The annual Dacotah Bank Insurance Rumble will feature a new look this year, but it remains the highlight of the summer at Brown County Speedway.

The event takes place Friday and Saturday at the local track and offers a total purse close to $100,000.

“We’re getting good vibes,” said track official Terry Voeltz of the potential car count for the event. “It’s a heckuva good weekend. There’s a lot of money at stake.”

Voeltz isn’t quite sure exactly how many Late Models will be competing, but expects all the “lastest young guns and new guns of WISSOTA” to be here.

The Rumble has a new format this year.

In the past, 20-lap heat races helped to determine who would get into the 66-lap main event for the major prize money.

This year, the Rumble is part of the Structural Builders WISSOTA Late Model challenge series.

“That alone brings in extra cars because there’s people following that challenge series and trying to win it,” Voeltz said, “because it pays out $10,000 at the end of the year.”

The new look will feature a pair of races on Friday night that will offer $3,000 to win. The winners of those two races will automatically qualify for Saturday night’s feature which will be 40 laps instead of 66.

The next 14 cars with the highest accumulative passing points will move on to the main feature and there will be two possible provisional drivers. The winner of final feature will earn $10,000.

Fans will once again have the opportunity to be matched up with one of the drivers in the main feature through a random drawing. Whoever holds the ticket matching the winning driver will receive $1,000.

“They may hate the guy,” Voeltz said, “but they’ll be cheering for him so they can win a thousand bucks.”

There will also be something else new this weekend.

“One of the biggest parts of the show this year is we have sprints coming in,” Voeltz said.

The Buffalo Wild Wings NOSA Sprints will be a part of the action. They will have their own separate race with $2,000 to win.

There will not be Super Stocks or Modifieds this weekend. Friday’s 7 p.m. program will feature Street, Midwest Mods and Late Models. Saturday’s 7 p.m. show will include Streets, Sprints and Late Models.

Last year’s Rumble was rained out and weather remains the biggest concern heading into this year’s event. Voeltz said it is so hard to predict what will happen on a given day.

“It will say a four percent chance of rain and you’ll see the biggest rain storm you’ve ever had in your life or it will say 90 percent, the sun is out and you don’t get a drop, so you don’t know what the heck to think,” Voeltz said. “You just prepare like you’re going to race and that’s all you can do.”

Voeltz said fans often don’t understand the situation when it comes to making race-time decisions.

“A lot of people get frustrated, because they don’t understand what goes into our decisions,” Voeltz said.

He noted that rain on the actual racing surface sometimes isn’t the biggest problem. It’s the pit area and getting people to come that are the real issues.

Voeltz said this summer’s heat has been a real challenge in preparing the track each week.

“This hot weather and stuff like that is just giving us fits,” Voeltz said. “We’ll have that track at 3 o’clock in the afternoon and it looks like we’re going to have boat racing, and at 8 at night the dust is flying and we’re putting water back on the track. It’s just nuts. We’re working our tail off. We water that track every single night of the week.”

Voeltz said he is prepared to take a little extra time if needed during the shows this weekend to make sure the conditions are ideal with the all the money on the line.

“We might very well farm the track a couple of times, because with that kind of money and those guys coming in, we want to make sure everybody has a good track to race on,” he said.

If the drivers show up and the weather cooperates, the stage is all set for the biggest rumble of the year at Brown County Speedway.

“It’s a big deal,” Voeltz said, “so we’re hoping and praying for the best.”