I love this photo. It was taken early in the morning of the first day of racing at the Dayco Holiday Spectacular in Alexandria, Minnesota in December of 1976.
Everyone was frantically looking at the new IFS, as news of their domination in Ironwood spread throughout the fans. You can see several guys in this photo carefully staring at the front end of the shiny new sleds.
I was there, but I was perplexed. See that single leaf-springer on the right of the photo? Well all three of them were there that day, and since seeing the promo photo a couple months earlier, I was hopelessly in love with the tiny little sleds. I couldn’t figure out why everyone was looking at the IFS sleds with such fascination. I mean, they were cool, no doubt.. but the leafers looked like they were made for a kid like me.
It would be later the very same day this photo was taken that the “Midnight Blue Express” name came into existence.
