Dirt Mod Hall of Fame Honors Car Owner Glenn Hyneman
By Buffy Swanson
Pennsy team owner Glenn Hyneman, who has set the standard for professionalism since 1979, will be honored with the 2023 Gene DeWitt Car Owner Award when the 31st annual Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame induction ceremonies are held on July 13 at the Hall of Fame Museum on the grounds of Weedsport Speedway in New York.
“Maybe if I hadn’t sat in the grandstands at the old Reading Fairgrounds, with my girlfriend Bonita Werner, I wouldn’t be in this mess today!” kidded Hyneman, from his home base in Mohnton, PA.
It all started as a sponsorship: Hyneman’s Keystone Pretzel Bakery had billing on buddy Bill Brian’s Modified, driven by Gary Gollub, back in 1977. A business powerbroker and a take-charge guy, Hyneman bought a Brightbill-Kreitz car and put together his own team in ’79, with Jeff Kring driving. Kring was in it for two seasons before Barry Von Dohren stepped in, snagging the 1983 Bridgeport Sportsman title—the team’s first championship.
When Barry’s younger brother Craig took the wheel, things really began to take off: from 1983-86, CVD toted up 48 wins in Hyneman’s Pretzelmania 126 at six tracks in three states.
But Glenn wanted more. He got it with Billy Pauch. In early 1987, Hyneman and Pauch sat down in a diner outside Reading and hammered out an arrangement that would take both to the next level—Hyneman gaining status with a star driver in the seat; and Pauch getting the funding to stay on top of the game. In the years they were together—1987 and ’88 exclusively, then part-time in ’89 and ’90—the team took down 44 wins in the big-block Mods, 42 in small-blocks and six Sprint Car victories for a total 92 scores at 14 tracks in five states.
And Billy delivered “the big ones” he had promised Glenn over lunch in the diner: the ’87 320 Nationals on the Syracuse mile; three consecutive Victoria 200s at Fulton; Ransomville’s Summer Nationals; Grandview’s Freedom 76; Hagerstown’s Octoberfest; back-to-back Modified championships at both Flemington and Bridgeport; and another pair of titles at Penn National. During his entire stint with Hyneman, Pauch was lauded as the winningest driver in the Northeast—in any division. In ’87, their first season together, the Eastern Motorsports Press Association named Pauch “Driver of the Year.”
Hyneman looked back on that heady time. “I was a successful businessman and he was a very aggressive, talented race car driver,” he reflected. “We were both hungry for wins! It was very intense, at times.
“But I probably couldn’t have won all those races with any other driver.”
By 1989, Glenn was negotiating the sale of his Keystone Pretzel Bakery and nosing around the Sprint Car scene in his home state. It was a little bit of “been-there-done-that” in the Modifieds. He wanted a new challenge.
The next three years, Hyneman had Dave Kelly, Dave Calaman, Randy Wolfe and part-timer Pauch in 410 Sprints, before cashing in his car-owner chips to become a partner in the purchase of Susquehanna Speedway. He and old friend Mark Miller, along with Rick and Steve Schroll, helmed the operation, with help from former Penn National promoter John Wertz, from 1993-96.
“Looking back on it, that was part of my problem with the race track: I couldn’t be 100 percent. I had other business obligations that I had to take care of,” Glenn considered.
“Two things define a person: what you do for a living and what you do for your hobby. That’s what I’ve always felt. I’m Glenn Hyneman, the businessman—with pretzels, storage units, trailers, substation fabrication, and car washes. When I go out into the world, they know me as ‘the car wash guy,’” he noted. “The other side of it is your hobby. When I walk into a race track, everyone knows who I am. And I’m not saying that because I expect people to know who I am. Your comfort zone is your friends and your family—and racing people are my friends and my family. Maybe that’s what always kept drawing me back to it.”
Hyneman returned to Modified competition in ’97, first with Calaman, then Duane Howard, who hustled to 50 wins and three Bridgeport championships. Jeff Strunk—in an on-again/off-again hookup that’s now on-again—has brought home another 50 victories to date (including four of Glenn’s half-dozen 76ers), two titles at Big Diamond and two at Grandview. Over a span of 44 years, the Hyneman team has won 261 times, at 23 tracks in seven states, with 11 different drivers.
In all that time, car owner Hyneman has been on hiatus twice: once, to promote Susky in the ’90s; and from 2009-2012, to devote his free time to family commitments, attending son Doug’s high school football games and daughter Natalie’s dance recitals.
Because—as Glenn will be the first to acknowledge—in racing, either you’re all in or you’re out.
“One of those breaks with Jeff was the family one. It had nothing to do with Jeff not liking me or me not liking Jeff—I just needed some time off,” he explained.
Because Glenn Hyneman doesn’t do anything half-measure. “When you’re with Jeff, you’re all in. He wants to race every race he can race! So you can burn out pretty fast,” he said. “It was the same with Billy! And you’ve gotta know that going in. You’ve gotta know that if you don’t run all these races, then you’re not gonna be that good. If your driver jumps cars, back and forth, it’s never as good.”
So if Hyneman’s racing, you can count on a full-on, both-feet-in commitment, with no detail disregarded. He has created a readily recognizable racing brand—show-quality equipment, always red, always number 126, no matter what division or who’s in the seat, transported by a gleaming red rig, attended by a crew of red shirts.
As a promoter recently told Glenn: “I don’t care who’s driving. I want you at my track because the 126 has credibility.”
For this season with Strunk, Hyneman’s got seven motors and four Bicknell Modifieds ready to roll. To reiterate his deep-rooted dedication, “We’re all in.”
How does this year’s effort differ from seasons past? “Back in the old days, I did everything. I was the mechanic, I fixed the cars, I set up the cars,” Glenn said. “Even with Billy, we split it: he did everything on the cars he kept at his place, and I did everything with the cars I kept at my place.
“Now I’ve taken more of an owner’s role. I can’t do everything. I can’t change tires, I can’t do the things that need to be done at the speed of the younger guys,” he conceded.
Today, at age 69, still recuperating from shoulder replacement surgery, Hyneman has earned a rest. “Now I kinda sit back and enjoy being an owner.”
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