Edsol F. “Babe” Sneva was the youngest of the five brothers. Unfortunately, he perished when his supermodified crashed during hot laps at Cranbrook Int’l Speedway in British Columbia on Sept. 8, 1974. Babe Sneva, who was 24, was driving a supermodified built by his father. Ironically, Jerry Sneva won both feature events during the weekend of his brother’s death.
The racing legacy of the Sneva family continues today through the efforts of Jerry Sneva’s 47-year-old son, T.J. Sneva. The third-generation racer runs winged pavement sprint cars at tracks near his Spokane home.
Like other family members before him, T.J. Sneva moved to Indianapolis from 2000-’10 to chase his dream of racing in the Indianapolis 500.
“I was trying to chase Tom and my dad,” T.J. Sneva told SPEED SPORT. “I was trying to become an Indy car driver. It was a little harder than I thought it would be. I knocked on some doors. While there I ran Thunder Roadsters, Legends, midgets and late models. Really anything I could get in.”
He eventually came to the realization he wasn’t going to be an Indy car driver, so he moved back to Spokane. He had a successful business (Sneva Manufacturing) building snow skis already in Indianapolis and began to focus more on business instead of racing.
Little did he know that once he got home, he would find himself deeply involved in promoting a winged pavement sprint car series.
“I was driving for somebody else, and we were doing a lot of traveling. During COVID-19 they wouldn’t let us go to Seattle,” T.J. Sneva said. “I started thinking about it as far as the expenses going to Seattle regularly. I thought there are enough sprint cars in eastern Washington that we ought to try doing something around here.
“May 1, 2021, was our first race,” he continued. “So far, it’s gone well. We’ve had 22 cars and we’ve had some not so good nights like everybody. It’s been tough with the economy the way it is, but I’m happy with how things have turned out.”
Stateline Speedway in Post Falls, Idaho, is where most of the Inland Winged Sprints races have been contested. But the series has traveled to Polson, Montana, and expects to tow to Wenatchee, Wash., this summer.
“I sat down with the owner of Stateline Speedway prior to 2021 and said, ‘This is what I want to do. Will you have us?’” Sneva said. “I didn’t ask much for the first season. But I went out and found more money for pay and talked the track into paying a base purse.”
The Ed Sneva Memorial race was inaugurated at Stateline Speedway a few years back to pay homage to the family patriarch, but it’s become a tribute race to the entire family.
“The race was actually started for my grandpa but now they just call it the Sneva Memorial,” T.J. Sneva noted. “I had nothing to do with it. The track started that. Blaine and Jan usually come for it. Tom and his daughters have come for it. We have a pretty big gathering. It became our biggest sprint car race of the year up in this area.
“We try to put a little more money into it to make it a bigger race. This past year we had some guys come from Boise and Polson, Montana. It’s pretty cool to have my uncles watch me race. Jan actually flies up here from Phoenix for every show to watch me race. It’s pretty cool.”
T.J. Sneva won five features this past season and claimed the Inland Winged Sprints championship. He was also a participant in the Open Wheel Showdown in Las Vegas during December.
Sneva was asked if his family’s racing legacy will come to an end once he retires.
“I would like to see it keep going. I have two girls and we might put one of them in a Bandolero soon,” he said with a laugh. “I’d like to get one of my kids going at it, if not both.”
This story appeared in the Jan 3, 2024 edition of the SPEED SPORT Insider.
