Bill Schmitt of Redding, California, was an equally successful businessman and stock car driver.

Schmitt was a four-time NASCAR Winston West Series champion (1977, 1979, 1989 and 1990), racing in the series for 20 seasons, from 1974 to 1993, which included 237 races, 19 wins and garnering 24 poles, 122 top-five finishes, 163 top-10 finishes and 4,274 laps led. He drove for legendary NASCAR driver and owner Junior Johnson.

Bill was a major figure in short track races, including on dirt at Redwood Acres Raceway in Eureka, CA, where he was a frequent and popular winner, including the historic 1978 Open Competition event.

Bill passed away in November 2014 at the age of 78. I interviewed Bill in the office of his trucking company in Redding, CA in October 2013.

EARLY DAYS AT SHASTA SPEEDWAY

Bill Schmitt:

“I was born in Fullerton, California. Went to Anaheim High School in ’56. We moved up here to the Redding area. Too crowded down there. Lived on a ranch up here for about five years, my dad and I, and finally had come down here to Redding and bought this place in the ’60s. Been here ever since.”

Bill’s early trucking business in Shasta County connected him with his first race car, leading to a lifelong passion for the track which started on the oval in Anderson, California, Shasta Speedway.

“I was drag racing in Santa Ana, come up here to Redding, and I put everything away because I had to make a living. I had four kids and thought I need to try to do something to keep things going, you know? So I got involved in the woods and stuff like that. But after about five years, I kind of got into doing my own thing, had some smaller trucks I was operating myself. This guy was working for me and all of a sudden got a call and had to move back to Colorado. And in the meantime he’d been driving and had an old Pontiac race car he built. You put one set of tires on and it would last a month, and I think in those days a new tire was maybe 25, 30 bucks, a big deal. And he had our trucking name, my name, all over his car and everything. So when he had to move, he said, ‘Here, Bill, you can just take the car, I can’t take it with me.’ So it sat around here for about a year. Finally, I thought I’d go down Anderson to try it out. What a joke I was. I ran into everything and wrecked it, blew it up every week.”

“So I sat it out for about a half a year, and watched old Jim Boyd. He was just winning every night. He’d go to Chico and race on the way to Anderson [the Valley Auto Racing Association]. And so I built a Chevy and then I started getting a little bit better, and then I got where I was kind of competitive with him, and I didn’t win any championships there. They had a deal here where you could win a championship on an individual track, but, and then they had the overall deal between Marysville and Shasta. And he’d usually beat me by one point or something like that, you know (laughing). Yeah, it was kinda neat.”

EVOLUTION OF SHASTA SPEEWAY

Built in the late 1940’s, Shasta Speedway in Anderson, California south of Redding, began as dirt which was paved in 1972 as a 1/4 mile oval. In 2005 it was reconfigured to a 3/8 “D” similar to Redwood Acres.

“The half mile, you should have seen that; that was years and years ago, but they had an oak tree coming out of turn two; the oak tree was three or four foot. And I’ll tell you, it had several scars on it! And if you messed up on turn one, you’d end up out there in the highway. Turns three and four had a little bit of bank to it, pretty flat, and had a little guardrail. Not that high, just like a highway; four by four posts. I remember I rode a car right over one of ’em one night. And it was nothing to go through that and be out in the horse barns.”

“Shasta was half a mile, then when they started importing more dirt, they cut the track down, and it’s a little bit to what it is today.”

“I helped them with the paving. I had an asphalt plant at the time. And they took pretty good care of the stuff around there. Porter had it, and then he wanted to get out of it, so I bought him out and I started promoting the racetrack. That was about ’75. I took Gary Cressey in because he was a good announcer. So I cut him in on a piece of the action . We did well; we’d have full grandstands every week, and we’d have people standing out in the yard. We’d have 50, 60 cars every weekend. And when we’d put on an Open Show, we’d have 150 cars, and it was a good deal. And then the locals started getting upset with me because I owned the racetrack and they said the flagman was in my favor all the time, etc. It was quite a year. I decided, well, I’ll cut back, I won’t race there much. But I still wanted to race to I decided to go into the Winston West series to try it out. It worked out pretty good. We raced in NASCAR for 28 years.”

“Well, (in 2005) they added about another hundred feet to it, about all they did. And banked the three and four a little bit more. But basically everybody tells me they run the same gear, everything, you know, drive it pretty much same as they did the other one.”

“They went and spent 2 million bucks down there on a waste of time. They had me down there to consult with what the hell to do with that race track to get more people interested in it. First thing you do is get your grandstand and put ’em on the other side where the sun didn’t shine right in your face. And then, make a half mile out it.”

“Finally they made a plan for a ‘D’ shape. And there was one like it in Tri-Cities and it was fast and fun. It was a fun track. Then somebody got a big idea down there that they’d be going into turn four too fast and might flip and go up into the grandstand. Well, grandstand shouldn’t even be there. It should be on the other side. So, it was a big go around. And they ended up with what they got. It isn’t any different than it was before they put 2 million into it.”

PROMOTING RACES

“My theory always was, and I think this is where a lot of promoters lost it; they think they have to get the people lined up to be able to put a show on – that’s not the way you do it. You get the show, then you bring the people in. And these guys don’t do that any more. I think that’s where a lot of promoters miss. It’s like they want the money in their hand before they ever put a show on. And that ain’t gonna happen. But when you start a show people weren’t gonna sit there so long. And our idea was that, if you can maintain for three hours, that’s about the limit, for the average person. So don’t hold up. You don’t treat each race like a main event. You get through the one, get ’em off the track, get to the next one.”

1976 BOBBY ALLISON CAR

“I had a red Bobby Allison Grand National car I bought in ’76. Didn’t win over there at Redwood Acres though with it. It was quite a bit heavier car than what everybody else was driving.” As Bill joined the Winston West series, he would maintain a Late Model stock car for the short tracks.”

REDWOOD ACRES RACEWAY

Bill visited Redwood Acres Raceway in Eureka often in the many years when it was a dirt track, and like Shasta Speedway, was paved eventually in 1988.

“The promoter who paved it, Rich Olson, invited us over there two or three times, Then they had some open shows. I don’t know, it was kind of fun, it was easy to drive, it’s not a real challenging track.”

“The dirt track is what was neat, I thought. But it made a difference, you know, when the tide was out and tide was in. Because it’s relatively close to the bay. I didn’t think that would make a difference. Their problem over there at times in the 70s I know was the dust, so dusty that it would just be kind of miserable. Daytime races were tough over there. You could water that thing down, pack it in, and well, once it started unraveling it came apart fast. We used to have a lot of fun over there, man. Had some real beatin’ with those cars, you know, you could really get beat up.”

Over the years, Bill would provide some historic moments at Redwood Acres Raceway over on the coast in Eureka….

1973 TRACK RECORD BROKEN 20 TIMES IN ONE DAY – BILL WINS A-MAIN

from Dirt Trackin’ At The Acres by Tom Dilling:

“The Biggie for this season, without question, would be the beating that the track record took during timing for the July 8 Open Competition program. The entrants all took a run at the fast, fast Larry Sallady-Lee Tomasini groomed track. Ray Luzzi, Larry Pries, Mitch Gilbert, Bill O’Neill, Bill Schmitt, Frank Swords, Dave McMurray, Markey James, Ed Schmidt, Dusty Mausa, Denny Myers, Jim Walker, Earl Vagle and Dan Bradbury all broke the old record, with Denny Myers doing it three times. But after the dust cleared and all was said and done, Walker ended up with a 19.402. That was on July 8, 1973 and it would stand for over five years. And how many times was it broken altogether on July 8? A nice even 20! All ten cars in the Fourth Heat had broken the track record!! By the way, Bill Schmitt of Redding won the A Main that day…”

Bill Schmitt:

“The tire situation over there; you always took two sets, two types of tires with you, mud tires or slicks. And we started doing the slick thing over there. We were probably the first one to ever do it. The only reason that I stumbled onto it was that I took them over in the car and we got there late. We just didn’t change ’em. We just left them on; man, them things had grab, hold that track and just run, you know. And it was different. Everybody said it was crazy, but it worked. That became the norm. Everybody did that after that.”

“It was kind of funny in those days, we used to take the car we had, with dirt tires because we ran down here quite a bit. So it was all Firestone then that we used. But when it come to asphalt, we never changed nothing in the car. Change the gear and change the tires. And we always got our used M&H, and they had two compounds. And that’s what you bought, those two compounds. One of the two. So you always got the soft ones. But like Redwood Acres over there, you put dirt tires on that track when it was slick and hard like that, about 10 laps, they’d be gone.”

“They even had a groove, you could see it was all dark into the turns, like laid rubber down. Very strange for a dirt track. It was very different, you know. And we drove it like an asphalt track.”

1976 FAIR NIGHTS BILL SCHMITT vs JIM WALKER

In 1976 Bill Schmitt had one of the most memorable moments in Redwood Acres Raceway history, and it wasn’t even a win, and involved the most popular local driver, Jim Walker.

Eureka Times-Standard June 24 1976:

“Jimmy Walker’s A-main win and an outstanding gesture of sportsmanship highlighted the Six Rivers Racing Association program at Redwood Acres Wednesday night. Walker, the Permatex 200 champion who is back on the stock Car racing circuit after being severely injured at Daytona Beach in February, took over the lead on the 33rd lap of the A-Main with Redding’s Bill Schmitt right on his heels. On the 45th lap Schmitt hit Walker’s car going into turn two and the 1974 Camaro spun clear around. Schmitt then slowed down and allowed Walker to catch up and pass him as a capacity crowd roared its approval. Schmitt remained in second place for the balance of the race. “The A-main was one of the best we’ve ever had out here,” reported SRRA track announcer Jim Wilson. “There were lots of out-of-town drivers and several leaders throughout the event. Schmitt performed a real gentlemanly act.” “

from Dirt Trackin’ At The Acres by Tom Dilling:

“During the Fair Night racing there was another display of sportsmanship that will be remembered for a long time. Bill Schmitt bumped Walker on next to the last lap; Jim spun all the way around while Bill waited for Jim and the race resumed. Jim went on to win. Two real gentlemen and sportsmen. Schmitt endeared himself to us all with that display.”

Schmitt would take the second night’s A-Main, beating Mike Chae, Jim Walker, and Dane Smith to the line.

The Times-Standard reported:

“According to track announcer Jim Wilson, a SRRA official, the two-day meet drew close to 5,000 spectators.”

Bill Schmitt, looking back:

“That first night that Jim and I, we had our little bumpin’. Well, we always went over there for Fair Nights, and it was all the drivers somehow promoted the track (the Six Rivers Racing Assoc.) and didn’t kill each other. They had their arguments, but, you know, they had proper meetings and voting and took it very serious. And they got along enough to keep it going really well. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it.”

“So we go over there, but that particular weekend prior to that, we had a two day deal here in Anderson. And I was leading the race down here at Anderson and some guy got into me and I ended up going up in the air and landed on one of the posts that hold the fence right in the grand stand. And it came right up through the floorboard. Right next to me, you know. They had to take two wreckers and pick the car up to get it off of it, So we just kind of tore the car all up that night. We worked hard trying to get it ready for Eureka and we got over there and, and we were late; got in hardly any practice anyway. The race took off, there was a bunch of cars and it ended up with a two night deal – as I recall, you got so many points for positions each night. And whoever had the most won this trophy and $1,000 bucks I think it was, in those days a lot of money.”

“The first night Mike Chase was over there at Eureka that night too. And it was towards the end of the race and Jim Walker and I were way out, gone from the other guys. And I remember it was pretty open area in front of him. And he went into turn and he was doing his normal thing. And the track was getting a little bit slick, so he kinda crossed it up a little bit. So he went up high, so I come down low. But when I come down a low, I went probably in a little harder and I slipped up, just barely tagged him on the back end round he went, Oh man, you can’t do that Jimmy Walker over there. Not in those days; somebody’ll hang ya.”

“So I decided then I just pulled over there on the back straightaway and slowed way down. And again, I was going pretty slow and nobody had caught up with it. So we were right behind the whole pack, but we were leading. Finally he got going and as soon as I seen him get going, I started to pick up a little bit. But I let him get back in front of me. And took off. He won the race that night. And I was right behind him.”

“But the funny part, Chase was almost the one that won to race, ’cause he was getting ready to pass both of us over that whole episode. Anyway, I never thought too much about it. And people all were clapping and going on because he won it. The next morning he picked up paper and here’s a whole big article. And Schmidt was such a good sport, and pulled over and waited for Jimmy Walker.”

“Well I wanted it to be right, you know, especially on his own ground. And, he’d come over to me that next night when they had the second go around. And I think I won it that night, And he was second. So we ended up being in a tie anyway for the points deal. And he come over to me before the race started. He said, ‘Man, this is terrible. I’m the local, I’m the favorite. And you got all the publicity!’ There was a whole page on the thing, never mentioned him once, hardly!” (laughs).

“I ran into a guy here a while back and that was the first thing he started talking about after all these years.”

“Jimmy, he’d come over here to Anderson, him and I got along really well. He was good on this racetrack. He won a lot of races at Anderson. And I felt pretty good that, I could go over there and do the same thing on his racetrack.”

1978 DIRT CLASSIC AT REDWOOD ACRES

In 1978 the Six Rivers Racing Association, promoters of Redwood Acres Raceway, organized a big Open Tour event with a large purse on the line, drawing many drivers from out of the area including Bill Schmitt and Mike Chase from Redding, Dane Smith and Harold Hardesty from Medford, and Bruce Rhodes and Everett Johnson from Chico.

Eureka Times-Standard, July 24, 1978:

“Redding’s Bill Schmitt, holding off a token challenge from Ferndale’s Jimmy Walker. captured the North Coast Dirt Track Classic and the major cash prize ‘which went with the $10,000 stock car event at Redwood Acres Sunday. Schmitt, starting from the pole position. which he won in Saturday’s qualifying runs. virtually had the 100-lap race all the way, with the Redding ace taking the led only eight laps from the start, and holding first place from then on, snaring the checkered flag and the bundle of cash”

From Dirt Trackin’ At The Acres by Tom Dilling:

“The original purse for Open Competition was a whopping $10,000 but by the time the race rolled around, because of various donations, it was up to almost $12,000. A lot of money, but a lot of effort, too. Just for the record, I had better mention that Bill Schmitt of Redding won that race. Bill is a Winston West Grand National stock car driver and champion. He finished second in the division this past season.”

Bill Schmitt, looking back:

“That was, again, the points deal. Two day race. They put a lot of time into that. They worked all year to create that out of town Open Comp. The stands, they held quite a few people, and they was plum full. They had bleachers on both sides at that time. With the grandstand. So I think in 81, the North Coast Dirt Track Classic, that’s when they had what they called the world’s tallest trophy. And I think Jimmy won it that year. And it was like, you know, a story a half high. And I always wondered, I’m gonna have to ask him, like, what do you do with something like that? Do you break it down or, I mean, it’s just ridiculous. You have to keep it outdoors. (laughs)”

What brought Bill to Redwood Acres to race?

“The people” he says. “And of course the challenge with Jimmy Walker. And that was a big thing. It was like when I started in the West Coast thing and I wanted go beat Herschel McGriff. I got to do that. But it took me a while.” (laughs)

“I got along with them guys pretty good. In fact, when we went up to Medford raced up there a few times, Bert Beck and all those guys were there. They always accepted us pretty well. And it was almost like you had to be part of the clan to be able to get into it. When I got into NASCAR, it was the same way at Daytona. Jimmy had been there, for the Permatex late model race. But, the big guys wouldn’t let hardly anybody in. And the only thing that got me in there was knowing the Allisons and those ties. So once you get in that click, they helped you. But they wanted you to make it.”

“But isn’t it kind of funny that after a guy like Walker and even myself, but you go to these short tracks out of town and you win and you win, those people watch you, but they get tired of watching you. That’s the thing is they want it spread around. They don’t want you to dominate. It’s the same thing nowadays with NASCAR.”

A POPULAR VISITING DRIVER AT REDWOOD ACRES

In the old Redwood Acres Raceway program, the Stock Report, you can find photos of Bill Schmitt with his Winston cap on, and it really was a feather in our cap that he was visiting Redwood Acres from time to time, noting how he was doing in the Winston West series and that he was going to be at the Acres that weekend.

“You know, I think actually, what I felt about the way I was taken in over there was I was kind of like one of the regulars over there, you know? And even the press over there would treat me like I belonged there, better than it did here in Redding. Even though they wrote articles here, it was just about the same old thing all the time, you know? But over there in Eureka, they always had a good story with ’em.”

“You know, those fans over there were different too because they were die hard race fans. And I remember those couple of nights over there that people could get. I mean, it was scary. I think if they could do it, they’d jump that fence and come out and kill the guy. They actually were out waiting for him when they come out.!”

SHORT TRACK CARS

In the 80s Bill would come over to run at Redwood Acres other short tracks with a late model that was different than his Winston West cars.

“We had one car then we had built and we used, it was a Nova. And then, then we went to a Camaro,”

“I think the only track that really sticks in my mind, and I’m sure there’s a couple others that I never won and I should have won several times, was Monroe . It was a 5/8 mile. Jimmy had been there too. He used to run his late model up there. And they had $50,000 bucks to win. And they’d always bring in like Junior Johnson’s guy, Bill Elliot was there once he took me out leading the last lap.”

And he took you out?

“He took me out.”

So he took you out, meaning he took you out?

“He took me out.” (laughs)

“And believe me, I’ve never let him forget it. (laughs) He said ‘I didn’t do it intentionally’. I said its pretty bad when he got across the infield to go take me out. (laughs) It’s like, well, you’re too good to done that by mistake. It’s like, you’re too good.”

“In the early 80s Sterling Martin was there one time, and he was leading and I was right behind him, we lapped the whole stinking place. It was a 500 lap believe it or not. We went there and the first time they had it, Herschel McGriff and I were the only ones that stayed in our cars. Took six and a half hours to run it. Him and I were the only ones that didn’t have to have relief drivers. (laughs). Chase and the rest of ’em were all crawling outta the cars.”

There was also a similar race in Calgary, the first NASCAR races outside the United States

“500 laps, and that was the third mile track! I had an 11 lap lead on the 2nd place car. They said you couldn’t pit and get back out without getting down a lot. I did it every time. We were the only ones doing it too.”

JUNIOR JOHNSON, ‘THE LAST AMERICAN HERO’

Born in Ronda North Carolina, Junior Johnson was immortalized in the Tom Wolfe essay “The Last American Hero Is Junior Johnson. Yes!” for Esquire magazine in 1965, and later as a film starring Jeff Bridges in 1973. Johnson went from moonshine runner to winner of 50 NASCAR races, 1960 Daytona 500 winner, and eventually a six time championship car owner.

From illegal stills to illegal race cars, Junior Johnson represented the old stock car adage he has been credited with: “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.” Still aggressive into his 60s, in a 1991 Battle of the Nascar Legends race on the Charlotte infield, Johnson, unhappy with the officials, was bumping the pace car repeatedly under yellow, which contained Bill France Jr, the CEO of NASCAR, who took the opportunity to get out of the car mid race. When asked afterwards if he had run into the pace car, Junior said in his southern drawl, smiling, “No, they run into me.” When reminded Bill France was in the car, he said “Well he was on the right side and that was the side I was tryin’ to get to”, (laughing).

“Junior liked drivers that drove aggressive. There wouldn’t be a place for him now. Everything was so checked on now. He was an ‘innovator'” , Bill says smiling.

From 1975 to 1993 Bill had been racing in 2 to 4 NASCAR Cup races each year, mostly focusing on the west coast tracks; Riverside, Ontario, Sonoma, and Phoenix, with the exception of Daytona in 1980. He often drove Junior Johnson prepared cars.

“Junior talked slow like a southern Good Ole Boy, but he got things done. I always sent cars over on a hauler for Junior to fix them up and send them back. He told me at one point they were switching over from Chevy to Ford, and I had been running a Chevy. I told him I can’t afford to do all that. This time we sent the cars over and they came back as Fords. When I called him on the phone, he said ‘No problem, all paid for.'” If Junior needed you to drive a Ford, you ended up driving a Ford.

At one point Junior asked Bill to drive for an injured Bobby Labonte at Martinsville in a NASCAR Cup race, but he had to turn him down. “I had a logging business with 200 employees, I didn’t feel I could leave.” Wife Sylvia says “You should have said ‘Yes’!”

HANGING WITH THE NASCAR BOYS

Bill knew the Waltrips well. “Michael is a great guy, we kept in touch. You meet a lot of nice people. Earnhardt’s come out and see us, and Allison’s and the Petty’s. They stayed friends, they’re pals, go fishing with them. Allison used to fly me from Riverside and to here in Shasta.”

“Oh, they were a kick. I’d go fishing with Allison. He liked fishing. And then when we were promoting; I’d go promote Bakersfield or a couple other racetracks just for a weekend type thing, special event, and I’d always call him up and see if I’d hire him to come out. I had Neil Bonnett, he was really a neat guy, he’d come out; Donnie Allison, Bobby Allison. They’d come out here to Redding and they’d stay here. In fact, there used to be a bar here on the corner, and they’d go down and play pool. I don’t know what time they came home, but it was the close to the night, you know, and Donnie, he was a nut. That they’d come out, never turned me down, never did. That was pretty neat. Incidentally, my wife, Sylvia, owns all that now, Design Time, that’s our Granite store now.”

“Donnie drove one of my cars at Laguna Seca. and I had something poke a hole in an oil filter on my car, had to pull into the pits, and he went on and he won. Bobby, he drove mine several times. And Dale, when he had that losing streak, he hadn’t won a race for two or three years. He and Teresa had come up and they had a race, he come out and I led, I was way out there for a while. I had about 16 laps to go, he was running second, and I had the stupid engine blow. So he inherited the lead, he went on to win that thing. And from then on he started winning back east. He called me up and said, ‘Man, you broke my jinx, but I’m not coming out there anymore.’ (laughs).”

“Davey Allison, he used to come out here with Bobby and in fact, Davey drove one of my cars at Monroe and, three days later is when he was killed (July 13, 1993 in a helicopter crash in Birmingham ALA). We knew the family pretty well, Bobby and June.”

WINSTON WEST SERIES

Why number 73?

“That’s what NASCAR issued to me. I couldn’t get 33 like I used to run. Wherever you started racing there, that was what they gave you.”

“The first Winston West race I won was Portland in 1975. In Vancouver they had a road course up on the mountain. But it was one of those that if you went off the track, you hit stumps. That would take you out. Had to watch out for the deer across the track. That was in the days of Ray Elder and all them guys. All of ’em were good guys.”

LAGUNA SECA

In 1977 Bill won the Monterey 100 NASCAR Winston West Series race at Laguna Seca in a Chevy Nova. I asked him what the famous Corkscrew was like, going over the crest and dropping several floors.

“I was a logger for years, and that was like driving a logging truck! That was neat, I liked that.” Bill, who logged and owned trucks for 35 years and drove them on the twisty dirt roads could relate. “In fact, I was surprised NASCAR never did the schedule. We had two years we ran there and then that was it.”

ONTARIO OVAL and A.J. FOYT

“When I qualified my best at Ontario, I remember, they had a USAC (Indy Car) show there, and they had stock cars as well. Ontario was supposedly just like Indy and they had those markers on the turn (…3…2…1). And I can remember distinctly, everybody said, you gotta get past ‘2’ before lifting to make it, you know, if you are going to get a fast time. And it was hard to do because you’d start seeing the numbers pretty soon you find yourself looking too much at them numbers, not paying attention to what you’re doing. And I can remember going past the ‘1’ marker before I lifted. And I thought, ‘this isn’t gonna work too good’. But it stuck and got around, you know? And old A.J. Foyt, was doing double duty, he had a little Camaro he ran, he was on the pole and I was on the outside of the pole. And I think I was about 151 mph, A.J. was just a fraction faster. And Sylvia was sitting by the pits there, and A.J.’s wife was next to her, they didn’t know each other. I guess A.J. come over and sit down and says to his wife, ‘Who is that guy!!?’ You know, never heard of me before. (laughs).”

“I was running my Grand National, and A.J. was running his Camaro, and the open wheel Indy car the next week. But I remember we had to park outside because we didn’t have enough clout around there to be in the garage. They didn’t have enough garages. And it rained all week and they postponed it. Of course we covered the car up. They didn’t allow no practice or nothing. They put the car down the line, took off and that thing just hissed and popped. So I lost about two laps trying to get that straightened out.”

ROAD COURSES AT RIVERSIDE and SEARS POINT

Bill won at Sears Point four times. “I like road courses. The best finish I had with the cup cars was when they came to Riverside. I finished third there once. Good track. It was one of those that psyche you out a little bit. If you like the dog leg, you could run through it wide open, but if you were first timer on there, man, you’d back right off.”

In 1980 the Eureka Times-Standard reported while local driver Jimmy Walker would forego the Stock Car Products 300 at Riverside International Raceway to put together a new Camaro race car, Bill Schmitt expressed high confidence heading into the race:

“Bill Schmitt of Redding will drive in the Winston Western 500 Sunday. And the new NASCAR Winston West champion has the other drivers worried. He is loaded with self-confidence and has convinced himself he is going to win. “1 think we’ll blow their doors off,” he predicted. “We had a good year. We won four races, led twice as many laps as anybody else, and at Phoenix last race of the year, when he clinched the title, Neil Bonnett won in our backup car.” Schmitt’s doggedness in pursuit of victory was never better illustrated than in the Napa Arizona 250 Starting his Oldsmobile on the front row next to Richard Petty, he needed to protect a 12-point lead over NASCAR Winston West rookie of the year Tim Williamson of Seaside. “On the second lap Jimmy lnsolo blew his engine and dumped his oil right in front of me,” Schmitt said. “I spun and hit the wall and lost three or four laps. I thought I was done for right then and there.” But the lumberman from redwood country took off in pursuit of the field, working his way up to 11th place at the end of the race. Young Williamson, who finished a strong fourth one lap behind Bonnett, Bobby Allison and Petty, picked up seven points on Schmitt, but that wasn’t enough. So now Schmitt looks at racing the kings of the super speedways differently. “Jimmy lnsolo and I have got our heads together. He says he plans to win the pole position, and I say he may have to move over to make room for me on the front row,” Schmitt said. “We don’t care where those other guys start. We were always behind the eight-ball out here on the West Coast, because we didn’t have enough of this kind of racing. Now, with Ontario and Phoenix so close together, we think we’ve got our act together. Before, I was always so darn nervous at Riverside Now I’ve got more knowledge and a better engine. They’re gonna have a tough time with Bill Schmitt.”

WINSTON WEST CHAMPIONSHIPS

In the November 8, 1981 Eureka Times Standard, Don Terbush wrote:

“Perseverance is a quality that has stood Redding racing driver Bill Schmitt in good stead throughout his career. Schmitt, a familiar figure to Six Rivers Racing Association aficionados because of his many appearances at Redwood Acres, thought for awhile that his racing luck had deserted him. One of NASCAR Winston West’s foremost drivers — series champion in 1977 and ’79 — and winner of 10 career Winston West events, Schmitt hit a dry spell. Or perhaps it should be referred to as a drought.(…) But Schmitt never quit trying — not even when he was tempted to stay away from the Sears Point race. “I entered, then withdrew, because I didn’t think I could leave my businesses in Redding,” he recalled “But then things straightened out at work and I re-entered. We didn’t even start working on the car until the Tuesday before the race.” Schmitt’s decision to compete in Sonoma proved not only wise, but profitable. He added $5,525 — his largest career payoff to his racing bank account with the triumph and ended many months of frustration. Buoyed by the victory, Schmitt will now turn his sights toward a return visit to Riverside International Raceway on Nov. 22 for the Winston Western 500 The Win-ston West drivers will be competing with their Winston Cup “cousins” in this event Schmitt finished third at Riverside in August in the Warner Hodgdon 200 race.”

Bill Recalls:

“First year I run full time, I won the championship in ’77. And I won ’79. It was kind of funny ’cause I couldn’t do nothing for two or three years there. Just couldn’t get it together. But my oldest son was crew chief and he built the cars. And he understood what I needed. He wouldn’t drive ’cause he had to wear glasses, he couldn’t see. But boy, he could build a good car and set it up. And he didn’t even ask me what I needed. He just knew what the car needed. But when he was off in the eighties, he had some other stuff he was doing, but every year he’d come back, I’d win a championship. So we won in ’89 and ’90, across three decades.”

“We did everything here, in fact, built our engines here for a long time. Terry Elledge, started out with us. Terry went back east. He’s still going. He, he’s on the road to retire. Of course his boy Jimmy Elledge, he was a crew chief for Dale Earnhart for a while. A million bucks a year. So he must be pretty good at it.”

“Then after that was Lloyd McCleary, they called it Pro Power then, they built the engines. He’s back east. Everybody’s who’s worked for went back east. So if nothing else, it set them guys up pretty good shape. My problem was, I was just too late in life starting and I should have been doing it this these days, you know? Right. Now the bucks are in there. And it’s kind of strange to hear what they do to set the cars up ’cause it’s just the opposite of what we were doing. Like that Bump sitting on in rubbers. Shocks were a big thing, our days was a pair of Monroe 50/50s and that was it.”

“Mike Chase, he recently stopped by here, He works for Penske now and he’s the total shock man. He’s been doing it for the last 12 years, and he’s their shock expert. He said, you’ve never seen so many shocks, different combinations, in your life. And he says that you gotta dial it in; boy once you got it dialed in, you got it. That makes a car.”

DAYTONA

“You go out there and shoot, I get up on them banks and next thing I knew I was down on the flat part, you know. I felt pretty comfortable down there”, Bill says laughing. “And I’d come in and Sylvia always kept track of everything. And she’d say, ‘Well, you better get on it’. And I said, ‘Well, geez, I must have been flying.’ She said ‘Well, everybody else are doing 185 and you’re doing 150.’ ” (laughs)

“So Neil come over and he jumped in the car and he says ‘lemme take that car out. You think there’s something wrong with it or something?’ First lap is 186 miles per hour. He was faster than anybody with that car. And he says, ‘All you gotta do is keep your foot on the, if it tries the lift, take the other one and put it on top of it. Don’t touch the brake and don’t turn the steering wheel’ (laughs). He was right. You could go through there flatfooted and it’d be so much g-force, it’d sucked the engine down about 500 rpm.”

“That draft’s a different thing. You gotta get used to that. You’d feel like, man, this guy’s really slowin down, you’re half throttle behind him. So you’d think I’ll pass him, heck with it; you pull out, get up alongside the door, that’s far as you go.”

OVER 200 MPH DOWN UNDER

On February 28 1988 Bill also raced in Melbourne, Australia, at the Goodyear 500. the first NASCAR race outside of North America. The race was at a newly constructed track, the Calder Park Thunderdome. The field included Bobby Allison, Neil Bonnett, Dave Marcis, Kyle Petty, Michael Waltrip and Hershel McGriff. Bill qualified 16th of 31 drivers but finished with a DNF on lap 31 due to engine problems.

“The promoter sailed a container ship in, loaded the car up and hauled our junk and made our way over there. We stayed an extra couple weeks, but we were over there almost a month. It was the first race they had. It was a mile and a half track and it was probably between a Darlington and a Bristol type track, and it was fast.”

At Calder Park drivers got up over 200 miles an hour. At Texas World Speedway 214 MPH. What were those speeds like?

“Now you go 230 down the back straightaway in Daytona, it seemed like you’re going 70. Till you’ve pulled up on someone!”

LEAVING RACING

“I quit in 1994. Butch Schaeffer, he runs the West Coast Series now, they’re trying to put a race on down here at Shasta next year. And they said that the promoter wanted to get with me and wants me to drive. And I said, ‘You want me to drive? I mean, I don’t even go to a race anymore.'” (laughs) I said, I quit because it made me want to go race and I don’t wanna do this no more. I said, I’m too old to go do it. He said, ‘Yeah, but Herschel McGriff is still doing it.’ I said, well that’s Herschel. Look at it. The first 10 laps he was down 2. I said, I don’t wanna go out there and look like an idiot. I said, furthermore, I doubt when I could even get in the car because the way they got it built today. You know, like Gordon and those guys, you see pictures of ’em, but you never realize how little they are. About like a jockey.”

“My granddaughter got pretty well involved in it. My son was building her cars and she got pretty good at it. And she’d called me up, want we come down and help her out a little bit. So I’d go down there once in a while, finally one day said, you get in the car and see what you think of it. And I went out and broke track record first two laps out there,”

Bill said he won quite a few races and trophies over the years, usually giving them away to family and grand kids.

“The worst trophy I think I ever had is I won this Pepsi thing down here two or three times. And it was an eight and a half foot trophy. Wouldn’t fit in the car, I’d give it to Napa, they’d put it in their showroom.”

“I got involved with these kids and the Pinewood Derby Races and stuff like that. So they wanted me to come in and flag for them. So I’d go to those deals, and all they’d give ’em for winning was a ribbon. It was about once a month and I thought, you know, that’s not really good. So I started taking my trophies and I’d take the name off of it and I take them to give away to the kids. Then I got Goodyear to throw in sponsor coats and hats. And boy, I mean, them kids really loved that. (laughs) Pretty soon the dads were wanting coats, like sure, you know, bring some big enough to fit them.”

Kind thanks to Bill and Sylvia Schmitt for their generosity in opening up their collection of photos and stories of Bill’s racing career.

Thanks also to Doyce Eaton, Mark Baldwin, Mike Marcelli, and other fans for their contribution of rare photos.