Oddly enough, Droud Jr.‘s racing life took a turn north when his dad began dabbling in sprint cars on a regular basis.
Looking back to his move, Droud Sr. recalled that late model racing “had slowed down a bit, and four or five of us wanted to start sprint cars around here. Lonnie Jensen and Jim Schuman were involved, and we got about five cars all told, and it took off from there.”
To get his program going, Droud Sr. was able to secure a car that had been built by the man known as the Prince of Darkness: the legendary constructor/racer Don Brown.
“I bought a car from Jim Goettsche, and it was still purple from when Don Brown had it,” Droud Sr. recalled. “We took it to Midwest Speedway and it took a while for me to learn how to drive it.”
Droud Sr. and his associates were actually doing a bit more than just developing a healthy racing alternative at Midwest Speedway. Significantly, this represented the birth of 360 sprint car racing.
Droud Sr. wasn‘t concerned about his place in sprint car racing history; he just wanted to get the hang of open-wheel racing as soon as possible. He was a quick study.
In the 1981 season he finished third in Midwest Speedway points, nailing down a win the last Sunday in August, and he followed it up the next week by taking the inaugural Labor Day Sprint Festival.
Not all was smooth, however, as he was stricken with a case of gout and discovered that it was just too painful to try to race.
Faced with a dilemma, and with season points assigned to the car, it was time for Droud Jr. to step up. It was a move his father was reluctant to make.
“He was overprotective,” Droud Jr. noted of his father. “He had laid this all out. It was all I ever knew, but when I talked to him about racing a sprint car myself, he was like, ‘Oh well, uh, we‘ll see. I don‘t know.‘ Then he got gout and he couldn‘t bend his leg, so to keep him in the points I had to drive the car. I remember I had to start at the back of the heat, and I transferred to the feature. Then he also made me start at the back of the feature and I know that I went forward.
“I think I did pretty well because after the race I knew I didn‘t want to mess with late models anymore.”
The record shows that Droud Jr. did pretty well, indeed. A fifth-place finish was an auspicious start for a sprint car novice, and now there was no holding him back.
For 1982 he found a sprint car of his own, one that everyone agreed was hardly a pristine piece. But interestingly enough, it was a car that would serve sprint car rookies well over the course of several consecutive seasons.
No one, however, saw it as a car that was capable of winning.
Thus, if there was any additional evidence needed to underscore that this Droud kid had talent, it came when he nearly pulled off a miraculous win over a future member of the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame.
Picking up the story, Droud Jr. said, “I was leading with two laps to go and there was a caution. Well, under the yellow freaking Lloyd Beckman pulls alongside me. I‘m not sure, but I think I might have peed my pants. Of course, he went on to win the race.”
Droud Jr. was able to shake off that initial disappointment, and both father and son had great days ahead. Droud Sr.‘s fortunes would change when body shop owner and Midwest Speedway operator Pete Liekam decided to buy a new sprint car.
With Droud Sr. at the controls, and Mike Barnett twisting the wrenches, the team parlayed five wins into the 1984 Midwest Speedway championship.
As for Droud Jr., he began to have even more success beginning in the 1983 season. Better performances came after father and son traveled to Mexico, Mo., to secure a used Don Maxwell chassis from driver Bill Baker.
“I was pretty excited,” Droud Sr. recalled, “because those were pretty good cars back then. I called Maxwell and asked him to come out and take a look at it, and we saw that the lower frame rail was bent in. He told me that the car was involved in the accident at Knoxville where (Darryl) Dawley and (Roger) Larson were killed. I said, ‘Oh my God, I have bought a piece of crap.‘ Maxwell said, ‘Wait a minute.‘
“He went to his shop and got a tape measure. He told me to measure it from the motor plate to the back torsion tube. I measured it twice and both sides were the same. He said, “Right. That bent rail frame doesn‘t mean a thing, because I straightened it out. That car ought to work.‘ We got that Maxwell and Junior did pretty well from then on.”
To get over the hump and make that first trip to victory lane, Droud Jr. received some assistance from an unexpected source.
Beckman was an intimidating figure on and off the race track. It turns out that he could strike fear in Droud Jr. long before their first real on-track encounter.
“When I was younger,” he says, “and my dad had the dealership, I was always in the back working on motorcycles. At that time, all of these guys would hang out at the shop and they would come by around two or three o‘clock. Lloyd had a red Cougar he got for winning the track championship at Eagle, and when he pulled into the parking lot my brother and I used to run to the other side.
“My dad had a storage area on one side of the shop and we used to run over there because Lloyd was so mean. I don‘t know what changed, but somehow he and I connected. He didn‘t usually want to let anybody in, but he just started helping me at the end. He actually helped me a lot.”
Droud Jr.‘s first wife was Beckman‘s daughter but, well before there was a familial tie, Beckman had already decided to reach out and help a young driver he felt had talent.
In fact, Droud Jr. revealed that in the early days of their growing relationship he would stop by Beckman‘s house to talk racing. Funny enough, he claims that he didn‘t even realize that Beckman had daughters.
Over the course of his long career, Beckman had enjoyed some of his best years at the helm of Speedy Bill Smith‘s Speedway Motors car. While there would be several stops and restarts, there came a time when he decided the time had come to hang up the helmet.
Remembering that key period in his life, Droud Jr. said, “Lloyd talked to Bill and his son Carson and told them they should let me drive their car. They ended up skipping a season, but they came over to help me with my car.
With their assistance, Droud Jr. scored his first sprint car win on July 6, 1984 at Eagle Raceway.
This story will be continued in The Quiet Career Of Don Droud Jr., Part 2.