With an average finish of 1.5 this season including five feature wins and 10 top-five’s, it’s safe to say it was a great campaign for Doug Butler en route to winning the 2023 Sunset Speedway Mini Stock Track Championship. It isn’t his first rodeo, though, as it joins previous triumphs at the Innisfil facility, as well as titles at Barrie Speedway.

“Basically, just picked up where I left off in 2015,” Doug Butler spoke of his 2023 campaign. “I tried to be more consistent, more on par. Everybody stepped up their game but basically when you’re full-time racing, it’s preservation of your equipment – keep it going, reliable. I had a couple hiccups but can’t ask for much more than what happened.”

The season featured many memorable battles en route to the title, including being the inaugural winner of the Allan Lankin Cup in a unique three-feature format.

“I wasn’t sure what was happening; I didn’t have that in the bag at all,” Butler reflected. “We went into the first feature pretty confident. The second feature, I wasn’t as aggressive as I should’ve been as I was trying to stay out of trouble. But the last feature, it was pretty much all hands-on deck and take some risks and see if they reward or not. Between me, Shawn (Taylor) and Ty, (Seaboyer) it was a crazy battle – even Charlie (Smith) was in there.”

It seems everything for the division is right where you’d want them, with the competition as diverse as ever as witnessed by a mix of drivers inside the top-five weekly. However, there are still concerns about the future in knowing how the division has evolved.

“The cars have gotten so far out of hand in my opinion that there’s so adjustment to be competitive and know a lot more than you used to have to keep up with everybody right now,” Butler explained. “Everybody is putting their money out now-a-days. Our tires are $200 a piece and they only last 20 good laps at Sunset. That’s a big pretty investment.

“It’s just snowballed in our rules, basically. Our class was the starter class, before Four Fun – it was Mini Stock. But now you’re allowed tube chassis cars, adjustable almost everything up to the motor now. To me, it’s gotten out of hand. Racers are their own enemy. If it was back in the day, you stripped the car and put a little camber into it, and you drove it, we’d still have 40 cars on the track I think. But the way they’ve evolved – basically, bone stock is our old mini stocks, especially when you see race rims in bone stock and standard. Four Fun used to automatic only but now they’re allowed standards.

“I think it’s snowballing the wrong way, but you never know – especially with the new cars coming. You can do more to them and there’s more around like the Colbalts and all that stuff. That’s my opinion.”

For Butler, he grew up around the race track, attending events on a weekly basis while watching his father race. However, it was only after his father got out of racing due to “kids, school, and a house” that Butler’s career began.

“When I was in high school, Ben Melenhorst did a presentation on what he did this summer, and he raced,” Butler recalled. “I was like, ‘I kind of want to go race. I like that thought.’ So I asked Trevor Martin to go build a car – we’re always farting around on the farm so let’s go racing. Then we ended up picking up two cars – the 69 car, and we built the original 10 car.”

Now with another championship under his belt, Butler admits he is unsure as to what the future holds for him next season and beyond. Between the financial and time commitment, he currently has his plans for 2024 up in the air – though assured he would be out in his car in some capacity.

“I’ll probably end up rebuilding it this winter, even though it was very competitive; you have to keep on maintenance and make sure everything is not broken,” he commented. “Even this year, I found some issues that was very lucky on my part. That was due to taking the car apart every week and checking everything over. But I don’t know. I would hope to be advancing divisions, but time management isn’t there for me right now. My sponsors says they can get me finance for it – but now I need five guys in the pits. It was me, Randi, and her dad a lot of the season, and we were crewing for two cars – we were crewing for Tyler Seaboyer.

“Also with my shift work, it’s hard to invite four guys over to work on the racecar. I’ve always been an independent guy through the week, just kind of do it at my leisure type thing. So who knows. You never know what can happen in the off-season.”

The financial side is why he advises someone who may be interested in racing themselves ensure they have the money backing to be able to do so.

“If you had to pay someone to do everything and set up the car and do maintenance, it’d be astronomical,” he explained. “If they had a bit of mechanical knowledge, that goes a long way to not pay someone to build the roll cage and not maintenance the car and stuff. But the big thing is just ask questions before you get into it. See what’s entailed in the details and the cost, and the time invested in it before you actually get into it.

“When I first started racing, I didn’t know what camber was – I didn’t know any of the racing terms. I just learned and I’m still learning stuff to this day from different people, from late model drivers. I soak it in as much as I can.”