MONROE – John Zaretzke sat in his shop Friday and watched the rain fall. He has racing to do, some momentum to ride, and isn’t sure he’ll be able to do it, at least not this week.
“It’s like going to work and not getting paid,” Zaretzke said.
Zaretzke would like to get out on Evergreen Speedway’s track and build off of last season’s Super Stock championship, his second at the track. He’d like to improve on last week’s encouraging but mediocre win in the first race of the season’s Super Stock series. He’d like to show what taking an offseason off for the first time in about five years has produced.
So rain, rain go away.
Evergreen, which had its opening day rained out earlier this month, is scheduled to play host to its second week of several racing series today. Track officials hope the marquee Super Stocks will be among them, but those cars do not run in the rain.
The Bombers, Northwest Legends, Super and Extra Contact Figure Eights as well as the Hornets, Stinger Eights and the motorcycle stunt team The Believers also are scheduled to run. Qualifying begins at 3:45 p.m., heats are at 5 and mains are at 7.
Mother Nature cooperated last week and Zaretzke took advantage of it. He arrived late at the track, preventing him from warming up and causing a slow qualifying time that forced him to start 11th. He zoomed up to second on the second lap behind Dan Beecher and claimed the lead. Last year’s points runner-up, Shane Harding, made a challenge midway through the 50 laps before spinning out and Zaretzke held off Jason Fraser, last year’s Rookie of the Year, and Kelly Mann to cross the finish line first.
Zaretzke said the late arrival affected the rest of the day.
“We were a little off in terms of settings and we didn’t qualify well,” the 32-year-old Monroe resident said. “The important thing is we won, but we’re not happy with the way we ran.”
Zaretzke has been racing stock cars since he was 16, and he had a lot to live up to. His father, Carl Zaretzke, was a seven-time Super Stock winner at Evergreen, and John said he did feel some pressure to live up to his father’s legacy.
“When I first started I did,” Zaretzke said. “I used to wonder, ‘How do I crawl out from being Carl Zaretzke’s kid?’ Now I think we’ve won enough that people can see me separate from my dad.”
Zaretzke won his first Super Stock title at Evergreen in 1998 and earned his second last season, claiming 16 top-five finishes in 17 starts. It wasn’t easy, though. Rain postponed racing nine times.
Zaretzke said he has considered moving elsewhere to further his racing career, somewhere less wet, but has too much invested here.
“This is where my funding is, this is where we have our advertisers and marketers,” Zaretzke said. “We’re established here in terms of our shop and our equipment. I’ve got a great job at one of the best construction companies around. It wouldn’t be worth it at this point. If I were 18 again, things might be different, I might be trying to be the next Jeff Gordon. Now it’s a hobby.”
To prepare to defend his title this season, Zaretzke took the offseason off for the first time in years, staying away from Go Carts and out-of-town racing and instead working in his shop until midnight every night.
He hopes the late nights and extra work pay off, and he hopes the weather gives him a chance to see if it does.
“It was pretty exhausting being in the shop that much,” Zaretzke said. “But that’s what we love doing. This is supposed to be about fun, and we were having fun. That’s the whole reason we’re out here.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
