Published: Nov. 5, 2015
4-time Slinger Nationals champion Bickle Jr. to enter Hall
of Fame
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
Rich Bickle Jr. had a curiosity about cars or anything that
could go fast. It followed him throughout his childhood and it was aided by his
father, who raced for more than 30 years.
As he grew up, his curiosity and desire to race also grew
with it.
Bickle recalled a time when he climbed over a fence at a
race track near his hometown of Edgerton to watch the legendary Miles “The
Mouse” Melius. Forty years later, that curiosity has turned into: What in the
world happened? “You don’t realize 40 years can go by that fast,” Bickle said.
From the dawn of his curiosity to now, Bickle put together a Hall of Fame
career, which will be recognized at the ninth annual Southeastern Wisconsin
Short Track Hall of Fame induction ceremony Saturday at the Wisconsin
Automotive Museum in Hartford.
A few years ago, Bickle went to the museum to check it out.
“I was astonished,” Bickle said. “I never really thought
more about it, let alone get inducted. This is awfully cool.”
Bickle, 54, will go into the Hall of Fame alongside Lowell
Bennett, Jim Blazek, Donny Goeden, Dave Moulis, Pete Ostrowski, Bill Prietzel,
John Quinn, Ray Toft, Dave Watson and John Ziegler.
“I’m totally thrilled,” Bennett said. “It’s definitely a
privilege to be in there with such big names. There’s a lot of guys that
growing up that I really thought were cool. They were awesome race car drivers.
I have the utmost respect for all of the old competitors.”
Goeden, of Kewaskum, is third on the Bumper to Bumper IRA
Outlaw Sprint Car Series victories list and has more than 120 feature victories
overall. He won the 1992 and 1993 Eastern Wisconsin super modified division
championship, the IRA championship in 1999, and has won the last two 360 sprint
car championships at Plymouth.
Prietzel, of Hubertus, is a three-time Mid-American Stock
Car Series champion and the 1977 Hales Corners sportsman division champion. In
2012, he made his NASCAR debut, racing with the XFINITY Series at Road America
in Elkhart Lake.
For Bickle, he won more than 300 shorttrack races, including
the Slinger Nationals four times (1992, 1996, 2003 and 2013), Oktoberfest at
LaCrosse (1986), the National Short Track Championship at Rockford (1990 and
2012) and the Snowball Derby in Florida five times (1990, 1991, 1996, 1998 and
1999).
On top of that, he won two super late model championships at
Slinger (1983 and 1989) and at Madison (1985 and 1986), and won the Red, White,
Blue Series at Kaukauna (1990).
Later, he ventured south and competed in NASCAR. He made 85
starts with the Sprint Cup Series, 54 with XFINITY and 79 with Camping World
Truck. He won three truck races — all in 1997 and he finished second in the
championship to Jack Sprague.
“My dad raced for 33 years,” Bickle said. “I was born at the
race track; a month old and I was at the track. It’s all I ever wanted to do. I
just wanted to be a racer.” And he was good.
“He never gave up,” Bennett said. “Rich was one of those
guys that ran the wheels off of it, but he was also very smart.”
The smarts, Bickle said, came from his father and those
smarts were admired by many in the pit area.
“He’s a phenomenal fabricator,” Bennett said. “It’s what
made him great. He was quite the innovator.”
The other thing working in Bickle’s favor, in addition to
his father’s smarts, was he also had his mother’s determination.
“She was truly driven,” Bickle said.
That combination made him tough to beat.
“Rich and I raced together for so many years,” Bennett said.
“We had our times, but for the most part, we did really well together and
respected each other.”
Even after almost two years off, Bickle was still
competitive. The game hadn’t passed him up. He retired after the 2013 season,
citing low funds as a reason. This season, he came out of retirement.
“All in all, the year was pretty good,” Bickle said.
All that racing was never his plan.
“I would’ve never dreamed of racing more than three or four
tracks in my life. I remember going to Milwaukee to watch the Daytona 500 at a
movie theater in the ’70s.”
Bickle said two people had an influence on his racing career
and he’s excited that they’re joining him in this year’s Hall of Fame class:
Watson and Ziegler.
Bickle promised he had a good story or two about Watson and
Ziegler but wouldn’t disclose it until the induction ceremony.
“They helped transform my career,” Bickle said.
So after 40 years, what’s a memorable moment in Bickle’s
racing career?
“There’s so many,” he said. “Where do you start? where do
you finish?”
Here’s an attempt at it:
■
Winning the Snowball Derby five times was one collection of memories for
Bickle.
■ He
drove for NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip and Cale
Yarborough.
■
There was also the time where Bickle went to Daytona with a home-built race car
and qualified for the 1990 Daytona 500 — his third
career Sprint Cup Series start.
■
Bickle competed in one of NASCAR’s most historic races: the inaugural Brickyard
400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1994.
But what Bickle said he was most proud of was his shorttrack
career in Wisconsin, which drew comparisons to that of Melius, Dick Trickle,
Joe Shear and Jim Sauter Sr.
“There was no expectations,” Bickle said. “I just loved
racing. I always wanted to race something.”
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