Tony Izzo Jr. never gave up hope that his family’s La Salle (Ill.) Speedway would rise again. Even as his mother, Kerry, fielded offers for the property since the last race was contested there on June 23, 2021, the 55-year-old former Dirt Late Model standout had a feeling the quarter-mile oval’s story wasn’t over yet.

“I think I always knew that we would do something again here,” Izzo said just days ago while at the speedway preparing for its rebirth.

Thanks to Kerry Izzo turning down potential buyers with plans to bulldoze the racetrack, La Salle does indeed have new life. She’s given her blessing to Tony along with his friend and new business partner, Justin McCoy, to bring the joint back from the dead for a special-event schedule that commences in a high-profile way May 6 with a $20,000-to-win Super Late Model show to kick off the 2025 FloRacing Night in America presented by Kubota schedule (and the five-race Illinois Speedweek).

It’s a feel-good story for the Dirt Late Model world in particular, and it’s happening because Izzo came together with McCoy, who operates G&M Recycling and Disposal in Streator, Ill., to form an energized partnership.

“We’ve been friends a long time,” Izzo said of McCoy. “He used to race out here and everything else, and (since the closing) he would always just say, ‘We got to get that racetrack open, we got to get that racetrack open.’ And then, jokingly, you know, I’d always say, ‘Ah, it needs too much work, but you do the work, I’ll pay the bills. You go get blah, blah, blah, to get the place going, and we’ll do it.’

“Well, he must have took me up on it, because one time last fall I came out here and he was doing the work. So I said, ‘I guess we're doing this,’ and that’s kind of how it started.”

In early November came the announcement that Izzo and McCoy were reopening La Salle. But as Izzo had told McCoy, the facility was far from being race ready. Three years since its last activity — a DIRTcar Summer Nationals event won by Brian Shirley of Chatham, Ill. — meant nature had begun to reclaim the speedway.

That day Izzo found McCoy digging in at La Salle, the scene they viewed together included a grass-covered racetrack, tall weeds and out-of-control brush growing all across the property, weathered bleachers and seemingly countless other items in need of attention. This would be a major project for the new partners.

“It’s just crazy how fast” an untouched facility deteriorates, Izzo said. “I think to myself, Wow, we must have really stayed on top of all that stuff rather regularly because, I mean, trees will grow anywhere. I couldn't believe it — trees were grow growing up through the floors of the concession stand. You can't believe what nature will do to something that quickly. 

“And everybody was always like, ‘Well, what are you going to do with your bleacher boards?’ I’m like, ‘Do bleacher boards go bad from not using them?’ Well, I guess we used to stay on top of them, too, and replace them when one would go bad, because after three years there was a whole lot of boards bad. We replaced all kinds of bleacher boards, you know, two, three truckloads of bleacher boards, so it turned into way more work than either one of us thought it was going to be.”

Izzo caught himself for a moment. He backtracked, noting that he “shouldn’t say” he was surprised by the amount of sweat — and financial — equity the track needed.

“I knew it was going to be a lot of work,” he asserted, “and it’s going to be all worth it on May 6.”

Flinging La Salle’s gates back open and seeing cars racing around the bullring again for that midweek show has Izzo motivated, if not exactly brimming with excitement over his second tour of duty promoting the track. He oversaw La Salle’s operation for just over a decade after his sister, Kerrianne, left its helm in 2008 and his brother, Joey, had a short stint running the facility, but this time he’s coming into a different situation. With a partner from outside the family, a new outlook on the racing industry gained from experience and the extra challenge presented by a track that’s sat idle for an extended period, he has a more pragmatic philosophy than his younger self.

“Me personally, I’m excited, but I guess I’m kind of in that “I’ve been here before’ mode, so it’s not like Christmas morning for me on the first day,” Izzo said. “It’s more of a business venture this time for me, you know what I mean? It’s always been about doing it for the love of the sport and the love of the racing and this, that and the other thing, and if you made money at the end of the day, that was a bonus. But really now, because I’ve done that for so long, you know, it’s more of a business investment for me now.

“And the business end of it is going much more smooth because Justin is very hands on, so I can get back to sponsors, I can get back to scheduling … I have a guy out here who can take a lot of stuff off my plate. When Justin come along … you know, he’s only 38 years old, and I know that doesn’t sound young, but when you’re 55, like me, 38’s young, you know what I mean? So he brings a new, young enthusiasm to the table that that helps us do what we’re doing out here.”

Certain aspects of Izzo’s latest La Salle effort give him an extra boost.

“Right now I’m excited because I got a lot of support from a lot of people,” Izzo said. “The community’s behind us, sponsorship stuff is rolling in that we never, ever expected. People volunteer their time, volunteer their equipment, there’s lots of volunteer people helping get this place back open. That excites me.

“What I say about it that’s kind of bittersweet is just the time that it takes. Like Justin has a family, four kids, and a lot of the people that are out here helping and stuff all have wives and kids. And, you know, I’ve been in racing since I was born, and I know what racing can do to a family when you let it overwhelm you or dictate your life and all that. So right now, it’s overwhelming again for me because we have a timeline that we’re going up against. It was super exciting at the start because I thought, This is what it needs. This is going to be fine. It’s a little, again, overwhelming right now, just being up against the timeline. Everybody's putting in 14-, 15-hour days out here.

“But I’m super excited with everything that’s planned, super excited with my partnership, super excited about the partnerships with Flo (Racing to facilitate a major opening race) and the events that I have,” he added. “There’s a lot of excitement around here.”

Izzo is certainly thankful that his mother decided to keep the property. There would be no second act for him if she made a different decision.

“What people need to know is my mom could have sold the property,” Izzo said. “I know there were some different offers on the table, but she really wanted to sell it to somebody that wanted to keep it as a racetrack. There was offers for (it to become a) solar farm, other different things. And, you know, we were just holding out hope for somebody to buy it that would keep it open as a racetrack, or reopen it.”

Izzo said there were “a couple people interested in buying it to keep racing,” but they weren’t serious enough to close a deal. Some obstacles to such a transaction were present as well.

“Here was the problem,” Izzo said. “We sit on almost 60 acres, and there’s rental properties, there’s antique stores, there’s some other stuff that sits on this property yet. If you’re going to sell the racetrack, you’re going to have to sell it all as a whole. You can’t just sell the racetrack section. So when she was trying to sell it as a whole … you sell the racetrack to someone, the racetrack itself sits on 18 acres. So where are you going to park haulers? Where are you going to park the fans? That’s why the additional land has to go with it, but everybody’s like, ‘Oh, no, I just want to buy the racetrack.’ Well, you can’t just sell just the track, you know what I mean? You’re going to need the (other) land anyway. And if you sell them just a racetrack, how do you do anything with you own land (left)? Because nobody wants to buy up land next to a racetrack, so the guy who owns a racetrack needs to own the land around it. 

“We had some people want just the racetrack portion of it, but when it comes down to it and we explained them that he couldn’t do that, they understood that. And there was a couple different offers where she could have probably sold it (for use in other ways), but there was nothing feasible enough that we felt in good hands to sell to, race-wise.

“So my mom still owns still owns the property, and she’s giving us the OK to do what we’re doing out here,” he continued. “There’s no way it would have come back otherwise. You know, she could have just easily said, ‘Nah, I’m just going to keep holding out and sell to a solar farm or something,’ but we said, ‘We’re gonna form this partnership, and we're gonna reopen it.’ She said, ‘Go for it.’ I don’t want to say she said, ‘Don't come to me for any money,’ but it was just, ‘You guys do whatever you guys got to do there. I’ll let you do it.’ ”

The big difference from Izzo’s previous tenure running La Salle Speedway? He and McCoy are diversifying the facility’s schedule of events. In fact, they’re calling now it La Salle Speedway & Event Center in a nod to their plans to do more than simply host races.

“I mean, here’s the thing,” Izzo said. “I’m a Late Model guy to the bone, and I gotta realize that I can't have just big money Lake Model races. This community can't support the ticket prices of high-dollar Late Model races all the time, or high-dollar sprint car races, so, you know, to cater to the community, get the community involved in other things, we’re bringing in rodeos, we’re bringing in monster truck stuff … we got this big monster truck-car show deal, a three-day thing that’s really big in this area that they brought to us (to host).

“So my approach this time was, yes, make it more than just a racetrack, because you can’t just bank on the Late Model races. And if we can offset some of the expenses by having these other events … the thing is, you know, you got a liquor license 365 days out of a year, you're paying insurance 365 days out of here, so you need to utilize the place for other things.”

The non-racing events are interspersed between roughly one race program a month, a schedule that includes May 30-31’s $25,000-to-win MARS Late Model Championship Series-sanctioned weekend and July 3’s DIRTcar Summer Nationals event. There’s also a World of Outlaws NOS Sprint Car Series show slated for Oct. 18 to close the racing schedule.

Izzo and McCoy aren’t looking to return weekly racing to La Salle, which ran regular programs from its launch under the Izzo family in 1992 through 2015. He doesn’t see the track positioned to operate every week.

“I think it’s a generational thing still,” Izzo said. “You know, Fairbury, Sycamore, the tracks around here that are still really successful with even weekly races, they’ve been around a long time. Even though ’92 seems a long time ago, that’s just 30 years, right? So at Fairbury, Sycamore and all that, great-grandfathers went to the races. Out here, the generational thing just never got built, so the locals do other things out here. If you give them, you know, one (event) a month, they should be able to fit that in their schedule and in their budget.

“I don’t personally see (weekly racing happening), especially with Justin, having his full-time disposal job. I see us being more of a once-a-month event center like we are, and I see us going heavier in the event direction. You know, we were trying to get a concert (scheduled) similar to what Fairbury does. There's a whole lot of things we want to do here, but again, it’s all about time and the right partners and everything.”

Izzo is focused on the here and now, which means completing as many projects as possible before Tuesday’s grand reopening. They’ve rebuilt concession stands, put in a new, state-of-the-art public address system, upgraded the 1,000-capacity bleachers on the pit side and converted some of the lights to LED. The infield looks better than ever with green grass covering it, all but the two skyboxes on each end of the main grandstand have been upgraded and “everything has gotten a fresh coat of paint,” he said. The planned party deck outside turn four won’t be completed nor will new bathrooms, but Izzo hopes they will be available later in the season.

“We’re still wide open with a lot of stuff,” Izzo said. “It’s just every time we get forward, something else happens. Like, the (water) well went out (last week), so had to bump practice back to Sunday and we just had to borrow water and all that to get through it. They finally got the well back going so we’re good there (for May 6).

“You just fix 10 things and something else comes up, but it’s been fine. Right now, we switched over to race mode. Are there some things that we didn’t get to, that we wanted to get to? Absolutely. But these are things that it's not going to hamper the performance of the event, so we don’t even worry about it, you know what I’m trying to say?

“My guys are taking care of all the other stuff so I can take care of the track (surface) and make sure that that’s top notch, because like I always say, you can cover up a lot of blemishes with a great race, a great racetrack. Not that you want to have blemishes, but things out of your control happen. And if your performance is good, the race is good, people and fans and everyone will accept small mistakes and be a little forgetful about a thing here or there.

“There’s a lot of pressure to succeed and a standard to lead up to, but I tell myself all the time, ‘You’ve been there and done this before, quit stressing so much,’” he added. “But, you know, I want everything to be perfect.”

Izzo is handling the preparation of the surface, which he said has “come back really, really nice,” giving him an even better feeling for La Salle’s comeback.

Being in the grader again and working on the racetrack? Izzo definitely loves it. 

“Oh, that's the best part of it,” said Izzo, who isn’t promoting any side events with his Sixteen Promotions this season to focus on La Salle. “That’s my, uh, comfort zone. It’s like these people that get on their lawnmower for a couple hours. It’s where I do my best thinking. I can get in there and I can’t hear the phone ring and all that stuff. So it’s like, you just, you can just stay focused on what you’re doing. You know what I mean?

“At the end of the day, I’m going to make sure that the racing’s good and that’s the most important thing.”