Kyle Schattschneider’s racing career got off to a fast start when he was a junior in high school. Leading up to the 1974 season “I had a neighbor that literally gave me a ‘57 Chevy 4-door,” Schattschneider said. “I talked to my dad and he gave me a couple things he wanted me to check off the list before started and I mostly got those done.”
“The car was built in an alley here in Algona. No garage or nothing. I’d take it down to Dick’s Tire Service and Dick and Steve Krapp would lend a hand. And most importantly he had tires,” he laughed.
Schattschneider didn’t have to wait long, grabbing the win in his first ever race in 1974 in the Roadrunner division. “I know how this will sound, but I wasn’t really surprised when we won. I thought I would win the first night. Dad told me that we couldn’t race anywhere else until I won in Algona. We accomplished that on the first night.”
“Dick Krapp had a brand-new Suburban and gave me a standing offer that he’d take me anywhere we wanted to race. We went to Jefferson, Fairmont, and Boone.”
But it was in Algona that Schattschneider had the most success, winning eight times that first season, including the Midwest Championship at Algona plus earning the points title.
“I remember racing in a big event at Boone in ’74,” he says. “We didn’t qualify the first night, we were just terrible. We couldn’t do anything right and spun a couple times. We came back the second night and one driver couldn’t make the feature so we got to start last. We raced up to second before we got a flat tire. That was a big deal to us because it proved that we could race anywhere and be fast.”
Schattschneider campaigned that car at Algona through the 1975 season, then the local track closed. “I graduated high school in 1975 and even though the track was dormant in 1976, I raced some at other tracks with Don Doocy,” he remembers.
Kyle Schattschneider before the races at Algona. Schattschneider collection.
The closure of the Algona speedway largely put Schattschneider on the sidelines until 1990, when he bought an old Scott Cook car and rebuilt it. “When we got going again in the early ‘90’s we’d haul the car with an old trailer and our old wrecker. And I always felt a little sheepish about that. But dad told me ‘what do you think the guy who pits next to you thinks? You beat him on the track and he’s parked next to your shitty old trailer and wrecker.’ “Dad was right, the trailer didn’t make the car fast.”
In 1991, Schattschneider won four times at Algona in the Bombers, including the Mid-Season Championship and Kossuth County Fair Races. In 1992, he moved up to the Hobby Stocks, winning three times that season, including the Wetherell Mfg. Frostbuster.
One of his biggest wins came in the Stock Car class at Algona in 1994 during the Kossuth County Fair. “I beat Kevin Berte that night. He was winning everything and it was really hard to beat him. I stayed on the bottom and held him off. He wasn’t very happy that I beat him, but I told him we could trade cars and try it again,” laughed Schattschneider.
He became a regular competitor in the B-Mod class and in 2004 scored a pair of wins at Algona. He competed in a Modified after that before returning to his own B-Mod in what was his last year racing, 2009.
Schattschneider joins his late father, Gene, as an inductee into the Kossuth County Racing Hall of Fame.
