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RIP Rollie Beale


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#1 Michael Ferner

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Posted 18 February 2014 - 16:59

1973 USAC Sprint Car Champion Rolland "Rollie" Beale has died. Amazingly, during a 25-plus-year career as a driver, and another 20-plus years as an official, he'd always had a "day job", working as a railroad car repairman and, later, inspector. If my numbers are correct, he competed in 316 USAC Sprint Car races (33 wins), 18 USAC Dirt Track Championship races (best finish 4th) and seven USAC National Championship events (best finish 9th). He was also a five-time winner in IMCA Sprint Cars (during a time when that championship was at the height of its importance), including the 1966 Little 500, and had a number of Super Modified wins in a wide area around his hometown Toledo (Ohio). Reared on asphalt, but equally at home on dirt, Rollie Beale was a racing giant during a time when there were lots of tall men.



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#2 Richard Jenkins

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Posted 18 February 2014 - 19:11

Tremendous shame, sorry to hear this. RIP to a true enthusiast of the sport.

#3 Doug Nye

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Posted 18 February 2014 - 21:00

All that and a day job too.  Respect!

 

DCN



#4 Michael Ferner

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Posted 19 February 2014 - 20:18

Another Sprint Car great to have died recently (actullay, a couple of weeks ago) is Harold Leep of Wichita (Kansas). Like Beale, he was a National Sprint Car Hall of Fame inductee, and also like Beale he had been involved with racing after retiring as a driver, only he was a promoter. And, he was a semi-pro driver, too, running gas stations and a bowling alley (!) "on the side". Since the mid-fifties, Leep had been on forefront of independent Sprint Car racing in the Midwest, winning two United Speedway championships (1957 & '58) and finishing third in IMCA points twice (against the likes of Parnelli Jones, Jim Hurtubise and Johnny Rutherford), with a total of 28 IMCA main event wins in almost exactly ten years, beginning and ending his "streak" at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds Speedway. After his tenth Sprint Car win at the latter venue, Leep concentrated on running Super Modifieds there and on other tracks in the Southwest, adding a number of track championships and countless wins to his portfolio. When area Super Modified racing organised under the banner of the National Championship Racing Association (NCRA), Leep was one of the original stars of the club and won three NCRA titles between 1972 and '76. Having tried once, back in 1960, to break into the ranks of sanctioned racing after a run of five independent Sprint Car wins within a week, only to fail to qualify for three consecutive USAC National Championship races and finish a lowly 14th in the fourth, it came as a final twist of fate and irony that, more than twenty years later, NCRA Supers slowly evolved into Champ Cars that were eligible to run with USAC's Silver Crown division, and Leep added a second USAC start in the twilight of his career, finishing 17th. By then, he was racing against his own son, Harold junior, who preceded him in death, but not before passing on the baton to his son, Jeff Leep. Racing is a family tradition with the Leeps.



#5 Magoo

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Posted 21 February 2014 - 07:25

I had the pleasure of knowing Rollie Beale -- he was a hero on the local racing scene but always totally accessible . Great driver and a truly great person, salt of the earth. RIP Rollie.