FORT WAYNE, Ind. — As midget and go-kart racers from around the country converge on the Allen County War Memorial Expo Center for the 23rd edition of the Rumble in Fort Wayne, promoter Larry Boos has been busy getting the race track in tip-top condition.
The process of building the race track began Tuesday as Boos and his team began loading equipment into the facility, but the real magic comes when Boos begins treating the sixth-mile concrete oval with what he calls “pop syrup.”
“We’ll put the syrup down around 2 o’clock on Thursday,” Boos explained. “We’ll start practicing at 4:30 on Thursday.”
WATCH: Night one of the Rumble in Fort Wayne this Friday
The pop syrup is a combination of Pepsi and a little something extra that Boos adds to the mixture. Boos likes to call the additive his, “KFC secret ingredient.”
Adding the pop syrup to the concrete floor creates traction on what would otherwise be a slick concrete floor.
In terms of how the syrup is applied, it’s surprisingly simple.
“Everybody has their own deal on how they apply the syrup,” said Boos, who typically only applies the syrup once during the Rumble in Fort Wayne weekend. “I’m still just old-fashioned. I put it into a gallon jug, put a couple holes on top of the cap and walk backward and just fan it out on the surface. Then we use pickup trucks (to work it in).”
Promotor Larry Boos application of soda syrup and then the track truck applies the rubber @RUMBLEFORTWAYNE See the races here Friday & Saturday or tune in at https://t.co/oZwptysuJA pic.twitter.com/wLu6k4UG87
— Pit Row TV (@PitRowTV) December 16, 2021
Boos, who spent years working with famed Eldora Speedway promoter Earl Baltes, said he still uses the same technique for managing the racing surface for the Rumble in Fort Wayne that he learned from Baltes regarding the dirt at Eldora.
“Working for Earl Baltes all these years, he told me one thing when I first started, listen to the dirt,” Boos said. “The dirt will talk to you. It’s the same thing with the syrup. I put the trucks out there and they start going around, and I have to listen.
“The syrup, the object is to get it sticky, almost like to take your shoes off. So you can listen to the truck and you can hear where its heavy on syrup or it went to nothing. Before the rubber gets on it then you can go over and patch that with a little bit more pop syrup. Then you can try to fix it at that point.”
Just like a dirt track, elements such as air temperature or moisture in the air will impact the tackiness of the syrup.
“When the overhead doors come up, if it happens to be damp outdoors, then the syrup becomes moisturized and it gets very slippery,” Boos said. “The object of the pop syrup is to put it down and build rubber up on top of it. If the elements are such that there is dampness in the air or a temperature change, that rubber may just evaporate with it. You are constantly trying to stay on top of it. One year it got so bad we just had to mop the floor and start all over. We really don’t want to do that.
“It’s as bad as maintaining a dirt track,” Boos added. “You have to constantly watch it. It changes from race to race, hour to hour. Then running the combination of the go-karts, the quarter midgets and the big midgets with different types of (tire) compound, everything just changes.”
This year’s Rumble in Fort Wayne program will be live streamed in its entirety via Pit Row TV and SPEED SPORT TV.