ARTGO was the premier traveling series during the 1980's. Many drivers graduated from ARTGO, to ASA, and on to NASCAR, including names such as Mark Martin, Alan Kulwicki, and Rusty Wallace. This picture was from the April opener at Rockford. Even today, Rockford's early opener is an important event to be at. After some coaching from Jim Hendricks on how to drive this 1/4 mile track, Dale went on to win an important qualifing race which earned him into one of the few ARTGO features he tried to compete in. Dale actually traveled through a SNOW storm on his way back to Wisconsin.

Super Late Model cars at Slinger Super Speedway began with this style car. Howe and Dillon were the most recognized chassis builders of that era. This car was a MK5 Dillon Chassis. Mark Martin was the house driver at this time and Mark designed the chassis. The car came with setup instructions, written by Mark himself. But there was only one set of holes for the control arms, so all you needed was a tape measure and a level to follow Mark's instruction sheet. This was one of the first cars to break into the 12 second bracket at Slinger. Dale only owned this car for one year before selling it to Rich Somers. Rich drove it until the end of his racing career, winning a few features with it along the way.