Dave Evans 1944 – 2016
By Stan Kalwasinski
Former Grundy County Speedway late model champion, Dave Evans, 71, passed away on April 16 in Necedah, Wis.
Racing out of Crystal Lake, Ill., Evans wheeled his Camaro No. 7 to track championship honors in 1979 at the third-of-a-mile paved oval in Morris, Ill., capturing two feature races, including the 50-lap Spring Championship, and finishing ahead of Tom Jones, Larry Middleton, John Knaus and Bobby Dotter in the final point standings. A total of 13 late model drivers scored feature wins at Grundy during the season.
Evans started racing in the 1960s with his first race coming in a ’49 Ford at Wilmot, Wis. Over the years, he competed at most of the area short tracks, including O’Hare Stadium, Rockford Speedway, Santa Fe Speedway, Kankakee Speedway, Waukegan Speedway, Lake Geneva Raceway and Illiana Motor Speedway.
In 1974, Evans finished second in the Chicagoland Driving Championship (CDC), which pitted drivers from Grundy, Illiana and Waukegan in overall feature race competition. Evans chalked up five feature wins (three at Illiana and two at Waukegan) during the season and started a total of 51 feature races at the three tracks in his Jim Ellison-prepared ’73 Camaro. “Dynamite Dave” was the second-ranking driver in the points at both Illiana and Waukegan for the 1974 season. In the second and final year of the CDC (1975), Evans dropped to 16th in the final points.
Evans finished second in the late model points at Waukegan in 1977 – the last year that the track was paved. His first appearance into Waukegan’s “top 5” final point standings came in 1973 when he finished fifth in the final standings.
Evans competed in a number of Tony Bettenhausen Memorial 100 lappers at Illiana, with a third place finish in 1973 being his best effort. He was injured in a crash in 1975 during the Bettenhausen 100. Evans also competed in numerous ARTGO Racing events from 1975 through 1979 with Evans competing in the first ARTGO event – the Wayne Carter Classic at Grundy in 1975.
At the end of the 1979 season, Evans turned his attention to being a car owner with Joe Shear his driver. The Shear/Evans combo won the annual Tony Bettenhausen Memorial 100 in ’79 as Shear guided Evans’ fresh ’79 Camaro to the win.
The following year (1980) Jim Sauter became Evans’ driver with the combo winning the Bettenhausen 100 and the National Short Track Championships 200 at the Rockford Speedway. 1981 saw Sauter wheel Evans’ Bernzomatic-sponsored Camaro No. 7 to the ARTGO late model series title with Sauter winning seven feature races.
After the ARTGO championship run in 1981, Evans pretty much left the racing scene, operating his auto body shop in Crystal Lake and later relocating to Necedah.