By Mary O’KEEFE

From “hanging around the fence at Riverside Raceway” to being inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Motorsports Hall of Fame (WCSCMHOF), Ken Sapper has had one heck of a ride.

Sapper found out on his birthday last year that he was chosen as an inductee to the 2022 Hall of Fame.

“I am humbled and grateful to be honored by the West Coast Stock Car Motorsports hall of Fame as a 2022 inductee,” Sapper said. “I’ve been blessed to have worked with many of the drivers, crew chiefs and car owners who have been honored by the WCSCMHOF during my years at Speedway Engineering. I look forward to joining their ranks. Many thanks to those of you who have congratulated me already. I’m deeply gratified.”

There have been a lot of turns around the track for Sapper but each time he has proven to be a really good driver, a really good racer and a winner.

When Sapper was in 11th grade attending Glendale High School he and a friend got two-for-one tickets to the Riverside Raceway. He asked his mom for her permission to go to Riverside.

“I had asked her if I could go and you would have thought I had asked to go to New York. My mom said, ‘Oh, that’s so far away,’” he recalled.

But he got permission and attended the race.

“I have been into racing stuff ever since,” he said.

Sapper added he was lucky enough to meet Frank Deiny, a welder who had his own shop – Speedway Engineering – and was a winning stock car driver.

“I went to work [for him] and we became friends,” he said. “I just thought the world of him.”

Deiny was a welder as was Sapper. They created a bond that lasted for years and, in fact, Sapper was Deiny’s first full-time employee.

“I’ve been there since 1969. We built 440 rear ends,” he said. “We built some very fine cars that were well received and our customers made us look so good. The last time Richard Petty won a championship they were running our chassis.” Richard Petty is regarded as the best stock car driver of all time.

“We sold to the best of the drivers and the worst,” Sapper said. “I took to driving in 1971.”

He had mentors like Deiny who were champions at the Saugus Speedway in 1966.

“I looked up to him and the older folks [who were racing]. They seemed to know what they were doing and I got a lot of good answers from them that I applied to my own life and to driving,” he said.

Saugus Speedway was where Sapper learned to race but he also met his wife there. They recently celebrated their 50-year anniversary.

“Her sister was married to a fellow racer and that’s how we got introduced,” he added.

Sapper said he started having some racing success in the mid-’70s and it just continued.

“Trial and error,” Sapper said of the way he learned to race and build cars.

This learning model was pretty successful for Sapper and those at Speedway Engineering.

“There was a time on the short tracks on the West Coast, from Washington State all the way down to El Cajon, where if you didn’t have a Speedway Engineering chassis it was hard to win,” he said. “I am very proud of that.”

Sapper was a winning driver and won three consecutive modified stock car titles from 1984 to1986. It wasn’t too often that he didn’t finish “too far out of the front.”

The Saugus Speedway racetrack closed in 1995. Racing for Sapper moved to Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino.

“It’s a great little track and I won another championship there,” he said.

In total, Sapper won 60 main events at Saugus and Orange Show Speedway.

Though Sapper stopped racing in 2003, he has never been far from the sport. After his mentor Deiny passed away Sapper was named president of Speedway Engineering where he still works.

Winning is something Sapper is used to; however, being inducted into the WCSCMHOF is something that has made him slow down a little and reflect on his racing days.

He had been given a heads up last October that his name would be on the ballot as an inductee. But because it normally takes most who are nominated a few years to get voted in, he wasn’t really prepared for that call congratulating him for being inducted into the hall of fame.

“I am humbled by this more than you can imagine,” he said.

Ken Sapper will be inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Motorsports Hall of Fame on June 9 at the Sonoma Raceway.