About

TJSlideways.com started quietly in the guest bedroom of Bob and Pam Buffenbarger’s house on a quiet evening in the spring of 1996 by T.J Buffenbarger after the completion of spring semester at Lansing Community College.  From those humble beginnings, TJSlideways.com from a local informant webpage to one of the largest open wheel racing sites in the world.

When T.J. launched the first version of the website in July of 1996 the internet had  a just a handful of pages dedicated to sprint car racing.  None of the existing sites had information about open wheel racing in T.J.’s home state of Michigan.  With the help of Keith and Betty McCall with the Sprints on Dirt, I-96 Speedway, and Butler Motor Speedway the TJ Slideways Michigan Sprint Car Page was born.   With great photography from Mike Nelligan of MSPN photos the site immediately began to draw attention from not only people in Michigan, but users around the world.

One year later the domain name TJSlideways.com was purchased and coverage expanded to the entire Midwest.  In October 7^th, 2007 the first live scoreboard updates were posted during a World of Outlaws sprint car show at I-96 Speedway.  The site continued updating events from I-96 live every Saturday night until 2000.  During this time T.J. developed “version 1.0” of the website with some homegrown  software to automate the entire website.  During this period TJSlideways.com expanded and T.J. hit the road traveling to races all over the country.

In August of 2000 after the Knoxville Nationals the college years were over and T.J. had a “real job” to go with the duties of running TJSlideways.com   Coverage expanded from the Midwest to the entire world.  At the same time the website migrated from its own software to PHPNuke to run the website.   This same year live coverage of the Chili Bowl Nationals drew rave reviews and the site continued to grow.

Over the next decade TJSlideways.com covered some of the biggest races in Motorsports including the Knoxville Nationals, Chili Bowl, Kings Royal, Mopar Million, Indiana Sprintweek, Ohio Speedway, and many others.  T.J. was nominated for National Sprint Car Hall of Fame and Museum’s 360 sprint car poll media member of the year and in 2008 won the Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame Mic Schuler media member of the year honor.

Going into the next decade TJSlideways.com went under another transformation.  With the success of a new radio show heard on RacesOnTheWeb.com with longtime Slideways friend Brett Mann, the site was retooled to include more audio, video, and photographic elements into the regular content along with other social media applications.

The site is currently run as a family operation by T.J. and his father Bob.  Often times T.J. and Bob will attend separate races and bring back their experiences to TJSlideways.com readers while other teams father and son will team up for an epic road trip.

We hope you enjoy your TJSlideways.com experience.  Any questions, comments, or concerns can be e-mailed to our staff via our contact form.