12/28/2023 0 Comments Jj hightail race car driver“I was making almost as much racing as I was welding at the time.” “I could go out and make $35 a night racing a stock car two of three nights a week sometimes,” said Bennett. I loved racing that much.”īennett was a welder at Valley Iron Works, where he made $85 a week welding up steel for paper machines. I didn’t care if it was dirt or asphalt – if there was a race track I was there. We even raced at 141 Speedway when they first built it. ![]() “I raced everywhere and anywhere I could. “I started racing at tracks in Oshkosh, Shiocton, Seymour and De Pere that first year,” said Bennett. When he got out of the Army, he purchased a 1937 Plymouth as his first stock car in 1959. “Lowell (Bobby’s eldest son) was born in Germany.” Bennett purchased an Austin-Healy that he would drive in competitions against lieutenants and colonels in races and hill climbing events in Germany. “I got drafted into the Army and went overseas,” said Bennett. “I enjoyed racing the bikes – I was a junior in high school,” said Bennett, who upon graduation would work across the country as a storage tank welder.īennett made good money with his job, purchased a Jaguar and went road racing for a bit. Bennett rode the motorcycle home that he raced. So I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ That’s how the need for speed got started.”īennett took that motorcycle and went to Rib Mountain near Wausau, Wisconsin, took the fenders and headlights off, and got it ready for racing. He told me if I help him out with the honey bees in the summertime for the next three summers, he’d give me that bike. “A guy had a motorcycle for sale at a race in Oshkosh one afternoon. “That got me into racing and I got used to skidding them sideways and such,” said Bennett. “I said if me, Dad and Grandpa all chipped in it would only cost $33 apiece.”īennett’s dad, Albert, who was a beekeeper by trade, raced motorcycles across Wisconsin in the 1940s at the county fairgrounds. ![]() “I saw an ad in the newspaper at Grandpa’s house in Hortonville,” said Bennett. ![]() When Bennett was a young child, he saw a Whizzer brand motorcycle. It didn’t matter if it was stock cars, snowmobiles or flying airplanes. In fact, it didn’t even need a motor, as Soap Box Derby cars were part of Bennett’s passion, too. (Vercauteren family photo)Īs a kid growing up, Bobby Bennett would race anything if it had wheels on it. B” Bobby Bennett takes the checkered flag for a ride after a Sunday afternoon victory at the Brown County Fairgrounds in De Pere, Wisconsin in 1974.
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