Greg Maas

Editor’s note: This column is in reference to the death of 65-year-old Greg Maas of Iron Mountain, a long-time race official at Norway Speedway, who was reportedly hit and killed during a crash at the third-mile oval track on opening night of the 2022 Dickinson County Racing Association season. The crash occurred during the latter part of Friday night’s racing program and remaining events that night were immediately canceled. The accident remains under investigation by the Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office.

I have been writing for the Iron Mountain News on and off for 10 or 12 years. I wouldn’t consider myself a writer, so I don’t really know what writer’s block is but this by far will be the most difficult column I’ve ever written.

In situations like this, there are so many cliches but for the most part I just simply have no words. Greg Maas was a fixture, a pillar and an icon at Norway Speedway for 34 years. He was very good at what he did, mainly because he loved what he did so much. It’s hard to understand.

Maas’ passion for the sport never waned even under the most difficult circumstances. He and his wife, Lori, stopped over last week to tell me that he would have to miss his first race in many years. I kind of just chuckled and said, “We’ll just have to shut it down then.”

I always joked with Maas that he can’t be sick, fired, quit, retire or get vacation time — and he would just laugh. His smile, his positive attitude and his efficiency set the whole tone for my evening or, actually, the speedway’s evening.

For the last seven to eight years, I did Maas’ job for the first couple of hours every night until he arrived. It’s a difficult job and a very important job as far as driver’s safety. It’s loud, there are many distractions and you must always remain focused.

Every Friday night I would be angry with Maas because I’d see him walk in and I would wave him over by me to take my place, and he would just smile, wave and walk into the pit shack to visit with all of his friends.

Later on, he would come walking out, come over fully equipped with his uniform, his own flags, his own radios and his jug of ice water. I would yell at him and say, “I’ve been standing out in this hot sun for over two hours” and he would smile back and respond, “It’s air conditioned in the pit shack now.”

I have raced at many racetracks in the last 45 years. I truly believe Norway Speedway has one of the safest racing facilities in the Midwest, mainly because there are no concrete barriers to hit.

In some places we have multiple barriers of guard rails, large Euclid tires buried in the ground and 20-feet-tall catch fences. We disc up the ground at each end of the speedway to slow the cars down, if they ever leave the racing surface. We have safety lights at the end of the straightaway and the end of the flag stand to make the drivers aware of any issues.

Our fans are protected by distance, concrete, steel chain link fencing and cables. Our safety crew is top-notch as far as leadership, experience, equipment and they are constantly looking at ways of improving their abilities. We have Integrity Ambulance service on site, a luxury that many tracks can no longer afford.

However, with all of this being in place, that does not mean that a freak accident cannot happen unfortunately. For the last three days I’ve been bombarded with why this happened and the confused of the world placing blame, when everyone knows that it was nothing more than an unfortunate accident.

I will stand firmly with my conviction and another cliche of “only God knows why.” Almost everyone reading this has had their faith tested by some tragic situation that cannot be explained and has no logical reasoning, but life goes on whether we want it to or not. Maas created a huge positive impact on our sport and he will never be forgotten. He had no enemies.

His wife, Lori, who is also a member of our racing family and one of the strongest people I know and have taken care of one of our ticket booths for many years and loves racing as much as Maas did.

Maas was a great father, grandfather and loving husband. He took a lot of pride in working for the Iron Mountain Daily News and was admired by his co-workers.

We will race this Friday night in Greg’s honor. And, yes, I can assure you that’s what Maas would want.

Rest in peace my friend.