Rich Bickle

Bickle was introduced to racing as a child watching his father, Rich Sr., race throughout Wisconsin. He began racing motocross at the age of five. While winning the 250cc championship on Sunday nights at sixteen, he also raced stock cars at Jefferson Speedway on Saturday nights in 1977, selecting a beat-up 1968 Pontiac GTO from behind his father's barn — "It was so beat up you could hardly tell what it was." He raced a 1974 Pontiac as a sportsman at Jefferson for the second half of 1977 and all of 1978, then stopped racing motorcycles after graduating in 1979.

In 1980 he raced weekly at Rockford, Lake Geneva, and Capital Speedway (now Madison International Speedway), winning 23 semi-features — the most in the United States that year — and was named Sportsman Rookie of the Year at both Lake Geneva and Rockford.

Bickle turned his Rockford car into a late model in 1981 and won his first late model feature at Lake Geneva. In 1982 he raced between 90 and 100 events and set fast time at Wisconsin Dells Speedway (now Dells Raceway Park). He told Slinger Super Speedway owner Wayne Erickson at the 1982 off-season banquet that he would win the 1983 track championship, which he did, finishing in the top five in seventeen of eighteen features. In 1985 he won the Capital Speedway season opener and the track championship. In 1986 he won the points championship at Capital Speedway with seventeen feature wins. In 1987 he won a $15,000-to-win event at Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Butch Miller had led most of the race but pitted with 60 laps left, Bickle and Ted Musgrave gained the lead, and rain and hail halted the race with 46 laps remaining and Bickle declared the winner.

Overall, Bickle won 230 races at various short tracks, including track championships at Slinger Super Speedway in 1983 and 1989.

Bickle won the Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway a record five times: 1990, 1991, 1996, 1998, and 1999. In 2013 he won his fourth Slinger Nationals after apparent winner Steve Apel was disqualified.

In 1990, Bickle made his debut in the American Speed Association, a Midwest-based racing organization. He finished runner-up to Johnny Benson in Rookie of the Year standings. Benson would later take over Bickle's old Cup ride in 2000.

Bickle made his NASCAR Winston Cup debut in 1989 at Charlotte Motor Speedway in a self-owned, unsponsored No. 02 Buick, finishing 39th out of 42 cars after his engine expired 37 laps into the race. In his first Daytona 500 start the following year he drove his own underfunded Oldsmobile to a 28th-place finish, five laps down.

After years of limited starts — including leading one lap at Charlotte in 1993 and driving ten races in 1994, most for Harry Melling — Bickle made the full-time jump to Cup in 1998 driving the No. 98 Thorn Apple Valley Ford Taurus for Cale Yarborough, replacing Greg Sacks who had been critically injured in an accident at Texas. Bickle had two top-five qualifying efforts and finished a career-best fourth at Martinsville, delivering an emotional post-race interview.

When that sponsorship departed, Bickle signed with Tyler Jet Motorsports to drive the No. 45 10-10-345 Lucky Dog Pontiac. He posted top-tens at the Pontiac Excitement 400 and the Pocono 500 but had trouble qualifying for races; after the Pepsi Southern 500 at Darlington he was released from the team, and he drove some races for Melling Racing that year. In 2000 he did substitute duty for Joe Bessey's team, and in 2001 drove once for Morgan-McClure Motorsports and once for Midwest Transit Racing.

Bickle began racing in the Craftsman Truck Series in 1996 for Petty Enterprises, winning two poles, recording nine top-ten finishes, and finishing eleventh in points.

For 1997 he switched to the No. 17 DieHard Chevrolet owned by Darrell Waltrip Motorsports. He started four races on the pole position and won three of them. He nearly won a fourth at Sonoma until a chaotic next-to-last restart occurred and rookie Boris Said retaliated against Bickle for contact during that restart, foiling Bickle's race. He finished second in championship points that season.

Bickle made his Busch Series debut in 1993 at Atlanta, finishing 27th with engine failure. His best Busch Series season was 1995, where he won one pole and had four top-ten finishes in a limited schedule. In 2001 he made his first full-time Busch Series run driving the No. 59 Kingsford Chevy, competing in 27 events before being released.

Bickle continued racing at special events at his home tracks in Wisconsin after his main NASCAR career. In 2012 he qualified third for the Slinger Nationals behind Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth; after being sent to the back for early-race contact, he battled to the lead just past halfway and finished sixth. He won the National Short Track Championship race at Rockford Speedway at the end of the 2012 season for the second time.

Bickle announced that 2013 would be his final season of stock car racing, contesting the ARCA Midwest Tour and returning to Slinger. He ended his career finishing 22nd at the Oktoberfest 100 ARCA Midwest Tour race at the La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway on October 6, 2013.

He came out of retirement in 2015 racing at the Slinger Nationals, Madison, and several events at Wisconsin International Raceway. In 2015 he was inducted in the Southeastern Wisconsin Short Track Hall of Fame citing his two Slinger track championships and four Slinger Nationals wins.

In 2019 a book titled Barnyard to Brickyard — The Rich Bickle Story was published; Bickle announced a book signing tour of Wisconsin race tracks in July 2019. In 2020 he stated the 2021 Snowball Derby would be his last contest.

In January 2021 he won the Outlaw 600 class feature at the Vintage World Championship Snowmobile Derby at Eagle River, Wisconsin. On May 2, 2021, he won the annual Joe Shear Classic ARCA Midwest Tour race at Madison International Speedway, and later won the Jim Sauter Classic ARCA Midwest race at Dells Raceway Park. He also won the final weekly race of the Super Late Model season at Slinger, finishing second to Luke Fenhaus for the championship. He made his final career start at the 2021 Snowball Derby in early December, at a point when he stated he had raced at 226 race tracks.

Bickle became one of the most vocal figures in short track motorsport commentary. In a 2021 podcast he said "Everybody wrecks everybody. They drive through you, and it's because daddy pays the bill." He coined the term "daddy's credit-card racers" to describe drivers he views as having major funding behind them and stated "Nowadays all you do is just buy your way in." In 2019 he was involved in an on-track incident with Carson Hocevar and Harrison Burton during the Last Chance Qualifier at the Snowball Derby; Hocevar caused an accident between Bickle and Burton, and Bickle delivered an expletive-filled rant directed at Burton before later apologizing.

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