As a racer Cody Brewer was unfazed by the fearsome Belleville (Kan.) High Banks. Now as he pondered the upcoming appearance of the USAC AMSOIL sprint cars at Red Dirt Raceway he pronounced himself “terrified.”
It is the side of race promotion that remains largely hidden from the public. In a week’s time the USAC teams would point their rigs to Meeker, Okla., to complete the season. For Brewer and his wife, Melissa, the checklist of things to do in preparation for a major race is endless.
Today he is loading an auger attachment in his truck which comes on the heels of the couple building a quarter mile of fence. Melissa was exhausted from two grueling days power washing the facility, and fresh paint could be found everywhere.
There is the anxiety of checking weather reports and the constant sense that something has been forgotten. This race carries a big purse, so the risk is high.
“Some race tracks out there are tax right-offs,” Brewer said. “Not us. Our track must support itself.”
He knows the score. In terms of the bottom line, the margin is razor thin.
There is one thing about Brewer that is important to know. He has always been able to punch above his weight.
“I was a wrestler,” Brewer said with a laugh, “and we’re all a little off. We don’t know when to quit.”
It was the same way when he got behind the wheel. “I wanted to participate in the show,” he said. “Some guys put a car together and they won’t go race the big shows. I always wanted to go against the best guys in the country.”
Brewer is a firefighter by trade and he has done construction work on the side. However, in a moment of candor he admits, “All I ever wanted to do was race. Even today it is all I think about. I’m 40 years old now and I am still ate up with it.”
It is easy to see how this happened. His grandfather Ray Brewer owned the first Datsun dealership in Oklahoma and one of the first in the western United States. He fielded cars in SCCA competition for years and introduced his son to the sport. Ken Brewer began in quarter midgets at Oklahoma City’s Taft Stadium at the age of five and spent 25 years racing open-wheel cars primarily with the National Championship Racing Ass’n.
By the time Cody came of age to race his options were severely limited.
“There really wasn’t a place to run quarter midgets then,” he said. “So the first thing I had a chance to do was pavement road racing in go-karts.”
There was a problem. The races were held on Sunday afternoons and as far as his mother was concerned that was a day for church. He competed when he could and was even willing to take on BMX bikes. Then a lot in his life changed. His mother, Willa, passed away when he was 13, and by then his sister, Lindsay, was in college. Now it was just Cody and his father.
Ken put a new car together and father and son went racing. It sounded like fun, but it was soon clear the spark was absent. It was time to hang it up. In 1997, Ken Brewer decided to sell his equipment, but there was one twist. He acquired a 600 micro in the exchange. Now it was Cody Brewer’s turn.
By 1998 Brewer was racing at Ft. Cobb, Okla., (also known as Dutton’s or Southwest Speedway), Port City in Tulsa, and I-44 in Oklahoma City. Unlike today’s scene, at this point in history the drivers were primarily adults.
Racing with the National Modified Midget Ass’n, he competed in major races and had some success. By 2001 he had formed a relationship with owner Donnie Burk and it produced one of his great memories.
Racing at I-44, he was surprised to see Sooner legend Donnie Crawford in the field. While Brewer finished second on this night, he was one spot better than Crawford. It was nearly surreal.
“I thought I should probably retire right now,” he said. “I beat Donnie Crawford. That was a big moment.”
When he felt it was time to put a midget program together Burk was there to help, but he had already learned a valuable lesson from his dad. When they raced as a father-and-son team Cody yearned to upgrade his equipment. Ken had a ready answer.
“My dad was kind of a hard knocks guy,” Brewer said. “So he said if you want nicer stuff, go get it yourself. In hindsight I appreciate it.”
Thus, while Burk may have helped, Brewer raised money to make a go of it.
He campaigned his own car for years, but also moved to sprint cars in an unusual way. As a very young man, Brady Bacon began racing extensively with USAC for Kasey Kahne. Then, when the fortunes of the team changed Bacon moved back to Oklahoma to race with ASCS for Mike and Megan Eubanks.
Bacon’s father, Leon, was serving as crew chief but at times it was hard for him to get away. Brady Bacon called Brewer and said he needed help. Brewer was trying to get on with the fire department and decided to cut back on his own racing. He knew that he was not going to be able to turn this hobby into a profession. He took Bacon up on his offer, and the deal was clear.
“I was going to get very minimal pay,” he says, “but at the end of it Mike and Megan were going to give me a sprint car roller. I raced it for years, mainly non-winged stuff, and the last time I crashed it, I just didn’t put it back together.”
After he married and started a family, different priorities emerged. He also began to get a bit disheartened about the state of the sport. Oddly enough, it provided the impetus to put even more on his very full plate.
“It had never been on my agenda to be a promoter or own a race track,” he said. “But I was getting frustrated about how some shows were ran when I raced my sprint car. You would go to the race track, and you would be just sitting there. They would start an hour late, then the track would be junk after heat races, so we would take an intermission. Here I was at the place I love, and I was thinking they are just killing racing.”
Perhaps a seed had been planted, but how he ended up in an entirely new role in the sport still involved an element of chance. It began with bitter disappointment. The story begins in Belleville, Kan., around 2005. He was there to race a midget but had blown every engine in his inventory.
“My crew guy and I were looking to drink our sorrows away and we went wandering through the campground,” he said. “We met these guys from Fairbury, Neb. It was about 1 a.m. and they were cooking some corn and hotdogs and asked if we wanted to eat. Then they asked us to come back for breakfast, and then dinner the next day.”
It was a friendship that blossomed and led to hunting trips in Kansas and Oklahoma. All in the party loved midget racing at the Belleville High Banks but were worried about the long-term survival of the track.
One thing all agreed on was that the lead up races to Belleville were important. For those outside the region, it provided a reason to make a long tow to Kansas. There was one caveat, these events had to be on a short track that would be easier on equipment given concerns about the dwindling car counts for the Belleville Midget Nationals.
It turns out that all of Brewer’s friends had told him about the Fairgrounds in Fairbury, Neb., but he hadn’t done a particularly good job of listening. He finally decided to take a trip north one winter with car owner George Malone. It was a game changer.
“I drove up there on a snowy day and we pulled in and I saw the covered grandstands and how it sat in the fairgrounds,” Brewer related. “The size of the track was perfect. So, we had a track, but we needed a promoter.”
A call to USAC’s Kirk Spridgeon produced a bit of sticker shock, but over time more people signed on to the idea. It was then that Brewer, essentially a newlywed, had another question to pop.
“I said, ‘Babe, do you want to promote a race?’” he said. “Now she was as naïve as I was about this and she said, ‘Yeah, we can do that.’”
In 2016, the place was packed. While they didn’t make much money, it was a success by any measure. Now the race is a part of the annual county fair and continues to thrive.
Buoyed by a good start as a promoter the next big surprise in Brewer’s life came later that year. He was a regular attendee at an early morning cross fit group but for some reason was once forced to hit the gym later in the day.
Participating in what he jokingly calls the “desperate housewives’ class” he encountered a friend of his sister. She reported that the nearby Brill Motor Speedway was for sale and that he should consider buying it. It was a notion he dismissed.
Yet, via a Facebook message Melissa Brewer got wind of the opportunity and was not averse to the idea. Cody brought the matter up with his father who thought it would be fun. Even Cody’s banker was keen on the idea. As much as Brewer wanted someone to tell him it was a foolish idea no one did.
He took the plunge even though he wasn’t buying a showpiece. Oddly enough, the track had operated under approximately 11 different names over the years.
“It was fairly cheap,” he said. “Because it was a junker. We spent months just cleaning it up before we ever tried to improve it, and it is still a junker. It’s not the nicest place, but it’s our place and we are proud of it. We try to keep it clean, keep it painted and keep improving it.”
What Red Dirt Raceway offered was great racing, and as fans hungry for action turned to livestreamed events this track generated a buzz. This came none too soon. There were tough times.
“The 2017, 2018 and 2019 seasons were tough and then COVID hit,” Brewer recalled. “My wife said, ‘Do you just want to call the bank and give them the keys?’ There is no reason for a hostile takeover.”
Then an odd thing happened. COVID turned out to be a bit of a blessing.
“We are in the middle of nowhere and there weren’t a lot of rules,” Brewer said. “People didn’t want to be indoors, but they were willing to be outdoors and that got us over the hump.”
Brewer still gets behind the wheel when he can, but he now sees the sport from multiple angles. He admits that “racers can be crybabies, but it hasn’t been that bad. People could see we were working our tails off and if something was messed up, we tried to fix it. You can get a lot of grace if people can see effort.”
With the passing of his father this past June, Cody and Melissa have even more placed on their shoulders. The good news is they can handle it. If you talk to Cody Brewer long enough the word relationship is sprinkled throughout the conversation. He believes when racers forge close ties with fans it benefits them in tangible ways in the long run.
Likewise, if relationships are formed between fans and drivers those people will come to the track even if conditions are less than ideal. In his mind this is the key to promotion and to the overall health of the sport.
“That is the most enjoyable part of racing,” he said. “Racing is the excuse for how we ended up together. The time before the races and after the races, having a beer or going to Denny’s later is the most important thing of all.”
He hopes the after-race party following the USAC finale is a good one.