Fran and Dick Duff, Tracy Leslie enter Motorsports hall of fame
Fran and Dick Duff, Tracy Leslie enter Motorsports hall of fame
(MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. – November 1, 2015) – Tracy Leslie, the 1988 ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards champion, joined Dick and Fran Duff as entrants into the Michigan Motorsports Hall today in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.
Leslie (left) won nine ARCA races during his driving career, including four in his championship season of 1988. From Mount Clemens, Michigan, Leslie won twice at Talladega and Winchester, plus Flat Rock and Michigan International Speedway. He was a late model champion at both Toledo Speedway and Mount Clemens. He won a NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Indianapolis Raceway Park in 1993. He made five NASCAR Sprint Cup starts and more than 75 ARCA starts.
Fran (1923-2012) and Dick Duff (1924-2014) were officials with ARCA and ARCA-sanctioned tracks for nearly 20 years. The husband and wife team paired with John and Mildred Marcum in the mid-1960s, the early days of ARCA, and were officials at races all over the Midwest and even to the high banks of Daytona. Their expertise was welcomed at virtually every track within a day's drive of their Toledo base, and their system is still used at many tracks as a backup to today's modern computerized scoring systems.
“Virtually every weekend of the racing season, from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, Fran and Dick made sure every driver was fairly and properly credited with exactly what they earned on the race track, without the benefit of electronic transponder systems or video replay,” said ARCA President Ron Drager. “When the racing program was over, it was Fran and Dick who dutifully completed hand-written documents — payoff sheets — which were relied upon to accurately provide cash payment of prize money to drivers prior to leaving the track, as well as serve as a reference for year-end income tax records.”
Drager said that Fran and Dick had a far-reaching presence on the sport.
“Between the two, the Duffs were in the scoring tower for the inaugural race at Michigan Int’l Speedway in 1969, scored hundreds of races at weekly tracks in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, scored the inaugural World 100 at Eldora in 1971 and filed weekly news articles from racing events to National Speed Sport News, MARC Times and Mid-American Auto Racing News,” Drager said.
The Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Fame inducted 11 people to the 2015 class. In addition the Duff’s and Leslie, former ARCA crew man Paul Weisner and John Hotchkiss, who made a handful of ARCA starts, were also selected.
Weisner, from Muskegon, was part of Tim Steele’s race team for several seasons. Steele won three ARCA Racing Series championships and 41 ARCA Racing Series races, including a series-best 24 on superspeedways. Weisner was known for racing the No. 20 car at various short tracks from the 1950s until nearly 1980.
Others named to the new class include Alton Franklin of Flint; Grand Rapids resident Patty (Adema) Senneker; Dick Reynolds Sr. of Zeeland; Mort Anderson of Greenville; Richard Maskin of Troy and Gaylord resident a Mark Nowicki.