By T.J. Buffenbarger
(September 3, 2026) — With the Great Lakes Super Sprints coming up on their final point paying weekend, Andrew Heykoop is wrapping up his first season as a racetrack owner and operator at Winston Speedway. Based on what has taken place this season sprint car fans should be ready for an entirely different experience when visiting Winston this Saturday under Heykoop’s stewardship.
Originally Heykoop purchased Winston Speedway with an eye towards assisting some of his interests in providing outbuildings and storage for the Electric Forest music festival that takes place every summer in Rothbury, Michigan where the track is located. After word got out that Heykoop had purchased the racetrack he saw an opportunity engage some of his existing customers and partners and tap into his creative side.
“Within 24 to 48 hours of the community finding out that we bought it, then I probably no less than had 1000 messages, comments, posts on Facebook there that they’re happy that we bought it and can’t wait to see it become a racetrack,” said Heykoop of acquiring Winston. “Afterwards my wife didn’t talk to me for 72 hours.”
Owning numerous towing and automotive businesses throughout West Michigan, Heykoop discovered a lot of the same partnerships in his existing businesses had an interest in having the Winston Speedway operational. With several faithful associates and friends started to evaluate reopening Winston, which had been dormant for the previous two seasons. The project grew quickly because of Heykoop wanting to provide quality facilities.
“We looked at it and then tried just rehabbing things, but every time we touched something, it just fell apart in our hands,” said Heykoop. “If you know anything about us and other businesses we have, we don’t half-ass anything. If we can’t put our name on it, then we just will rip it down and rebuild it, and so that’s what we did. All new grandstands, all new concrete throughout the facility, and upgraded everything. New buildings, outbuildings. It’s just one of those things that just had to be done. I was hoping it was over a multi-year period, but here we were.”
While Heykoop did not know anything about racing before diving into the endeavor of owning and operating Winston Speedway, but had several people surrounding him that knew the business and put their knowledge to use including some lifelong friends and his wife, who eventually came around on the idea of the family owning and operating a racetrack.
“I don’t run the racetrack or anything on racing side,” said Heykoop. Our race director is Ted Cooper Jr. He’s been involved in racing for a long time. We’ve known each other for over 30 years, most of our lives, and he’s a racer. He knows that background and really stepped up to the plate. I wouldn’t do it without him.”
“My wife comes from food service. She was the manager of different convenience stores, and so she runs our food service program and handles a lot of the administrative business side. That allows me just to focus on promotion. Between all of her, and then our other business managers that come and step up and help us on Friday night, we have about six, seven core people, and when it can spread out that much, it just really helps.”
The racetrack has also been an outlet for Heykoop’s creative side on their social media outlets. As the track was preparing to reopen, he made a post in the tone of television show “Star Trek” as a fun way to keep everyone updated on the progress of improvements to the facility set the tone used on those platforms all season, garnering a lot of attention in the racing industry.
“I was in our office trailer preseason building, and it was kind of just a just a boring day out. I had Star Trek on in the background, I needed to make some posts about progress, and I just was bored,” said Heykoop. “So, I just started typing in star dates. I did that a couple times and then we went to Daytona for the RPM Promoters Meeting and met some people whose jobs are to promote track social media wise. They’ve been watching our matrix and our engagements and said we can’t even pitch us to you; you’re killing it. So, we just dove into it deeper.”
With Heykoop’s first season owning the track winding down, the most surprising thing has been how appreciative the racing community has been in the Muskegon area to have Winston operational after being idle for two years and the closing of nearby Thunderbird Raceway last season.
“I’d actually probably say everyone is pretty much cooperating, going along,” said Heykoop of the biggest surprise during his first season owning a racing facility. “I set that tone early on preseason that I won’t tolerate a lot of stupid shit, so don’t give it to me. You respect me, I respect you. I take care of you, you take care of me mentally, and that’s what I think served us very well. For a Friday night race track we’ve had probably the most consistent, highest car counts in Michigan. So, I couldn’t be happier on that.”
After a successful first season at Winston, Heykoop and his team are not going to rest as they want to bring bigger and better things to Winston with more improvements and diversifying the events held on the grounds.
“As soon as we close our doors, which after this weekend I have one derby left, we’re going to add another 2-3,000 more bleachers within the complex,” said Heykoop of some of their ambitious off-season plans. “Then we’ll stay on as a Friday night track while looking at three two-day shows for next year. Hopefully, we get some bigger events in, but we needed a seating capacity to support that, and then we’re hoping to add Saturday as a music venue, so then we can stay viable.”
Heykoop sees event diversification as key to bringing new people to the facility that in turn might check out a race on a Friday night and where some of the race fans might be inclined to see other events at his facility.
“I equate racetracks a lot like I do towing, and for some reason they’re just stuck in multi-generational boxes, and no one really does any open box thinking,” said Heykoop of the parallels between operating Winston and other businesses he has acquired. “There can be change, and a lot of the tow companies we’ve bought over the years have gone out of business or were struggling because they were stuck in a box. I think you must diversify, but that’s just what we’re going to be doing.”
As one of the final events of the 2026 season the Great Lakes Super Sprints return to Winston for the first time since 2022, holding their next to last point race of the season. While the Muskegon market has a lot of dirt late model fans, the return of winged sprint car racing has been heavy on the request list for fans.
“A lot of locals and followers on our track pages that they want sprint cars back,” said Heykoop of winged sprint cars returning to Winston. “So, it’s going to be exciting to see how it lands.”
Other Notes
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Josh Turner will look to close the gap on Dan McCarron for the 2026 Butler Motor Speedway track championship. (T.J. Buffenbarger Photo) The Great Lakes Super Sprints have their 2026 Michigan region and final point race of the full tour Sunday at Crystal Motor Speedway. Max Stambaugh holds a 71-point lead over Chase Dunham for the lead of the touring points while Stambaugh only holds a 24-point lead over Dustin Daggett for the Michigan region title.
- As part of the Sunday program at Crystal, Daggett and Phil Gressman will take part in the “Wolverine Challenge” which is patterned after the “Hawkeye Challenge” that takes place at Boone Speedway in Boone, Iowa every season.
Two drivers from the seven different classes will race on the track at the same time with a different number of laps needing to be completed for a driver in that division to win the event overall.
The outlaw late models with their side boards will have to complete 30 laps while Daggett or Gressman will have to be the first to complete 29 to win the race overall.
- Butler Motor Speedway has the Terry Wilber Memorial on tap for Saturday with their weekly 410 sprint cars competing for $2,532.00 to win. Last week Jason Blonde picked up his first feature win of the season while point leader Dan McCarron ended up flipping in turns three and four. McCarron now has a 98 point lead over Josh Turner, who finished second in the Butler Motor Speedway championship to Blonde last season.