Even though it’s been almost 40 years, former sprint car racer Tim Gee remembers the evening of May 13, 1983, as if it was yesterday.
“We won our first World of Outlaws race, but it wasn’t recognized for a while because it was the first night of a two-day event,” the now 65-year-old Gee recently told SPEED SPORT about that victory at U.S. 131 Speedway in Martin, Mich. “That was a pretty big accomplishment for us.
“Back then they took the six quickest cars, inverted them and put them on the front of the feature — there was no dash. We managed to make that invert (qualified fourth) and I believe we started third. I’m behind Sammy Swindell and Shane Carson, and we won that race, so I feel like it was a pretty legitimate win.
“I took the lead from Carson on lap three, and I remember it being about lap 15 and I hadn’t been passed yet. I was gritting my teeth, squeezing the wheel and stepping on the gas pedal as hard as I could step on it. I’m thinking, ‘I’ve got five more laps and I’m not going to get passed.’ And I managed not to get passed.”
With that victory in his family’s No. 88 Yukon Freight entry, Gee, who was born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon, became the first Canadian driver to win a World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series feature. He added a second triumph two months later at Indiana’s Paragon Speedway. Gee solely held the distinction until July 28, 2015, when fellow Canadian Stewart Friesen joined the elite club.
Gee’s father, Gordie, was introduced to the sport by sponsoring a local racer, and he later became a driver and car owner.
“As a kid, I always thought about racing. Don’t ask me how I thought about racing for a living because there wasn’t any racing in my hometown when I was young,” Gee recalled. “Anyhow, I decided I wanted to be a race car driver and I realized I couldn’t do it from Whitehorse, so I had to travel south.
“I picked Edmonton, Alberta, which was 1,300 miles from Whitehorse,” Gee added. “There were multiple tracks in the area; mostly asphalt racing. Our neighboring province – British Columbia – had probably a dozen race tracks out that way. My dad owned a trucking company and I drove a truck for my dad when I was younger, so I transferred out of Whitehorse down to Edmonton to start my dream of racing.
“Out of Edmonton, we used to travel over to Skagit, Wash., to race. We raced over in Winnipeg, Manitoba; down in Great Falls, Mont.; and the World of Outlaws was in its infancy when we first heard about it. In 1978, I went out to Skagit to watch the Dirt Cup and the World of Outlaws drivers were there, and they were hands down the class of the field. That’s when we saw professional dirt sprint car racing for the first time and we thought, ‘This is it. This is where we want to be.’
“So we started to travel a little farther south all the time,” Gee continued. “We ended up racing on the West Coast in 1980. We got to know Ted Johnson a little bit and he invited us along to follow the group. In 1981, we started in Florida and continued with the World of Outlaws on and off for the next seven years.”
Statistics supplied by the World of Outlaws show Gee made 276 series starts, with two wins, 20 top-five finishes and 100 top-10 results. His best season in points was 1986 when he finished seventh.
“Racing with the World of Outlaws was incredibly tough, but it wasn’t just Steve Kinser. He was definitely The King at that time, but if you managed to beat Steve Kinser, you also had to beat Sammy Swindell, Doug Wolfgang, Ronnie Shuman and Shane Carson,” Gee said “It was really tough. It was an extremely steep learning curve.
“About year three or four we started to catch up a little bit with how to make our cars work better and how to be a little bit better race car driver. Unfortunately, the price of racing then, it was so popular and so strong, it seemed like the budget doubled from one year to the next.”
The economics of racing eventually forced Gee to abandon his adopted hometown of Jamestown, Ind., and head back to Canada.
“It was 1990 and I wasn’t racing very much. I couldn’t afford to race my own stuff. I did get to drive a few race cars at the local level and I couldn’t make a living doing that,” Gee noted. “A friend of mine from Edmonton came down to the PRI Show. He was telling me about a brand new race track that he was involved with that they were building in Edmonton, Alberta — right at the international airport there. It was a big racing facility — drag strip, dirt oval, road course, the full deal.
“I was thinking about getting back to Canada and thought that would be a good opportunity to get back there and do a little bit of racing,” Gee continued. “I always wanted to have my own race shop, sell race car parts and do some work on race cars, and that’s what we ended up doing.”
In 1991, Gee and his wife, Ruth, opened Gee and Gee Racing in Leduc, Alberta. The various businesses under that umbrella operated for more than three decades.
“We decided about four years ago that we’d been in this business long enough that maybe it was about time to shut it down and do something else,” Gee said. “Then, we had the oil crisis drop and the next year we had COVID come along and that ruined things for a couple of years. It was not the best time to sell or close a business, but we decided it was time for us to do something else.
“Our son, Skylar, has been down here (in the U.S.) racing for four years now. So we always wanted to come down and spend some time with him.”
The Gees sold the race-shop business and the Hoosier Tire distributorship, and shut down the parts store in May. This fall, they loaded up the motorhome and headed to Hillsboro, Ohio, to be with their 23-year-old son, who drives a winged sprint car for Logan Fenton Racing.
“I’m thrilled that he loves sprint car racing like I do. It definitely gives us some common ground to have a father/son relationship,” Tim Gee noted. “We’re here with him and involved with it. That has a lot more value to me than just him carrying on our family racing tradition. My wife and I really enjoy the time we get to spend with him.”
Gee says a trip home to Whitehorse is on the schedule during the winter months.
“My mom still has a place up there and my wife, Ruth, her family is all from Whitehorse as well,” Gee said. “We are semi-retired now and going back home to Whitehorse was always something we talked about. We don’t have a place there as yet, but we are looking — somewhere nice and quiet to retire to.”
This story appeared in the Dec. 28 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
