By Bill Martin
DETROIT LAKES, Minn. (Oct. 29, 2026) – When the race season started, Matthew Taves might have seemed like a longshot in the running for national IMCA RaceSaver Sprint Car rookie of the year.
His incredible on-track consistency, however, would make him a lock for the award.
The 15-year-old from Detroit Lakes, Minn., won two features and finished in the top five in all but one of just 17 starts, while earning the track championship at Buffalo River Speedway.
“It was pretty exciting to run up front, finish so consistently almost every night and to win a couple features,” said the Detroit Lakes High School sophomore. “We’d raced lightning sprints for four years before. RaceSaver Sprint Cars are a lot bigger, and it was nice going from no power steering to power steering, and we enjoyed racing against different people. There’s a lot of good competition that we got to race with weekly.”
After starting the season on Memorial Day at Sheyenne Speedway, Taves started traveling west on Highway 10 to make seven starts at both Glyndon, where he won the track title by a nine-point margin ahead of Brandon Rekow, and at Red River Valley Speedway in West Fargo, N.D.
His two other outings came at Norman County Raceway in Ada.
“We got a new motor and after getting out of lightning sprints, this was the next class to try,” reasoned Taves, who’d made a handful of RaceSaver starts in 2025. “And it went pretty good for us. We had the same car and the new motor from Precision Race Engines. The 410 class seemed like too big of a jump so we wanted to get some 305 races in this year.”
A lightning sprint, he’d explain, is a winged class powered by a motorcycle engine. Taves compiled 17 wins and two group championships, as well as a POWRi national rookie of the year title in that class.
He made like lightning and struck twice at Buffalo River, taking the checkers on June 21 and again on Aug. 9.
“That first win was amazing. We had a lot of experience there – Buffalo River was my best track in lightning sprints – and we finally hit the setup right. I started second row outside, got the lead about halfway through and had to hold off (multi-time state champion) Tye Wilke at the end,” Taves said. “We were always good at Glyndon. I’d won a track championship there with the lightning sprints the year prior and now we’ve won it in the RaceSavers, so that’s exciting.”
The one blemish, and it’s a miniscule one, in his statistics for the season was a single sixth place finish.
“We spend so much time on this car to make sure it’s ready to go and that nothing stupid is missed,” Taves said, when asked about the key to all those good runs. “Another factor was my driving style. I don’t push the issue as much as think I should sometimes, but we were super consistent and got top five almost every night.”
His father John and uncle Jon Bachmeier both raced WISSOTA Modifieds back in the day, at West Fargo, Jamestown “and everywhere up in this Northern area.”
“The Sprint Cars are a different class, but I definitely can go and learn from them,” he said. “They always can tell me something about what I did right or wrong in the car, and that’s always helpful.”
Brother Thomas manages all the Taves Racing social media platforms.
Taves won’t turn 16 until two weeks before the IMCA banquet in late November, making him the second youngest driver to earn national rookie honors in the winged division since that award was first presented in 1993.
He spends any spare time working on his Sprint Car, riding four wheelers … there’s a dirt track complete with jumps on what his family simply refers to as The Farm … and snowmobiling in the winter.
Wins – 2
Top Five Finishes – 16
Starts – 17
HIS CREW: Parents John and Denise Taves, brother Tom, sister Kate, uncle Jon Bachmeier, Shannon Fischer and Brayden Francis.
HIS SPONSORS: Driveway Service of Detroit Lakes; Mark Sand & Gravel of Fergus Falls; and Valley Tire, Amsoil and General Equipment, all of Fargo, N.D.