Minnesota Motorhead

Photo: Jason Novak and his Thunder Car at Elko Speedway.

If you make it out to Elko Speedway this summer, keep an eye out for Jason Novak’s number 88 Thunder Car, which is sporting the Minnesota Motorhead logo.

Novak, from Farmington, is a good friend who pasted this website’s moniker on the side of his car for next to nothing. It’s a sponsorship that pays in moral support, while his other sponsor, the Farmington NAPA store, does the real work of keeping him and other local racers on the track with parts specials. Still, it’s pretty cool to see Minnesota Motorhead lapping the 3/8-mile oval, so here’s a little background on the guy behind the wheel. 

Novak has been racing in the Power Stock and Thunder Car divisions since 2002. His current car started out as a run-of-the-mill ’85 Oldsmobile Cutlass destined for the scrap heap. He and some friends gutted it and turned it into a race car for the 2004 season and Novak raced it again in 2005. After that, the car was gradually disassembled and completely rebuilt. This year is its first appearance since the rebuild.

The home-built car is heavily fabricated, from the intense network of roll cage bars to the aluminum interior, which features custom bead-rolled flames on the dash. Even the shifter, a steel rod topped with a rocker arm that a pushrod blew through during a race last year, is home made. After leading much of that race, Novak finished second on seven cylinders.

“I call it my cruel reminder to, no matter where you are on the track, to shut the engine down when there is a wicked noise and you’re all of a sudden running on seven cylinders,” he said. “I was lucky to not have a complete engine failure out of that one.”

Novak is a mechanic by day, and said he learned metal fabrication on his own over time. His tool arsenal includes tin snips, a bead roller, a welder and other simple tools.

“Nothing fancy in my garage–no sheet metal brakes, tubing notchers or anything else that makes that stuff easy,” Novak said.

He also sprayed the car’s silver paint himself and gave it a clearcoat to boot.

Under the hood is a 350 making close to 400 hp on 110 octane, despite the use of stock exhaust manifolds and a two-barrel carb. Compression is a healthy 10.8:1 and the engine features a .500 lift cam. It sends power to the wheels through a Powerglide transmission, run in low, and 3:42:1 gears.

Novak’s first race of the season, in late May, was cut short by overheating issues, but he finished sixth out of 16 in the feature race the next weekend and said with a few more suspension and chassis tweaks, the car “should be pretty damn fast.”

Since Elko’s track is NASCAR sanctioned, a NASCAR license is required and drivers do get paid depending on where they finish. But Novak said it’s not nearly enough to cover the time and expense of building and racing a car and that’s not why he does it.

“Racing, much like the car show scene, is full of people with passion for what they do,” he said. “I have met a lot of people, made a lot of friends doing it, and always enjoy going to the race tracks in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I would rather go to any short track in the country over a big NASCAR race any day.”

June 12th, 2011 | Articles, Car Features, People