HARTFORD, S.D. — Lee Goos Jr. knew all about the rich heritage of IMCA Sprint Cars in his home state of South Dakota when he started racing.
Now he’s an even bigger part of it.
From Hartford, Goos is the 2024 Racesaver Sprint Car national champion, joining the likes of Matt Richards, Steve Ballenger, Doug Wolfgang and Dusty Ballenger in earning IMCA’s top award for the winged division.
“The first car I ever bought, which I still have, is 1994 Schnee that Matt Richards won the 1994 IMCA Championship with. I remember thinking how cool is was a local guy being the national champion. I never imagined I would be in the same group of (South Dakota) drivers to win a national championship,” Goos said. “And I’ll never forget years later after buying Matt’s car, he came up to me at the race track and mentioned I turned out to be a much better racer then he ever expected.
“Winning the national championship is definitely a great accomplishment. I realized more last year what it meant when we attempted a late, end-of-the-season effort to see if we could steal the points from Tyler Drueke. He drove all the way to North Dakota, coming from Eagle, Neb., for a weekly racing event that we to attended just to make sure he won the points,” Goos continued.
“We were pushing the car into the trailer after the race when I looked over my shoulder and there was Tyler, helping us push. That was one of the first times I actually talked to him and I gained a lot of respect for both how honest he was and how hard him and his team worked at being the best race team possible,” Goos recalled. “He mentioned that he couldn’t even sleep the night before and that if he wouldn’t have driven up to North Dakota to race and lost the national title by a point or two, he would’ve been devastated as that was a goal they had starting out the season.”
Runner-up to Drueke last year, Goos counted eight feature wins among 21 top-five finishes in only 28 events, en route to earning track titles at both I-90 Speedway and Jackson Motorplex.
“At the start of the season, I didn’t have any goals of a national championship and just figured I would like to be in the top 10 again. We’ve been in the top 10 every season since we started racing the 305 and last year figured the same until late in the season, when we realized we had a shot at the title,” he said. “This year there was a point where I only had 18 shows in and realized I could be right up there again. At that point I knew it was doable beings we had about month and a half of racing yet.
“We did travel further to a couple shows out of town just to make sure towards the end of the season, and we ended up with a decent margin at the end.”
The beginning of Goos’ career goes back to 1997, when he took his first sanctioned laps shortly after graduating from high school.
“It was just something I wanted to do since I was a little kid,” he explained. “I was racing with the help of some buddies in my early years and they started getting married and having families and it just got tougher for me. Racing wasn’t as much fun when I was doing it by myself, so I got out of it in 2004 and stayed out of it for quite a while.”
Goos got back into it by helping friends who had been trying to get into sprint car racing themselves and ultimately asked him to drive their car one night as they were struggling, first in 2014 and again in 2016.
He ran “hit and miss” at tracks within 100 miles of home after buying out a local 360 team late in 2016, right before Badlands Speedway (Huset’s) closed down for more than three years. He then bought out a RaceSaver team after the 2020 season.
“Early the next season I was just going to sell the motor from the 305 buyout but my boy (Dylan Waxdahl, who contended for rookie of the year honors in the class this year) talked me into trying it at least once and seeing what I thought,” Goos said. “We would have won that first race but an untimely yellow took away my pass for the lead and we finished second. As we got to know more of the people in that class we just really enjoyed racing with them along with the atmosphere and made some great friendships along the way.”
Goos enjoys the proximity of I-90 and Huset’s Speedway. Jackson is a trip of some 100 miles but he got the four-tenths-mile dirt oval figured out last season and promised himself he’d be a regular there this year.
“When we go out, the goals are to win and have fun. I just enjoying passing cars,” he said. “A lot of things have changed in IMCA since early 2000s. When you’re younger, it’s tough, especially financially, but as I get older I’m wiser at my decisions and financially its easier.
“Every time I race, I feel I learn something to try and make the car or myself a little better. You never forget the races you feel you should have won.”