JJ HICKLE A YEAR IN IOWA

BY JOANNE CRAM

AT AGE 31, JJ Hickle swapped yet another zip code after relocating once again to chase his dreams of full time sprint car racing. He has partnered with Brandon Ikenberry and is currently residing in Des Moines, Iowa to complete a forty to fifty race competition season.

Witty and hilarious, Hickle has quickly made a name for himself as he has turned a lot of heads with his very successful last two seasons with the National ASCS tour. Landing a full time ride at the famed half mile oval of Knoxville Raceway was a huge change in routine for JJ’s insane travel schedule of his previous few seasons and racing full time at one track hasn’t been part of JJ’s routine for several seasons now.

Hickle grew up on the peninsula of

Washington State. For those of you who were glued to the Twilight saga; the teen heart throb books and movies about the vampire diaries of the love story and place just across the forest from JJ’s hometown town of Quilcene. The town is just 70 miles from Elma, which so happened to be the home of Gray’s Harbor Speedway, where Fred Brownfield revived sprint car racing back in the early 1990s, just in time for JJ Hickle to grow up and take to slinging dirt at his local dirt track.

He started in quarter midgets when he was five. He grew up with a dad who raced stock cars on pavement and when he was old enough to get behind the wheel of something with speed, JJ’s dad, Joe, put him in the quarter midget. JJ started at Little Wheels, a track in Puyallup, Washington, initially because it was fairly close and he could get some experience. He then began traveling all over the Pacific Northwest to compete. His dad gave up his racing to fully support his up and coming driver as JJ was showing quite a bit of promise behind the wheel. They raced all over the Northwest at tracks like Langley, British Columbia; Portland, Oregon; Monroe and Puyallup in Washington. Hickle won The Grand in 1999 in Langley and The Dirt Grand Nationals in Hagerstown in 2004 during his seasons behind the wheel of the quarter midget.

When he was just 14, he skipped over the traditional next classes of cage karts, flat karts, as well as micros and jumped straight into a 360. For him, the choice was simple. He chose a 360 because there was just straight up more racing opportunities in the PNW. There aren’t a lot of tracks in the Northwest, and tracks that do exist are quite spread out making for a lot of windshield time to get to them and gain much needed experience. JJ’s home dirt track was Gray’s Harbor Raceway, where he fell in love with sprint cars and making the transition into a 360 an easier decision.

Hickle knew he wanted to race full time for a career from an early age. He had lot of success in his first year on the track with a lot of heat wins but no features. JJ raced his family car and remembered “it was a modest operation. We had one car, an open trailer, no spare parts.” The third through sixth years, Vern Rengen, a very well-known veteran around sprint car racing in the Pacific Northwest, hired JJ to race for him. This was a great boost to JJ’s career as a driver and sprint car mechanic, as he was able to learn a lot from Vern. He picked up his first feature with the 7 car in 2007, racing weekly Elma and traveling with the NST (The Northern Sprint Tour ASCS Division). JJ recalls looking up to Roger Crockett, Jayme Barnes and Jason Solwold as some of the drivers who came before him and made names for themselves coming out of the PNW. Hickle was on his way.

Previous car owners and good friends, Jane and Ivan Worden out of Cotati, California, needed a driver one weekend back in 2019. After a phone call and impromptu visit to California, the team was established and they spent the next two years racing as much as possible, at as many tracks as possible. The Wordens were eager to travel and hit the road racing. However, when Covid struck in 2020, the season plans had to be adjusted.

Originally the plan was to run the ASCS Northwest Tour through the Brownfield Classic, however they scrapped those plans and decided to make as much of a season as possible with whatever racing was available during strange times of shut downs, mask mandates, and inconsistently enforced policies between state lines.

When 2021 rolled around, the team decided to do the full season of the National ASCS Tour, after finding success on the road the previous season. Hickle won the Brownfield Classic, won the race at Hanford against 55 cars in March, swept the ASCS opening weekend Spring Nationals at Devil’s Bowl Speedway, won the Winter Nationals once again at Devil’s Bowl (making that a full season sweep of events at Devil’s Bowl), and won the Jesse Hockett Memorial race in Missouri. When asked about the one race highlight of last season, JJ says the Brownfield Classic is the only race he wanted to win before he was done racing. “I loved Fred (Brownfield). I was a huge fan of him. He took care of me, was always nice to me. He was a supportive promoter and I have always respected what he was doing for sprint car racing”.

JJ Hickle’s future is wide open, just like he races. “I hope to race full time for as long as possible and then own a successful race team. I would love to run an Outlaw season but not sure if that will work out.”

In JJ’s down time, he is a selfproclaimed food connoisseur and enjoys finding all of the downtown Des Moines fun food finds. Italian restaurants are a favorite, with Mexican as a close P2. He likes to golf, swim, hike, and do anything to stay active. He is also an exceptional scrabble player. Later in the season, he hopes to have his girlfriend, Shaina Barnes and her daughter, Cambria are able to join him for part of the season.

STOP THE PRESSES!

Just as this issue was set to head to the printer, JJ Hickle completely redefined his season as he put on a spectacular show on the Thursday night of the Knoxville Nationals and qualified to start 10th in the main event. Unfortunately, a lap one crash sidelined him but Hickle woke up the country to work he’s done this summer in the cornfields.