FORT WAYNE, Ind. – As far as sentimental favorites go at this weekend’s Rumble in Fort Wayne, there’s no car that fits more into that category than the Jason Dietsch-owned, Jeff Clouse-led No. 8 Hawk.
The car will be piloted by Pennsylvania’s Tim Buckwalter, but it’s not because of Buckwalter that the entry is wished success inside the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum.
Rather, it’s the paint scheme carried by Buckwalter’s No. 8 that makes it so special.
Buckwalter’s machine will carry the 1991 USAC National Midget Series championship-winning livery campaigned by the late Mike Streicher, who passed away Nov. 6 after an apparent heart attack.
Streicher was a legendary name in the annals of indoor racing, winning the Hoosier Dome Invitational in 1990, launching the Hawk Chassis brand with the support of the Seymour family and also assisting with the builds of six of the nine Munchkin midgets, working alongside fellow car builder Mike Fedorcak.
Though he spent most of his time prior to his death teaching the next generation of motorsports at the University of Northwestern Ohio, Streicher still kept his hands on a select few race cars in his spare time.
In fact, as Clouse explained Thursday night as he looked over the tribute car, Buckwalter’s one-of-a-kind machine – commissioned by Dietsch specifically for the Rumble – was the final car Streicher worked on.
“To go back even further, it was probably about 10 years ago that Mike and I were servicing Rick Daugherty’s two cars here, and we were standing out in the breezeway of the Expo on a pretty quiet Saturday morning when I asked him what we would build if we were going to make a killer indoor car,” Clouse recalled. “So every year when the Rumble would get over and everyone would get wound up, we would talk about what we might build. But we just didn’t have really any desire to spend that kind of money and to build a new car.
“Then Jason Dietsch, who’s actually a sponsor of the event, wanted an indoor midget. I tried it for two years to talk him out of it,” Clouse added with a chuckle. “But he finally twisted my arm and I called Mike and I said, ‘Man, we get to build that car we’ve always talked about.’ We actually did this car in 33 days. There’s nothing else like it. And we decided since Jason trusted in us to do it, there wasn’t going to be another one. Out of all the Hawk cars that were built, this would have been the last one that Mike actually had his hands on, as far as some of the design aspects go.
“It’s a cool piece, cool to see it in here and just an honor to pay tribute to him in this way here.”
Clouse’s ties with Streicher actually ran even deeper than just that one car.
Streicher put in much of the work on Clouse’s son Cooper’s Munchkin when the younger Clouse campaigned that car for several years at the Rumble, including setting fast time in 2014.
It was an effort which paved the way for the car that now pays tribute to its legendary builder.
“That car, Cooper’s car, was the last one of the Streicher-built Munchkins, and Mike always said we needed to have that one together for just us to be able to go and play with. That’s where we learned a lot of stuff to do on this new car,” Clouse noted. “And nothing that we learned was really anything that was super new or special, but we just knew things to fix and ways we could make it better than it was.”
As he reflected on his late friend, Clouse also called to mind several valued memories of his time working with Streicher in the racing industry, as well as points that simply stuck out about the man.
“He loved working at UNOH with the kids,” said Clouse of Streicher. “Every day, either going to work or coming from work, he called me on the phone. We talked for at least 10 minutes every day, sometimes two or three times a day. … Mike loved indoor racing. A lot of people don’t realize the amount of time that he put in for other competitors. He would leave here sometimes late on a Friday night after racing, drive from Fort Wayne to Findlay, Ohio, work all night machining parts and fixing parts for cars that he didn’t even build, and then would turn around with no sleep and drive back.
“That was who Mike was. He just loved this stuff.”
For his part, Buckwalter called it “a true privilege” to be able to pilot the Streicher tribute car this weekend at the Rumble.
The Pennsylvanian’s deal was put together with help from Bobby Seymour, who he’ll drive for at the Chili Bowl Nationals and who had an association with Streicher through the years as well.
“It’s crazy to just get the honor of driving it, you know?” Buckwalter said. “Saturday night when the place here is packed and everybody sees it roll out, there won’t be too many people that recognize the car from back then. But the craftsmanship in this race car, what he has on it, it’s second to none.
“We just want to give this car a good showing, the kind of run that it deserves.”
And when the car rolls out Friday afternoon, it will be a sentimental moment for Clouse, in particular.
“Mike taught me everything that I know and taught me how to learn,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing. He was the same way he was with the kids. One of his biggest sayings at the school was that teachers teach kids how to take tests, not how to solve problems. And that’s a huge thing I’ve used to make race cars go fast.
“We miss him, but this deal this weekend is cool.”