Look what Flat Rock Speedway just received as an incredibly special gift from longtime Joy Fair crew member Cheryl Schalm, the hood from Joy’s race car, which circled Flat Rock Speedway to many victories back in the mid-1990s.

It’s debatable whose idea it was to honor the past and present crew members who worked with Joy Fair by putting their names on the hood. Joy, of course, took the credit, but it was Cheryl who first brought up the idea and put together the list of names. Either way, it was a fitting tribute to the many people who helped make Joy’s racing career so special.

If you were old enough to be in the pits at Flat Rock Speedway during the 1960s and ’70s, when Joy was at his absolute best, you remember the scene. There was always a large throng of people gathered around his race car. Many were crew members, but plenty were fans who simply wanted to be close to greatness.

To the new generation of race fans who were never blessed to have had the opportunity to see Joy compete, there simply are not enough superlatives to describe just how good Joy Fair was behind the wheel. At Flat Rock Speedway alone, Joy won 10 Late Model Track Championships and 159 feature races, numbers that tell only part of the story, as he won races and championships all over the Midwest and Canada.

Now, thanks to Cheryl Schalm and the Flat Rock Speedway staff, a piece of that history has come home to honor one of the defining figures in the storied history of the speedway. The hood will hang in the tech barn for years to come, where it can be seen and appreciated by drivers, crew members and race fans alike.

And there probably isn’t a better place for legendary driver Joy Fair’s hood to be than at the Flat Rock Speedway, the place where so many of those memories were made.

Jimmy Hehl