The Finish Line
In Memorium
John Kranenburg and Tripp Shumake

by Chris Martin

John Kranenburg
(1934-1999)

The team concept in fuel and gas dragster racing dates back at least four decades plus. Joaquin Arnett’s "Bean Bandits" fielded their roadster plus a fuel dragster in Southern California in the middle and late 1950s and a few years later, the Carlsbad, Calif.-based Dragmaster Chassis magnates Jim Nelson and Dode Martin fielded a number of highly respected cars. In Florida, the fans instantly recognized Don Garlits’ Florida Mafia with drivers like his brother Ed, Art Malone, and Connie Swingle. In the very busy Great Lakes racing scene of that time frame, the most dominant TEAM was the "guzler" operation at 89th and Richmond in Evergreen Park, IL., headed by "Bud" Roche, Don Mattison, and the subject of this piece, the now late John Kranenburg, who passed away from complications due to diabetes. He was 65.

Kranenburg was one of drag racing’s first really great double duty drivers. Arnett could drive either a fuel or a gas mount at the same race, and obviously so could the Dragmaster guys, and the Garlits outfit, and a few others who have escaped the ken of this writer, but Kranenburg was different.

In their heyday, roughly 1961 through late 1963, Roche and Mattison attacked virtually every race with a double-pronged plan of assault: Namely that Kranenburg would drive both "the Guzler" dragsters, one in Top Fuel and the other in Top Gas. And they were very good at it, especially considering the talent in this area. In Top Gas, for example, Kranenburg could count on having to race Pete Farnsworth, Bruce Norman in Arvy Mack’s "Big Wheel," Hirata & Hobbs, George Kingshott, Larry Reimer in the Reimer-Vodnik-DeVos dragster, Al Chmiel, Ron O’Donnell and Jim Russell’s "Bubble Buster." If the case was Top Fuel, why hell, all John had to do was knock over Chris "the Greek" Karamesines, Dick Belfatti and Bobby Vodnik, Bob Snyder in the Snyder & Ebel B/FD, Don Love in the Love-Lund-Hay dragster, the Lang-Johnson-Leek "Sliver," Warner-Burling, Kaufman & Burton’s "Big John," "the Blue Angels" entry of Andrews-Fisher-Fraley, Joe Schubeck, or Chuck Hepler. Yet despite that case load, Kranenburg did a remarkable job.

Consider this: In 1961, Kranenburg and his "Guzler" mates utterly dominated the ultra-heavy Top Gas traffic at the Gary, Indiana plant. That year, Kranenburg won 11 Top Gas titles and of those, won eight Top Eliminator runoffs (Top Fuel dragster vs. Gas dragster). He lost just once all year in head-to-head Top Gas racing at Gary and that was to Bob Gardella in "T.V. Tommy" Ivo and Ron Pellegrini’s side-mounted Buick digger when his mount sustained breakage.

The ‘61 season was one of Kranenburg’s best. He beat the Ivo-Pelligrini-Gardella dragster on May 7 at Cordova Dragway to win the second slot in the Drag News Standard 1320 Top 10, the sport’s only nationally recognized rating system of the time. Before that race, he had occupied the No. 6 spot, but lost that to another Midwest car that gave him fits, "The Big Wheel" gasser out of Minneapolis. Oddly enough, that happened in March of ‘61 at Fremont, California.

Further 1961 heroics included a runner-up in Top Gas to Farnsworth’s "Percussion" dragster on Memorial Day weekend at Union Grove and a runner-up to Schubeck in Top Gas at the ‘61 World Series at Cordova. At that same World Series event, Kranenburg was also runner-up in Top Fuel to Karamesines.

That summer, Kranenburg made his move to a faster ride. Kranenburg, who originally got together with Roche and Mattison reportedly in 1958 with the 888 fuel altered sedan, took over the wheel of the duo’s blown and injected Chrysler-powered fuel dragster and excelled, having run as fast as 195.22 mph lap at Union Grove by July of 1962. The only Midwest driver faster was Karamesines, who ran the sport’s first 200 in 1960 at Alton, IL.

In fact, at the Union Grove Great Lakes Championships on Labor Day Weekend of 1961, Kranenburg won Top Fuel beating none other than the 1961 Bakersfield March Meet champ "Lefty" Mudersbach in Chet Herbert’s twin Chevy in the final.

The team motored together up until late summer or early fall in 1963. John had begun sharing the fuel ride with up-and-coming Jerry Caudle in 1962 and spent more time with the team gasser that season, wining back the No. 6 Drag News pot from "the Big Wheel", defending it twice before losing it to Dick Vest in the Vest-Erfman-Jordan dragster on June 23 in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

One of "the Guzler’s" best moments came a month earlier when Caudle guided the fueler past Joe Schubeck for the Top Fuel title, and Kranenburg did in Ron Pelligrini in the new Ivo in-line, twin Buick dragster for the Top Gas title at the Don Maynard Memorial Championships at Oswego. The Oswego show was on par with an NHRA national event when one looks at the entry list. Along with both "Guzler" dragsters were Karamesines, Pat Johnson, Hepler-Snyder-Chin, Lou Cangelose’s "Missouri Mule," Schubeck, and other heavy hitters. And the not-quite-as-fast-as-Top Fuel ranks included the fuel altered coupes of Gabby Bleeker, John Firstka, and Dave Doogan, along with the stretched roadsters of Loukas & Preising, Schulijack & Suba and the "Glass Chariot" of Charlie Johnson and Noah Canfield driven by a very young Dick LaHaie.

By late 1963, Kranenburg had hooked up with old pal Karamesines and drove "the Greek’s" number two "Chizler" for the remainder of his driving career, which tragically wasn’t that far away. In the spring of 1964, Kranenburg sustained a terrible groin injury in Fremont, California when the rear section of the dragster reportedly blew up and out. He drove only a few times after that.

He went on to fame as a mechanic, especially with "Big John" Mazmanian’s A/GS entries of the early 1970s. In the early 1980s, he was diagnosed with diabetes and this ultimately led to his death.

Tripp Shumake
(1946-1999)

Short of Doug Herbert's nuclear eruption on Friday of this year's NHRA Winston Finals, I will remember the race more for what did not happen at the track. Tripp Shumake, a solid acquaintance of mine, was killed a day earlier in a motorcycle wreck in his hometown of Phoenix. A name like Tripp Shumake sounds like a racer's name, so even if you are too young to recall who he was and what he did, you probably could sense that somewhere in his life's vocabulary, going fast was a big part.

Life deals (a moment of silence for cliché and lack of on-the-spot-writing skills) some terrible cards and this was one of those hands. In my 37 years in the sport, I've known racers and people who I absolutely marvel at. People who live lives that are so high and wild, that you swear each day will be their last. Those types are numerous in auto racing, but Tripp was not one of them. Oh, he had guts to spare and drove some incredible race cars, but he was as clean a living man as I've ever met and in the late 1980s became a minister in his church. He was the one guy you thought would live to a ripe old age, spinning yarns of yesteryear on his doings at the dragstrip.

On his last day, Tripp was on a motorcycle and a driver, obviously unseen, hung a U-turn somewhere in front of him, came up the wrong side of the road, hit him and scattered him to the wind. Tripp didn't have a helmet on and as any motor cop will tell you, that's betting into some horrible odds. In Tripp's case, the worst.

I got the news from Dave Densmore on Saturday morning in the reception area at John Force's trailer and it was one of those experiences where the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. Tripp Shumake? You can't be serious! The anvil of bad fate casting a large shadow on what had been a sunny disposition. Tightness in the throat pleading for a last minute reprieve. "Just kidding" scratched from the script.

What are you gonna do? That kind of news isn't one-liner material. It obviously happened, so roll with it as best you can.

I'll roll with it like most of his friends, by remembering the positive side and that's what appears below. Or as Ray Charles sang, "You only live but once and when you're dead, you're done, so let the good times roll."

The first thing that comes to mind was that he and his now ex-wife Susie (amicable split, I'm told) were drag racing's "cute couple" (as corny as that sounds) in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Shumake, (all roughly 5’7" of him) and his pretty blonde wife and blonde daughter Heather, looked like they belonged behind the wheel of an Eddie Bauer/Ford Expedition recreational vehicle in one of those squeaky clean TV car commercials. Unassailably clean-cut and wholesome, they looked the role of the ideal nuclear family. Tripp was clear, upbeat and effervescent. Like many race drivers, he had that forever-young glint in the eye that beaconed risk-taking. When asked about an important round at a race, he'd bubble something to the effect of "Hey, ole Prudhomme, or ole Pulde or Bonin is a bad Jose. No trouble gettin' up for him."

In my opinion, his greatest moment came in the deep South. At the 1981 NHRA Southern Nationals, Tripp became the eighth and last member of the Cragar Five Second Funny Car Club when he qualified No. 2 with a 5.98, 226.70 in Johnny Loper's '80 Plymouth Arrow. He then knocked off Paul Smith's "Entertainer," Shirl Greer in Larry Coogle's "Sting", and in the final, Kenny Bernstein's "Budweiser King" to win his first NHRA national event. It was a popular win with the Atlanta crowd, and there were very few photographers who didn't want a winner's circle shot with all three of them in it.

Tripp only won one other NHRA event after the Atlanta bash and he did it in Billy Meyer's 1982 7-ll/Chief Auto Parts Ford EXP, which was constructed in the late fall to serve as a blocker to slow the pace of Frank Hawley and the "Chi-Town Hustler" Dodge Charger. He beat Hawley in the semifinals, but it was too late for Meyer to advance in the Winston points because he needed a winning final to net the crown. Bernstein beat Meyer in the semi's, but Tripp knocked over Kenny in a moral victory for Meyer and win number two for him.

The Phoenix driver's biggest runs of employment were with Dennis Fowler's "Sundance" Funny Cars (1974-1977) and Loper (1978-1982). Prior to those rides, he wheeled Dickie Harrell's Vega in the very early 1970s and won the Tucson (Ariz.) Coca-Cola Fuel Altered title behind the wheel of John Aleman's Amos Satterlee-wrenched "Sheepherder" roadster.

He played fair, drove hard, and comported himself as a gentleman. What more can you ask from a racer? Tripp Shumake, we say thanks for the memories and enjoy the view.