Interview with 2019 Eagle Raceway Sport Compact Champion Cole Krichau

By Greg Soukup

This week we sit down with 2019’s ATV Motorsports IMCA Sport Compact champion, 27-year old Cole Krichau.

I asked what originally got him interested in racing and he said “Surprisingly, I wasn’t really interested in racing. Erica begged me to come out to the track a couple of times when we were dating. Out of nowhere they let me drive a back-up car, but otherwise I really wasn’t interested at all. I guess that’s what got the racing bug to bite me. I started racing a sport compact in 2012 in one of my wife Erica’s back-up cars. Then at the end of 2017 I got to run twice in the Valentino’s IMCA Hobby Stock class and then ran it 2 more times in 2018. That let me still compete as a rookie in the class last year, so I was racing in both classes. I managed to get 3 wins in the sport compact but am still working on improving in the hobby stock”.

When I asked about running in two classes he stated “I enjoyed it at the beginning of the year. But, then around the middle of the year we started having mechanical problems, just regular wear and tear, it became a chore so towards the end of the year it just wasn’t as enjoyable as it was in the beginning”.

Cole was lucky enough to have some solid, knowledgeable people behind him though to get him through the rough patches. “Mainly the crew is just me, Larry Cronin and Brian Cronin. I do have to give a big thank you to both of those guys for all of their help in getting me the championship last year. Brian is actually the one who went and picked up my car from the farm every week and brought it to the track so that I didn’t have to worry about that. Then he and Larry would get it checked over before I got to the track with the hobby stock. Another huge person in the whole deal was Larry’s Auto Salvage, my main sponsor. I can’t say enough about or thank those three enough for all they did for me”.

This season he plans on running the hobby stock again. “Whether or not I run the whole season or not, I’m not sure if I will or if I’ll just bring it out when I feel like it. I really like racing at Eagle Raceway though. Maybe I’m one of the weird ones, but I like the fact that sometimes it’s rough and you have to prepare for that. Eagle Raceway is unique in that way because you have to be ready for that on top of everything else”.

I know that we all can’t wait to get the season started and can’t wait to see Cole racing on the high banks of America’s Home Track, Eagle Raceway!