POLSON — When Kalispell’s Alex Lessor stood victorious on the windowsill of his Ford, arms stretched toward the sky and the white and blue No. 53 machine parked across Mission Valley Super Oval’s winner’s circle, he had checked an important box.
White with a gray chassis, a departure from Lessor’s typically black race cars, the car itself is a call-back to Baker native and Northwest Montana Stock Car Racing Hall of Famer Bob Schweigert, who suggested the colors.
Lessor’s car owner throughout much of the second-generation racer’s career, Schweigert passed away in 2020 as the chassis was being built by Midwest Super Late Model crew chief Toby Nuttleman.
Lessor fetched the car’s bones from Wisconsin and finished it over roughly 18 months at Schweigert’s former shop in Kalispell. His victory in the Twin 50-lap race feature on June 22, event No. 2 in the first-ever Montana Big 5 Super Series, was Lessor’s first victory in the car.
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Blue numbers on each door are hand-lettered by longtime Kalispell sign painter Gary Gudmundson. Lessor said he chose No. 53 some two decades ago because it was one less than his father’s No. 54.
Fifty-three seconds is also how quickly Lessor’s buddy and current crew chief, Nate Collier, was knocked out in a bygone boxing match in Kalispell.
A fifth-place finish in the nightcap propelled Lessor to the top of the Big 5 points standings, three points clear of Canada’s Tyler Emond and 23 better than Spokane’s Jess Havens.
“The best way to describe [racing] is like a drug,” Lessor said. “It’s hard to get out of your system when you’re embedded into it with your life.
“That’s all I really knew growing up and that’s all I’ve really known. All my friends and people that I’ve hung out with were racers. It’s a difficult lifestyle to live because you spend a lot of money and you don’t get to do a lot [of racing].”
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