The tow truck drivers at Willamette Speedway know Ron Shinkle well enough to gave him a nickname: The Showstopper.
When the Monmouth resident and Central High School graduate wrecks a race car, he often destroys it, and the races have to be stopped to scrape up the pieces.
“Unfortunately I know them pretty well,” Shinkle joked. “We’re pretty good friends. They’re nice guys. I just need them all too often.”
A few years ago, Shinkle was lecturing Willamette Speedway track champion Trevor Glaser on how to qualify.
“We don’t sandbag,” Shinkle said tersely. “We destroy the car in qualifying, but we don’t sandbag.”
In May, I showed up at Cottage Grove Speedway to the DIRTcar I-5 Northwest Late Model Tour race to find Ron Shinkle’s race car in a big lump on his trailer.
He flipped the No. 42 dirt late model more times than he can remember on the front stretch.
In an 1983 Olds Cutlass stock car nicknamed the “Manimal,” he won the 18 main events — including nine in a row — and the 2005 Classic Sportsman championship.
The next time he drove it, late in the 2007 season, he destroyed it.
He wrecked the car bad enough to break the transmission. That’s hard.
Shinkle’s next opportunity to wreck a race car comes when he makes his debut in a modified July 11 at Willamette Speedway.
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