Journeyman Tales: Rich Bickle

 

One of the most iconic interviews of the entire 1990s in NASCAR was when Rich Bickle finished 4^th at a Cup race at Martinsville in 1998, and he openly bawled during his interview, being so happy and proud. Everybody’s heart melted. But, who was Rich Bickle?

Growing up on two wheels with great success, Rich spent his late 70s and 80s as probably the most accomplished driver not to race full time in even ARTGO, let alone ASA, during one of the all-time greatest periods of concentrated talent in the Upper Midwest with names like Wallace, Martin, Kulwicki, Miller, Trickle, Sauter, Musgrave, Shear not just competing in the bigger money tours but also regularly at a lot of these short tracks in Wisconsin that was the lifeblood of the midwest stock car scene.

Rich ran a year of ASA, finishing runner up in rookie points and finishing a really solid 9^th in the points, but his regular racing stats are spotty after that for a few years except his greatest claim to fame as a driver. From 1990-1999, Rich Bickle won the legendary Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway an all-time record 5 times. From the late 80s through 1993, he’d tried to make a good number of starts in the Cup series primarily, but also some Busch series races, many were DNQs with a best finish of 20^th at North Wilkesboro. However, in 1994 he got his real break when he got a handful of starts with Melling Racing who were once championship contenders in Cup with Bill Elliott. These starts didn’t result in a great revelation besides another top twenty at Daytona, but they broke him into the mainstream as a driver at the national NASCAR level.

In 1995 Bickle hooked up for a limited schedule with Curtis Virtue in the Busch series, and was a standout in his handful of starts with four top ten finishes and a pole in a very competitive race with Cup drivers entered. He also drove a number of Cup starts with limited success for the short lived Dick Brooks team.

In 1996 the legendary Petty Enterprises signed Bickle to lead their brand new Truck series effort in a reunion for the team with their legendary Dodge partnership of past decades. The Dodge program took a few years to win a race and wasn’t near the Chevy or Ford programs at the time, but he still finished a very solid 11^th in points and attracted the attention of Darrell Waltrip who expanded his team into Trucks with Bickle in 1997. Bickle that year, simply, was great. 4 poles, wins at Portland, Evergreen, and Martinsville. Led the points after 13 of the 26 races even if he ultimately only ended up 2^nd in points. It was an incredible season that proved to many he deserved to be racing at a high level despite already being in his mid 30s.

DarWal lost its sponsorship for both series in 1998, so Bickle was on the sidelines to start, but not long into the season took over from Greg Sacks at Cale Yarborough’s struggling effort. After a rough summer, Rich Bickle really came on for the team, along with his tearful 4^th place finish at Martinsville he scored 7 top 20 finishes in the the final third of the schedule to make clear he could race in Cup.

Ironically with getting his biggest break with DarWal, after Darrell Waltrip sold the team and then at the end of the year went over to the new (disastrous) 2^nd entry for Travis Carter with new partner Carl Haas, the team’s new owner Tim Beverley hired Rich Bickle to drive for his team. It was an up-and-down start. In the first 11 races of the year, they scored a top 10 and three other top 15 finishes, but failed to qualify 3 times. They had a mediocre summer but then had a great streak with three straight top 20s including a top 10 at Pocono. However, after their next 5 attempts saw 2 DNQs and a best finish of 23^rd Rich was cut. He mostly finished the rest of the season back with the 9 of Melling Racing, with a best finish of 20^th at New Hampshire, his first race with the team.

In 2000, Rich tried to become an owner-driver in the Busch Series, but qualified for just 5 races and DNQ’d at 11, though in two of the short track races he actually qualified for he managed really strong 5^th place finishes. He also ran some Cup races for Joe Bessey, some of the last for that team in Cup racing though they’d continue in Busch North for a while, after parting ways with Geoff Bodine in the 2000 season with a best result of 21^st at Talladega.

In the 2001 Rich Bickle signed a full-time ride with the ST Motorsports team in the Busch Series. While he finished in the top 20 13 times, half of his starts, the top 10s were few and far between coming only at Rockingham, Nazareth, and IRP and he was let go before the end of the year.

Driving for various teams, but most notably Billy Ballew and a somewhat mysterious team which was aligned with Billy Ballew and sponsored by 50 Cent, Rich drove part-time in the Truck series from 2002-2005, making 23 starts with a best finish being a 5^th place at the Mansfield, Ohio short track in 2005 a couple days after his 44^th birthday.

Owning or co-owning several businesses, including a “controversial” (according to Wikipedia) strip club, he continued to race for many years after his NASCAR opportunities dried up, on the late model and super late model scenes of Wisconsin, retiring after the 2021 Snowball Derby.

Rich Bickle rules, dude had a long career out of just being a good enough racecar driver to be at the lower echelon of Cup at his peak, but continued until he was just simply done.