hatfield Racing Engines.

Mike Balcaen is closer to the end of his Dirt Late Model career than the beginning, but don't expect him to call a press conference to announce his retirement. He already learned that lesson when, after 25 years of racing, he prematurely made plans to call it quits following the 2008 season.

As it turned out, to morph a line from author Mark Twain, the reports of the Canadian driver's retirement were greatly exaggerated.

"I know one thing, if I do quit, I just won't show up," said the 45-year-old driver from Winnipeg, Manitoba. "I won't tell anybody that I'm going to retire, because that turned out to be quite the session of laughs and teasing. We're past that and we're just going to do a little more racing."

Balcaen surged beyond "a little more racing" as his team went full bore in 2010 with one of his busiest racing seasons, and another successful one. Balcaen captured his fourth career touring title on the Northern LateModel Racing Association, increasing his career total to 34 track, series and points championships over 27 seasons.

"It felt great. It was a very competitive year, for sure. We had a lot of great competitors and had good results all summer long. It was nice to get another championship," Balcaen said. "We've had a good run over the last number of years, and have a great crew to help us out. It's been very satisfying, but obviously a lot of hard work has been put into it."

Balcaen has always been among the top runners with the 12-year-old NLRA organization, and while he was winless on the tour in 2010, he stands second in all-time victories with 18, eight behind the late John Seitz. He credits NLRA board members, including Brad Seng, Mike Johnson and Robbin Anderson, with helping provide drivers in the extreme upper Midwest a chance to race Dirt Late Models regularly.

"We don't get the public noteriety nationally, I don't think, that we deserve, because it is an excellent series with a lot of talented races that could do well anywhere in the country, and have," Balcaen said. "It's nice, for us up in the North here, to have as many tracks as we do that we can race competitively with a Dirt Late Model."

Balcaen, who also captured NLRA touring championships in 2000, '02 and '08 (NLRA formerly had a weekly points title, too), enjoyed a series season that included plenty of travel and plenty of competition.

"In terms of the NLRA, it was probably more competitive than the past years, in that we had a lot more guys follow the full tour. We had (WISSOTA points champion) Ricky Weiss, Jeremy Keller, Joel Cryderman, Cody Skytland, Brad Seng, all real good runners, and Pat Doar ran a lot with us this year. We went to a lot of different tracks where they had their local strong runners that ran with us. Just the combination of that made it competitive each and every night."

Half of the series season — 14 races not counting three June rainouts — was run during a single week in August as the tour put together a stretch of races at five North Dakota tracks along with Estevan (Saskatchewan) Motor Speedway north of the border.

"During the week we ran six days in a row, and it ended up being a 10-day total deal," Balcaen said "It was a lot of fun because we just went day after day to a different track, different places, a lot of them which we hadn't been to before, and it made it a lot of fun. We were kind of like a touring little circus and that was different."

It would've been a trip Balcaen would've missed if he'd stuck by his plans to retire after his previous NLRA championship.

"After 2008, we'd won the NLRA championship and that was my 25th year, and I really felt when we talked with the crew and everybody, that that year, 2008, was going to be our final year, and that was the plan," said Balcaen, who works as an auto broker along with operating a racing car and parts business. "I'd been doing this a long time and I felt like it was time to sell everything off and just sit back and not race."

He ended up selling one of his cars in the offseason, but decided to race part-time while selling the rest of the equipment. He never climbed from behind the wheel for good, and he revisited the retirement plan with his wife Kim at the conclusion of 2009.

"We got to the end of 2009 and we didn't run very much, and my wife and I sat down and kind of talked about it," he said. "After that, I said either I've gotta step it up, or really sell all this stuff off. We thought we were ready to quit — but we weren't. So we basically upgraded. I got a new Victory Circle car, upgraded some engine stuff, and went out and we ran over 60 nights this year total, from January to October, which is more than I've ever run. We had some decent finishes and we're obviously going to race next year."

Like any sports figure — think Brett Favre — it's difficult to hang it up when you're still competitive. Balcaen said quitting seemed like the natural thing to do a few years ago.

"We just thought we'd worked quite hard the over last 25 years, racing really hard. We had a good crew and ran a lot of races. Being where we are up in Canada here, it's a lot of traveling for us, and we just thought that was the time we would call it quits.

"We — myself, my crew, my wife, everybody — after we sat out that year, we had a lot of idle time on our hands, and we were just so used to going racing, and doing the racing thing. I'd raced since I was 10 with go-karts, and we started Dirt Late Models when I was 16, so it's just basically been all we've done and we know. I guess it got to the point where we weren't really ready to quit.

"So we're just going to keep at it — I don't know how much longer we'll do it — but as long as we're competitive and we're having fun, we'll definitely keep at it and try to keep learning. Part of the business is, too, we're a supplier of race car parts and supplies, and keeping involved at the track gives us the opportunity to know what's working and what isn't and help out our customers."

Balcaen

The racing business has been bolstered by the Victory Circle Chassis that Balcaen and Weiss, a 29-race winner in 2010, piloted. The California-based chassis manufacturer gained traction when Hall of Fame driver Billy Moyer turned his Batesville, Ark., shop into a dealership three years ago, and Balcaen is helping the spread of the chassis in the upper Midwest.

"Already this year we've sold five for 2011, and they're building them as we speak at Victory Circle, getting 'em ready," Balcaen said in late November. "To sell that many cars after racing season, right at the close of the final points races is pretty strong, I thought, to get five cars out. So we're excited about that. We've got a number of other people showing a lot of interest in purchasing cars.

"Much like Moyer, we get the chassis from Victory Circle, we assemble them ourselves and put everything together which we think can make them as good as they can be. We just work with the people close to Victory Circle and some other key people in racing just to try and get our stuff as good as it can be."

With winter hitting Manitoba early, Balcaen has already taken his personal Victory Circle car to fellow racer Karl Tipton's shop in Arizona. Balcaen will fly to Arizona in early January to compete in USA Raceway's Wild West Shootout in Tucson from Jan. 8-16.

"Obviously our winters up here in Canada are very frigid, so it's kind of a win-win situation because we can go down there and have nice warm weather and enjoy a vacation," said Balcaen, who has competed in Arizona six or seven winters. "I've met some great friends out there. ... For the last several years (Tipton) and I have been good friends, and kind of hang out together a little bit in the wintertime. I also met some great racers that I don't race with normally in the summertime, like (Colorado drivers) Kelly Boen and Dean Moore and I, the three of us have been real good friends. So it's kind of a nice way to get away and enjoy some friendship, try to be as competitive as you can with your stuff.

"The nice part about going there, you go there and run six days and you go back to your home. So you're not racing for any points deals, you're just going to run the best you can every night. You just take it night by night, day by day and try to enjoy yourself as much as you can."

*****

Todd Turner | www.DirtonDirt.com