Shawn Jakes making the jump from hobby stock to stock car in 2005

 by BARRY JOHNSON
    NEW ULM, Minn. - His car has been ready for the 2005 season since last November, and so has Shawn Jakes. The Minnesota hobby stock driver is making the jump to I.M.C.A. stock cars this season and looks forward to the challenges.

    Jakes has been campaigning hobby stocks weekly at Arlington Raceway in Arlington, Minn. "I've been racing for about six years constant," he related. Starting in the enduro class, Jakes soon made the jump to hobby stocks. At Arlington they run two classes, hobby B and hobby A. "Hobby A's are like I.M.C.A. hobby stocks on steroids, " he added. "They are way over powered for the skinny tires that they run on."

    For the last two seasons, Jakes ran in the hobby A's full time. In 2003 he finished sixth in points. Last season he finished in the second position. "It was a frustrating end of the season. It seemed like we were battling from the back of the pack every night. There was a span of three weeks in-a-row where I got spun out and had to go to the back. That's part of the reason I'm making the jump up, I was getting tired of getting the car beat up so much. This is true for everybody, not just me, but when you start racing you beat your car up learning everything, working your way up. When you get better you find that you aren't doing the beating anymore, but more people are beating on you. You just learn from experience and I felt like it was time to move on."

    Jakes expects many differences in 2005 by making the change in class. "With the hobby stocks, within tow laps of the race, everybody gets strung out and you have room to race. That doesn't happen with the stock car class. There's no separation like you get with the hobby stocks. It's more like running Daytona and Talladega where everybody is in one big pack. That will be the hardest thing to learn. You will really have to be patient to make your move," Jakes said.

    "It will be fun to be the underdog again. The first year in any class, to me, is fun. Second place is as good as a win when everything is new to you. I look to be competitive. I want to learn and turn a few laps the first couple of nights. The first night I'd like to not even draw and tell them to put me at the back. I'll follow the pack and see what happens and what I can learn from there," he added. I know I might not light the world on fire in this class. I just want to gain the respect of the other drivers, turn laps and learn the car. People tell me they can't believe I have the patience to do that. The first week will be one of the most crucial. You don't quite know what the car is going to do since you have been off all winter."

    Mechanically, Jakes said the shift from hobby to stock cars wasn't that extreme. "At Arlington, you have to take the outlaw aspect out of it that you had with the hobby stocks, you can run the same motor with the stock car, just change some of the parts. In southern Minnesota, the competition is not as feverish as it is in Iowa. Here a guy can compete using a 350 with a set of non-Dart heads."

    As good as a start Jakes may get this season, it will all come to a halt in May. Jakes' wife Tammy is expected to deliver the couple's second child that month, and Jakes' racing season will taper off for a while as Dad takes on some new roles. "By then I hope I have gotten comfortable with the car and hopefully been kind of racy," he said.

    Whatever the season may hold for Jakes, he'll have four people helping keep the car on the track. Brother-in-law Brent Donner, cousin Tim Fischer, friend Paul Roberts and his six-year-old son Conner all lend a hand over the course of a season. "Monday through Friday we stay away from the car. We race on Saturday, and Sunday is a workday. Brent and Tim are there in the pits and Paul is the guy that helps out during the week if we need to do the work. He's there for the engine changes, the tranny changes or anything like that that needs to be done," he said.

    "Conner is there for everything, and this season I bought him a go-kart that he can race at Arlington. If you can't make it a family sport, it's not going to work. You have to get everybody involved. The first couple of years my wife hated it. We went to a special in Britt and were leading; we spun out and got hit head on. We got the car re-done for the feature and were running up around sixth or seventh before it overheated. I took the car home and had a reality check, and wondered if I should just put it up for sale and break even. I put it up, and it sold, and then my wife said, 'How can you sell it? That's what we do!' She told me to send the money back and keep the car. That's what we do, that's our Saturday night," Jakes said.

    Helping Jakes make those Saturday night shows is a wide variety of sponsors, including Zinniel Boring, Mike's Collision and Tire Center, Time Warner Cable, Fischer's Accounting, Sid's Signs on Broadway, S&S Motors, Cyclone Communications, C&D Automotive and Ground Zero Services. Once he gets his sponsors on board, Jakes strives to make the sponsorship worthwhile.

    "There are two types of sponsorships, work related, the ones you pick up through where you work. The others are brought on board through your marketing efforts. Its important you work with them and keep in touch with them. I give them updates. I give them a picture of the car at the beginning of the year and a picture of the car at the end of the year that has all of the statistics on it for what we did that season. I do a lot of car shows, as many as I can. I give the sponsors cards they can hand out, and my son hands cards out to kids at the races. It's a fun part of my life," he said.

    Jakes also keeps an active web site to update fans and friends on his racing for the season. "It started off with family stuff and a little about racing and grew from there. People come back weekly to see what we've been doing. I post results and I'm candid about what did or didn't happen. I do the update right when I come home from the track. I give a quick recap and say some things I may regret, but if I don't do it then, it runs into the rest of the week and my Monday through Friday family time and I don't want it to do that," Jakes added. "I still put my family first."

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