For the last 15 years, Adam Hensel has been a traveling racer.
The Atlantic, Iowa, driver typically just picks and chooses what track he wants to go to when he has a free weekend. He’s never raced for points or went for championships, he just went wherever the wind took him that week.
He was doing largely the same thing last summer, but found he was racing at Adams County Speedway more and more, and doing well.
So well that about halfway through the season he and his team realized they were leading the track’s hobby stock division point standings. So, they decided to stay there and see what could happen.
By the end of the season, Hensel had four wins and 16 top-five finishes at the NASCAR Home Track in Corning, Iowa, and a new experience. For the first time in his career he was a track champion.
“We just started out the season as a normal year, racing around,” Hensel said. “I went to a few specials with different sanctions and different tracks and never really had the intentions of running for points or anything to begin with. And it probably got about halfway through the summer and we were doing really good in points and doing really good at that track so we just kind of buckled down and stuck with it, and it worked at the end.
“I’ve never really raced a full season anywhere. I’ve never intentionally raced for points at all. That was something kind of different, something kind of new.”
Racing at just one track made working in the shop a bit easier. Instead of having to change the car to fit certain speedways, he just had to make sure his car was built for Adams County every week.
The racing, though, was much more stressful. Hensel was no longer just racing to race. He was going for wins, and competing against some of the best drivers in the Midwest. Luke Ramsey, who finished second to Hensel, is a former NASCAR national champion.
“Our class down there has a pretty long list of really talented and competitive drivers,” Hensel said. “There’s a pretty large handful of them that have extremely impressive careers, so it was by no means any easier. It was probably actually more stressful because I knew I couldn’t really take it easy at any one point in time.”
Hensel worked hard to keep the same mindset he’s had his entire racing career, but that didn’t make the races any easier.
“A lot of times I just try to treat it as a normal race. Just do what you normally do,” he said. “Show up and race and whatever happens, happens. It’s kind of hard to get the thought out of your mind when you’ve got guys that have won multiple track championships and have hundreds of wins in their career. You can’t really forget about that very easy.”
By the time championship night came around, Hensel was mostly “more excited for the night to be over with and be done with it.” The points came down to the wire, and the final night was just as much of a challenge as the rest of the season.
He finished second that night, winning the track title by 15 points.
Not only did he win the track championship, Hensel also came home with the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series Division IV national title.
“It was a whole new experience for me,” he said. “I never really ran for points. I really actually haven’t won a lot of races to begin with overall in all the years I’ve raced, so it was kind of overwhelming for a while, actually.
“It made all the years of racing actually kind of seem worth it for once.”
Hensel wasn’t totally new to Adams County this year. He’s raced at the track, which is about 40 minutes from his home, off and on over the years. His uncle also used to race there when Hensel was growing up.
“I kind of grew up around cars and spent a lot of time around the track as a kid,” he said.
Fast forward to 2008, when Hensel was about 24. One of his friends was competing, and Hensel started hanging out at his shop. That friend convinced him to get behind the wheel, and a group of friends all helped each other on their cars.
The sport has always just been a hobby for Hensel. He enjoys traveling and seeing different tracks, and working with friends on the cars.
He hasn’t decided if he’d like to try to defend his Adams County and national title next season. Right now, the team is working on a new motor they just purchased, and putting a new body on the car.
Where all that car will drive in 2024 is still in the air, but if it gets late in the summer and things are going well at Adams County, Hensel may have to give it another try for No. 2
“We’ve kind of talked about it the whole offseason so far, and I’ve always been so indecisive and just kind of raced what I wanted to race,” he said. “I really still haven’t made up my mind whether I want to be racing specifically for a championship again, but we’ll run the summer out and see how it goes, and if I think I’ve got a shot at it we’ll probably buckle down and try and go for it.
“But other than that I kind of just want to go back to having fun and just race whenever I want to race… If it’s stressful and you’re not having fun then there’s not much point in doing it.”