HARLAN, Iowa – Another IMCA racing season, another IMCA record.
Mike Nichols raced to a career 13th IMCA Sunoco Stock Car national crown in 2024, breaking the all-time mark set by late model legend Ernie Derr.
While appreciative of his own efforts and his IMCA Speedway Motors Weekly Racing competition – Nichols won 30 features and four track titles this year, boosting those career record totals to 657 and 51, respectively – he cautions that comparisons between eras are difficult to make.
Nichols’ first national championship came in 2002, Derr’s last in 1971.
“There should always be an asterisk with breaking Ernie Derr’s record. It was a different time. I didn’t beat Ernie Derr because I didn’t compete with Ernie Derr,” Nichols reasoned. “I have a lot of family history of talking about Ernie Derr and how awesome he was back in the day.”
Nichols was nothing short of awesome himself this season, racing to a fifth consecutive crown. He also stood on top of the podium in 2004, 2007, 2010, 2014 and from 2016-2018, each with corresponding EQ Cylinder Northern Region titles.
Any future national championship campaigns, however, would come out of the Southern Region as Nichols and wife Anita are relocating to the Lone Star State late this year, hopefully to an acreage somewhere southeast of Dallas.
“All the stars aligned for us this year. I have interviewed for and accepted a position that will require us to move,” said Nichols, a life-long Harlan, Iowa, resident. “I knew running for a national championship, or multiple track championships, might not be easy next year. This was a last opportunity and I wanted to make the most of it.”
“We’ve given probably 99 percent of the trophies we’ve gotten away. The national championship trophies are in the basement and to answer the funny question yes, we did have to get another shelf,” he added. “When we move, we will have to figure out a place to put everything.”
Nichols made his first walk across the banquet stage as a Modified regional rookie of the year in 2000 but would make a name for himself in The Class Too Tough To Tame.
“That rookie of the year trophy is old enough to drink. Now that first national championship one is, too. Twenty-two years ago, that’s just nuts,” Nichols said. “Very early on, in the early 2000’s, my goal was to race for the national championship and we did that pretty much every year. 2006 was the first-year bonus points were figured into the point total and prior to that, my concentration was not really on track championships. I didn’t look at track titles like I do now.”
His 2024 track championships came at hometown Shelby County Speedway, Crawford County Speedway, Interstate Speedway and Park Jefferson Speedway.
“I met all of my goals. I wanted to win a track championship at every track I raced at,” said Nichols. “I did that and, as Scott Bloomquist would say, the points took care of themselves.”
His feature wins came at seven different tracks in four states. Out of his 56 starts, however, the race that stood out the most was one Nichols didn’t win.
“The most fun race I had, I ran second to Travis Barker at Interstate (on May 12). It was a humbling incident where Travis and I exchanged slide jobs and he was better than I was,” Nichols recalled. “He beat me, and I knew that was a point where I was going to have to race with Travis a lot and would have to be better prepared mentally for those races.
“I’ve been called a cherry picker my entire racing career but there’s no such thing as cherry picking in the IMCA Stock Car division. No matter where you go, there are people who are extremely fast, especially the people who race at that track every week,” he’d continue. “That guy on that track is fast. I challenge anyone in the country to travel to Interstate and race Travis Barker. You’ve really got to have things going right to beat him.”
He’s already given the most national championship speeches and has started thinking about everything he wants to say when his turn at the podium comes during the upcoming IMCA banquet.
“It’ll probably be somewhat emotional. It could be the last time. I don’t know for sure what our racing future holds and you never know when your last time is going to be up on the stage,” Nichols said. “It’s been pretty amazing. Barring Jordan Grabouski (in 2019), we’ve been on that stage every year since 2016.
“The folks at IMCA are like family and that we’re going to spend the Thanksgiving Weekend together. I wouldn’t know what to do if we weren’t.”