Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Sunday, September 30, 2007
Auto racing: Dick Trickle all for mixing business with pleaure
These days Dick Trickle probably spends more time driving one of his tractors than stock cars, the four-wheeled machines which made him famous. And make no mistake about it, Dick Trickle has achieved a level of fame that even many of today’s Nextel Cup drivers will never achieve.
Thank goodness for that.
Why do I say that? Because Trickle isn’t all about selling the most merchandise — even though he’s sold plenty — or about hawking the
latest product, or about commanding the highest salary. Trickle is about one thing — racing.
OK, let me backtrack a minute. Trickle’s about two things: Racing and having fun. It’s hard to tell what Trickle did more of during his racing career, mainly because they went hand-in-hand. The King of short-track racing made sure of that.
“Although it was hard work, it was like playing for us. Who doesn’t want to play? We worked hard and played hard,” Trickle said. “I would crawl underneath the car, get dirt and oil in my eye, and say, ‘Who said racing isn’t fun?’ I made sure we also had fun.”
Trickle intends to both once again this week during the 38th running of the Okotberfest Racing Weekend, which officially begins Thursday at the La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway. He’s leaving his comfortable home on 9.5 acres of North Carolina countryside to revive a part of him that’s still there, but doesn’t get revved up all that often any more.
Yes, Trickle’s here to race. And to race competitively.
“I can’t believe the last couple of years how big that Oktoberfest has gotten to be,” said Trickle, who is making his third straight Oktoberfest Race Weekend appearance after missing it for 16 years. “It is a super big deal. And that 99-lapper, that is going to be interesting. Not just because it’s named after me, but the concept.”
The Dick Trickle 99 is three separate races of 33 laps each, that when combined, will determine a champion. That event is being held on Friday night. Trickle’s also racing on Sunday.
“We need to run better than we did last year,” said Trickle, who started 20th in the Wisconsin Late Model Miller Lite 100, but moved all the way up to seventh last year at the Oktoberfest Races. “So far this season, we have not run well. We want to run competitively, and if we do that, then winning is an option.”
Trickle, 65 years-old and about to turn 66 (Oct. 27), has collected three social security checks. But that doesn’t mean the man who won more than 1,200 short-track races and created at least twice as many stories, doesn’t want to win again. And again. You don’t start 295 Cup races in your career, and earn 14 top-five and 35 top-10 finishes without wanting to win.
Taking life easy while on his North Carolina farm, where his daughter, Vickie, and his son, Chad, also have homes, is fine. And, Trickle says, he enjoys being a grandpa. But this grandpa can still drive.
“It is a rush. It is a week I really look forward to,” said Trickle, who still competes in about four or five races a year. “It’s not hard for me to drive. Like Johnny Sauter once said in an interview, ‘Trickle was born to drive.’ That may be true. I don’t necessarily condition myself.”
You might be chuckling at that last statement; I know I was. But you have to give Trickle a ton of credit for making a life-changing move at age 48. He was a short-track legend in the Midwest, had solid sponsors, and was making a good living. Then came the call...
“I was making a decent living in short-track racing, but every time you got ahead, you had a bad week,” Trickle said. “In 1988 when I had a chance to go Winston Cup racing, it was like having zero bills and two or three times the pay. More than that, it was like a second challenge in life. I had fulfilled just about all I could do in short-track racing and I enjoyed it. This was a new challenge.”
Boy, did Trickle ever respond to it.
He earned Winston Cup Rookie of the Year in 1988 — the oldest rookie then, and still, in stock car racing’s premier series — and started d racing full-time in Cup in 1989. He didn’t win a race, but he came close and he also spent more than a decade in the big-time world of racing.
“In short-track racing I had to win a lot of races to just to raise a family and have a roof over our heads,” Trickle said. “What some people don’t realize is I had nine people working for me on my short-track operation. Now you’ve got four or five times that many people working on your car (at the Cup level).”
Trickle said racing full-time on the Cup and Busch Series for more than a decade was challenging, but as he pointed out, he also competed in the IROC Series and tested cars besides.
“Now the guys doing that, they are like 25 or 30 and they are acting like you can’t hardly do it,” Trickle said. “I was 55, 56 years-old and doing that. My motto is, ‘You gotta wanna.’ If you do, then it’s easy.”
Trickle is taking life easy now for a number of reasons. One, he can. And two, he’s earned it.
“The weather is nice here, so I spend a lot of time outside,” Trickle said of his property, which is about 25 miles from Charlotte. “I have a couple of old tractors I play with. I don’t hire much done. My wife was my chief financial officer for years. It’s nice to see her not have to worry about paying the bills. I am not saying I am rich or anything, just comfortable.”
Jeff Brown can be reached at (608) 791-8403, or jbrown@lacrossetribune.com
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