By Chad Meyer
He may not have been born with a wrench in his hand, but it wasn’t long before he was working on cars and engines. Racing may not have been the family business, but the very time inclusive hobby that is motorsports, it seems like it might have been for Tim Sidles [and his wife Connie] over the years.
“I was four years old when I started going with my dad [Arvin Sidles] to the races in Jackson [Minnesota] in 1967,” Tim recalls. “I overhauled my first small block Chevy engine when I was eight years old in my dad’s repair shop. My dad and the customer were keeping an eye on me, but at the age of eight I rebuilt that 327 Chevy.”
Soon after, Tim was the crew chief for Doc Clinton. When his dad bought Doc’s car and started racing himself, Tim was a fixture helping his father [Arvin] race. “In 1980, I had met my wife Connie, and we bought our first race car. In those days, if you were under 18, you needed a pair of signatures to race. My mom wouldn’t sign it, so then my dad started driving it and raced it for several years.”
Sidles ultimately started driving race cars himself in 1986 and drove until 1994, when a pair of back-to-back crashes in 1993 put him out of the seat. “I rolled over at Fairmont on Friday night and then crashed again on Saturday. I got a bad concussion, hurt my back and fractured my neck, which I didn’t know at the time. Pretty much after that I was an owner and builder,” he said.
Success came quickly for Tim behind the wheel. His first night behind the wheel was at Alta and on his second night of racing, he found victory lane at Algona. “That was certainly one of the highlights for me, to win in the first time I was ever at Algona and in only the second night of driving in a car we built, that was a pretty big deal,” Tim says.
“I loved Fairmont Raceway,” Tim said. “Most of my wins came there and it was my favorite place to race.”
After he stopped driving, Tim built a legacy of building cars for his family, friends and even some other competitors. He estimates he helped at least 15 other family members race anything from Figure 8’s, Hobby Stocks, SportMods, Thunder Trucks, Cruisers and more. He also built, sold or sponsored cars for others, usually cars that served as the first race cars for new drivers.
“We helped Mike Jergens start racing and sold Jay DeVries his first Hobby Stock. We were involved with Linn Curry, too, and he had a lot of success. We were involved with everything. If [track promoter] Joe Ringsdorf dreamed it up, we built it including the first “house car” cruiser when that division started and things like the double-decker cars he wanted,” Tim said.
Tim Sidles and the Sidles family are also known for helping keep other racers at the track. “We’re proud we helped everyone at Algona that we could. We carry about everything in the trailer to fix a car and we’ve even taken parts off the tow rig to help people get back on the track that night.”
Tim lists the fair races at Algona as the biggest moments for him as an owner and builder (and sometimes sponsor). In Thunder Trucks, Ramon Sidles won the 1994 Kossuth County Fair and 1998 Fall Special. The Cruiser tandem of Timmy Sidles and Chris Krug captured the 2007 Fall Special and the 2006 and 2007 track championships, while Chad Krug won the 2020 Kossuth County Fair in Hobby Stocks, in a car whose paint scheme paid tribute to Tim’s father Arvin. Chris Krug was the most recent to achieve Kossuth County Fair Hobby Stock success, winning in 2025. Linn Curry won the 2000 Kossuth County Fair race and the 1997 Fall Special at Algona.
Racing in Kossuth and Hancock Counties owe a debt of gratitude to the Sidles family for their commitment over the years. In 1986 when the Algona track reopened, it desperately needed cars on the track, and the Sidles family was one of the families who delivered in a big way.
Later when constructing a track in Britt was being conceived, Tim recalls that his dad Arvin, Dan Danielson and Jim Bradford had a discussion (and a few beers) around the Sidles family kitchen table about the feasibility of the speedway. Later when the B-Mod class was established, it began with conversations between Arvin Sidles and Dan Danielson.
Today, Tim and Connie Sidles own Chris Krug and Timmy Sidles’s Hobby Stock. Tim says, “We made a lot of good friends in racing. Some of them may have started over fisticuffs, but we later became great friends. We always enjoyed racing at Algona.”
Tim, who is a colorful character, often wears colorful clothes to the track, saying “I want people to remember me. I’m unique and different, and that’s how I want to be remembered.”
Sidles joins John Pletcher, Stacey Mills, and Bruce Wickman, plus the Algona Fire Department and Kossuth County EMS as inductees into the Kossuth County Racing Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony takes place during the Kossuth County Fair Races in Algona on Thursday, August 6th. Learn more at www.kossuthmuseum.com.
