MOORESVILLE, N.C. — Steve Stapp, a legendary United States Auto Club team owner who earned multiple sprint car titles, died Friday morning at the age of 80.
Born on Aug. 19, 1940, in Glendale, Calif., Stapp was bitten by the racing bug at an early age. His father, Elbert ‘Babe’ Stapp, was a talented racer who made a dozen Indianapolis 500 starts from 1927 to ’40. That allowed his young son to get an early racing education.
By the time he was nine, he was running the scoreboard at Carrell Speedway in Gardena, Calif. At 13, he was helping work on a midget owned by Marv Edwards and in high school he worked in the body shop owned by NHRA legend Don Prudhomme’s father.
During the same time period he bought his own car — a Kurtis Kraft midget — from Johnnie Parsons. He repaired the car and would field it for multiple drivers because he was too young to drive it himself. He later purchased his own sprint car.
When he finally became old enough to race, he started running sprint car and midget races both on the West Coast and Midwest against some of the top stars of the era.
In fact, Stapp got to meet one of those top stars in 1958 when he was prepping a midget owned by Joe Kleinbauer in Indianapolis.
In a story recounted by Stapp to SPEED SPORT columnist Bones Bourcier in 2017, Stapp recalled he was set to leave for a race at Chicago’s O’Hare Stadium when he learned Kleinbauer had hired a new driver. Stapp, who didn’t think much of the fellow, declared, “It’s a waste of time to go all that way to just to miss the show.”
Kleinbauer immediately reported this to his new driver, whose reaction was to insist Stapp remain at home. Stapp shrugged, walked to a nearby luncheonette and ordered a sandwich. In strolled another young man relatively new to Indianapolis.
It was 23-year-old A.J. Foyt, who had recently made his first start in the Indianapolis 500. He recognized Stapp, and asked him why he wasn’t on his way to Chicago.
“Oh,” said Stapp, “I got penalized for calling the driver a balloon-foot.”
Foyt said that he, too, was racing that night at O’Hare — wheeling a Harry Turner midget as Tony Bettenhausen’s teammate — and invited Stapp along.
“As soon as we got to the track,” said Stapp, “I told Kleinbauer that I needed the keys to his (tow) car. He asked me why. I said, ‘I’ll bring it into the pits, so you’re ready to go home when your driver misses the show.’ And he did, by a mile.”
Foyt, with Stapp as his signal man, snookered Bettenhausen on a restart and won the main event.
At the wishes of his wife, Rosemary, following the birth of his children, Andy and Susannah, Stapp gave up driving, but didn’t give up owning and building racing cars.
From 1965 to ’72, Stapp fielded sprint cars piloted by some of the best drivers of the time, including Johnny Rutherford, Mario Andretti, Pancho Carter and Larry Dickson.
Dickson would drive Stapp’s No. 27 to the USAC National Sprint Car title in 1968, but it wasn’t until Stapp teamed with Carter that his car’s performance reached a totally different level.
From 1973 to ’80, Carter earned 40 USAC victories and won sprint car championships in 1974 and ’76. They earned multiple victories in the Tony Hulman Classic at the Terre Haute (Ind.) Action Track and Joe James-Pat O’Connor Memorial at Salem (Ind.) Speedway in that time frame.
“We argued just enough that we came up with the right combination,” Carter said about his relationship with Stapp in an upcoming story in SPEED SPORT Magazine. “We would definitely butt heads at times. If the car wasn’t just right, I’d move around on the race track until I found someplace that it did work. I think that was one of the things that impressed Steve. Every now and then we would really hit it and we’d be really fast.”
Stapp walked away from racing in 1980 to focus on his trucking business, but within a few years he was back in the sport helping his son, Andy, and friend Jimmy White. Eventually Stapp began building sprint cars again, with drivers such as Brad Marvel, Joe Saldana, Bob East, Eric Gordon, Russ Gamester and more taking turns driving.
Stapp, who was known affectionately by everyone in the industry as “The Big Bopper,” was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1999.