TUSCUMBIA, Ala. – Marion Jacobs, a past competitor with the United Sprint Car Series through the 1990s and early 2000s from Tuscumbia, Ala., passed away Wednesday.
Jacobs, who was born in Columbus, Neb., was 86 years old.
He raced many types of open-wheel race cars from the time he was 17 years old. Jacobs’ racing career took him from Nebraska, where he was born, to Kansas, California and eventually to the Mid-South, where he planted roots in Tuscumbia, Ala.
Jacobs’ records and memory, which was sharp until the end, said he raced at 257 different race tracks during a career that spanned 69 years. He competed in his first event in jalopies in 1952 and his final event was at Thunderhill Raceway in Summertown, Tenn., piloting his blue No. 3d sprint car in 2012.
Jacobs started in those Nebraska Jalopies in 1952, then moved up to supermodifieds in Kansas before later moving to California to race his first sprint cars.
“Marion called me several months ago before he got sick and told me that he was going to get his old car ready and bring it back out and maybe race it or put his grandson in it,” said USCS Founder and President Pete Walton. “You could just tell even at his age in his mid 80s, he never lost that fire he had when he was a seventeen year old upstart. He loved his racing.
“By the time I met him back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, he had gotten kind of down on his luck and didn’t have the equipment he probably needed to win or be competitive with, but he still wanted and his family always wanted to be part of the racing community and join the action,” continued Walton. “I don’t know how many races he really won at those 257 tracks, but from his stories, it sounded like a good number when he was in his prime.
“No matter what, he seemed to have enjoyed every second of it.”
Jacobs leaves behind two sons, Marion Jr. and Daniel Jacobs. He also leaves behind three grandsons: Wyatt, Cody and Justin Jacobs.
He was preceded in death by his wife, Maxine, in 2014. A daughter, Diana, and grandaughter, Carrie, also preceded him in death.