WISSOTA's first Expo draws larger-than-expected crowd
to St. Cloud during annual meeting, awards banquet weekend

ST. CLOUD, MN (November 10) - The WISSOTA racing region’s biggest weekend got bigger in 2007 with the addition of the WISSOTA Auto Racing Expo, which accompanied the organization’s annual meeting and national awards banquet November 9 and 10.

Nearly 90 vendors set up booths to interact with racers and crew members during the Friday and Saturday Expo event, and a larger-than-anticipated crowd showed up to meet them. More than 1,700 people attended WISSOTA’s first ever Expo in the two days leading up to the national awards banquet, which was held right across the hall from the Expo in the St. Cloud Civic Center.

Vendors, racers and promoters who attended the Expo unanimously endorsed the event as a tremendous success and all groups, led by the enthusiastic builders and supply businesses who set up shop at the Expo, are all planning to come back next year for the 2008 Expo.
WISSOTA board member Scott Hughes, who spearheaded the event on behalf of the racing organization, said, “We haven’t spoken to a vendor yet who doesn’t plan to be back next year. More than half have already made their booth reservations for next November and more are calling each day to make sure they can participate again.

“Those who took a wait-and-see approach because this was our first ever Expo have also begun calling in to make sure they can be a vendor at next year’s Expo.

“We’re going to try to accommodate all of the businesses that wish to participate, but vendors shouldn’t wait to make their reservations. We very well could be sold out of available booths within the next month,” Hughes said.

WISSOTA arranged a pair of mini Racewise Chassis School seminars during the Expo weekend as well, and all 300 available seats were sold out approximately two weeks before the event.

“Mark Bush is incredibly knowledgeable and his Racewise seminars regularly sell out all across the country. From the WISSOTA perspective, we knew the seminars would be very popular; we simply wanted to give our drivers an extremely affordable experience and every driver and crew member I spoke with after the Racewise seminars was very pleased with the information Bush provided,” Hughes said.

“It was great that we could do this to help provide our drivers with an additional benefit just from being involved as a WISSOTA driver,” he added.

Bush has expressed a strong desire to return for a similar Racewise seminar program in 2008. Drivers and crew members should watch All The Dirt! Racing News and the WISSOTA website (www.wissota.org) for details throughout 2008 regarding the next Expo and seminar programs.