MONROE — An era in local auto racing is ending, just weeks before the new season begins.
Mickey Beadle, whose family has managed the Evergreen Speedway in Monroe since 1978, has decided to sell International Productions, Inc., the company his father helped start to oversee track operations.
“We just thought after 30 years, it would be time to end it,” Beadle said Thursday. “My uncle is retired. My dad passed on. My father-in-law passed on.”
Beadle has agreed to sell IPI to Lex Johnson, the owner of Concept Racing &Graphics and a 12-year racer at the Monroe track.
Beadle, who said he has been trying to sell his stake in IPI “all winter long,” would not disclose the specifics of the sale, but did say: “It’s not a lot. After 30 years most people wouldn’t think it’s much.”
The racetrack and stands, as part of the Evergreen State Fairgrounds, is owned by Snohomish County. The county’s current motorsports operations contract with IPI runs through 2010. Once the sale of IPI has been finalized, county approval will be required for the assignment of the contract to Johnson as the new owner.
Neither party expects obtaining county approval to be a problem.
Johnson, 33, first expressed an interest in managing Evergreen “four or five years ago, (Beadle) mentioned possibly selling and I threw my hat in the ring.”
Although nothing came of it then, Johnson, as a driver and owner of Concept Racing &Graphics — Evergreen’s exclusive provider of racing tires and fuel since 2003 — has remained in constant contact with Beadle and his staff.
“When this opportunity came up (about two weeks ago), we spent a lot of time not sleeping,” Johnson said. “I had to take advantage of this opportunity.”
Johnson will continue to maintain Concept Racing as a separate business — he noted many tracks sell tires and fuel to drivers — but his days of racing at Evergreen are over.
“Business is first,” Johnson said. “I’m never going to say I’m quitting racing. I may run at Yakima or a (Northwest) Tour race, but I have no plans for racing at Evergreen.”
Beadle will remain with IPI as either an employee or consultant to assist with the beginning of the upcoming season.
“I’ll be there for the opener,” he said. “I haven’t missed one in 30 years.”
The ASA Northwest Tour opens the season at Evergreen on March 29, with the regular slate of local racing in the NASCAR Whelen All-American series, including the top-tier super stocks, beginning April 12.
Sensitive to the fact that he’s taking over an established operation a few weeks before the season opens, Johnson said he plans on making no significant changes.
“There’s going to be some small things I’ll want to change,” he said. “But there’ll be no major changes. Same people, same programs, for the immediate future.”
Evergreen Speedway began as a dirt track in 1954, when Jimmie Collier, a telephone company lineman, convinced county officials to turn a dirt horse track into a place where he could race his roadster.
The original 5/8-mile dirt track was paved in the 1960s, and both a 3/8-mile and figure-eight tracks were added.
In 1978, Bob Beadle — Mickey Beadle’s father — along with his brother John Beadle, Terry Forsyth and Reg Midgley — founded IPI and assumed the motorsports operation contract at the speedway. Mickey Beadle was there from the start, helping out.
Bob Beadle, who died of emphysema in August 2007, at the age of 73, arranged for NASCAR driver David Pearson to race at the Monroe track in 1980. Pearson, a three-time NASCAR champion, called Evergreen “the superspeedway of the West,” a nickname still used by the track today.
In 1985, Bob Beadle, who was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2003, helped found the NASCAR Northwest Tour and that year hosted the first 500-lap NASCAR race — the Washington 500 — at Evergreen.
Evergreen Speedway was instrumental in the beginning of the NASCAR truck series in 1995, and the Monroe track has hosted some of the sport’s top drivers, including Bill Elliott, Sterling Marlin, Geoff Bodine, Harry Gant, Ken Schrader Derrike Cope and the late Davey Allison.
As the years went by, Mickey Beadle took on more and more responsibility within the family business, but can’t remember when he assumed control of IPI.
“It kind of happened fairly gradually,” he said. “Dad moved on, his brother retired, their other partners all dropped out. I became a partner in 1980, I think, and went on from there.”
Along with helping Johnson get off to a good start as Evergreen’s operator, Beadle would like to keep his hand in the world of auto racing by founding a museum dedicated to motorsports in the Pacific Northwest.
“That’s something that is lacking. We have a rich tradition of racing in this region,” Beadle said. “In 1906 one of the largest races of the time was held in downtown Seattle.”
In the meantime, Beadle is happy to pass the torch to Johnson.
“Lex is going to do a great job,” Beadle said. “I couldn’t be happier to pass it on to him.”
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