Troy Nelson in the #66 stock car
Jul 12, 2008
To the average racing fan, most drivers are not the type of people you want to bring home to mom and dad. When you see stock car racers like Tony Stewart, Kyle Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on SportsCenter, the impression is that these guys do nothing but get into fights with each other, on or off the track. Appearances can be deceiving.
“In racing you meet so many great people,” says Troy Nelson, driver in the Super Late Model class for Forest County Potawatomi Racing. “I’ve raced against so many people and friends of mine that are in NASCAR right now, that are Sprint Cup stars right now. Matt Kenseth, Johnny Sauter, the list goes on.”
When talking with this 16 year veteran of racing, one almost gets the impression he’s too nice for the sport. That is clearly not the case however.
“So far this season out of the two tracks we’ve got 13 top 5s, two top 10s, and one feature win so far this year,” Nelson said. “It’s been a pretty good season so far for us.”
Even that is a bit of an understatement. Over the course of Nelson’s career he has had over 70 feature wins, countless top 5 finishes, and 4 track records under his belt.
It would seem that Nelson has been racing all his life to be so successful at the sport. Once again, he defies the odds. “Actually, I didn’t really start doing anything until (I was) probably about 22 years old. That was when I bought my first car,” the Antigo, WI resident said. “I contribute (my success) to a lot of devotion to the sport. We are pretty serious about it. I’ve got a really good crew, good sponsors, and a little bit of talent."
Once again, Nelson’s modesty and kindness shine through. In a recent race at the Driveline 100 in Norway, MI, the man in the No. 66 car was competing against racers from California, Florida and the Carolinas, and doing quite well. He led 36 laps of the race, more than any other driver, and was in first place going into a caution late in the race. Driving a different vehicle than he normally does, however, his car responded differently after the lengthy break in action and finished second out of over 45 other racers.
If racing against people from all over the country doesn’t faze this father of four at all, one might wonder if anything in racing does.
“Besides racing against the competition level that we have here and around us here in Wisconsin, because we are kind of the hot bed of racing, the other challenge would be the set up in working with the cars,” Nelson said. “There is a lot of thought process and everything that goes into setting these cars up and making them as fast as what they are. The technology and everything that goes into these cars and developing them is just pretty mindboggling.”
If you ran into Troy Nelson off the race track, you might not get the vibe that he’s an extremely successful race car driver. Once again, appearances can be deceiving.
