Billionaire Canadiens Owner Gillett Raced on the Short Tracks...Who Knew?

London, Ontario (November 14, 2007) -

It really is true that you learn something new every day. Last night I happened to be watching Prime Time Sports on Rogers Sportsnet and caught a long and very interesting interview with George Gillett, owner of the Montreal Canadiens, Liverpool FC, Gillett-Evernham Motorsports in NASCAR, and the Ashland Oil Corporation and its Valvoline division, among many other things.

PTS is not exactly an auto racing show, and they spent most of the time talking about his other sporting interests, but one short segment was devoted to his involvement in NASCAR, and a couple of things he said really caught my interest. When asked how he got involved in motorsports, he mentioned in passing that he was in fact a former racer, and had sponsored short track cars and even an Indy 500 winner in the past.

So I did a little research and discovered that Gillett once raced at the legendary Slinger Super Speedway in his home state of Wisconsin, and later, after his business interests had taken off, he sponsored Wisconsin driver Larry Detjens, a legendary local driver in the upper Midwest who competed against the likes of Dick Trickle, Alan Kulwicki, and many others who went on to have success in NASCAR. Unfortunately, Detjens - uncle of present day drivers Scott and Chris Wimmer - was fatally injured in a crash in 1980, and there is a trophy and memorial race named after him at a couple of different tracks in Wisconsin.

Gillett's racing interests were not over at that point though, as he later sponsored the 1996 Indy 500 winning entry of Buddy Lazier, and of course now is co-owner of the Gillett-Evernham Motorsports team in NASCAR.

I know most of this is not open wheel related, but I found all this interesting. I guess you never know who you might run into out there at your local track, or where they might end up in the future!