DEDICATED – Bob Schacht Proves The Mantra That Old Habits Die Hard

“The speed of your success is limited only by your dedication and what you’re willing to sacrifice.”

Nathan W. Morris

They say that racing is life and that those who become immersed in it are nothing short of family. For drivers like Bob Schacht, nothing could be closer to the truth. Born January 24th, 1950 in Lombard, Illinois, Schacht got his first glimpses of stock car auto racing watching his father and his uncle turning laps at Santa Fe Speedway, a dirt track just outside of Chicago. Not sure of his path in the racing world, he began his own racing career at Oswego Drag Raceway, making speed on the quarter mile. By the time he turned 18 in 1968, he found himself following in his father’s footsteps running stock cars at O’Hare Stadium. But it wasn’t until he got to Illiana Motor Speedway that he truly knew what he wanted to do in life. Illiana is where Bob Schacht truly fell in love with stock car racing. That was in 1970 and although he supposedly officially retired in 2016, Bob found old habits were hard to break. He’s fielded cars for other drivers such as Johnny Sauter, Blaise Alexander, Red Farmer, Clay Rogers, and Frank Kimmel to name a few. All in all, almost 50 drivers have made laps in Bob Schacht prepared machines over the years, but even Bob himself couldn’t quite put it away, today putting in laps in his own series, The Grand National Super Series, a series him and wife Patty Simko Schacht formed together in 2022. The series features cars typically used in ARCA, Pro Cup, and NASCAR K&N Series machines from the previous era. A series that was formed to provide competitive racing at an affordable cost, it’s also an endeavor that highlights the couple’s desire to support and grow the short track racing community. It’s the story that got them here however that truly highlights where that dedication comes from.

Schacht’s ran and been competitive on every type of track he competed on including short tracks, superspeedways, dirt tracks, and road courses as an indicator of his talent. He’s competed in numerous series including NASCAR’s big 3 of Truck, Xfinity, and Cup. But where he found his most success was in the ARCA Series. A standout competitor on the series saw him amass 17 wins, 53 top 5’s, 91 top 10’s, and 16 poles. Schacht was a driver that had to have it his way, but it wasn’t out of cockiness. You see, Bob Schacht was a student of the sport, always looking to learn from the sport that had encompassed him. He felt it was important to know the functionality of every nut and bolt on the car. But he also thought it was integral to pay attention to everything he saw and experienced at the track. He likened it to stick and ball sports where to improve you had to study game film. He paid attention to what worked and what didn’t, not just from him and his team, but from every other driver and team he witnessed. He started his ARCA career in 1978 at the track where he fell in love with the sport and knew so well at Illiana, with a top five finishing 4th. Fitting that he also got his first win on the series at the same track in 1980. But in 1981 at Daytona, his career almost came to a grinding halt.

In the ARCA race at Daytona in 1981, a race that was postponed to the next day because of rain, Bob Schacht tried to dodge the stalling car of Phil Parsons and crossed the yellow line and hit a puddle of standing water, sending his car back up the track, off the outside wall, and into oncoming traffic. To his recollection nearly 8 cars came crashing into the 75 machine, leaving it destroyed and Schacht with a broken wrist, sternum, and with a collection of burns. As an independent race team however, what’s worse is that Bob Schacht was left with nearly nothing but a crashed unrepairable car, a hauler, and a garage to place it in. He was unsure how he was going to be able to get back to the track. But as a respected individual and racer, he had so much more. He had a racing family that was about to show him what that family was all about. Shortly after the crash his friend Tom Pistone gave him a call to ask him how he was and what he was going to be doing. Not quite sure himself, Bob told Tom he didn’t quite know, to which Tom responded that Billie Harvey had a car for sale. At that point Bob humbly told Tom Pistone he didn’t have a way to pay for a car yet, but Tom persuaded him to call Harvey anyway. Bob did just that but during their conversation Bob told Billie Harvey that he would love to buy the car but he wasn’t going to mislead him in any way, and that the truth was he didn’t have the means to buy it. But Billie Harvey, having recently met and starting to get to know Bob, told him to come get the car and pay for it when he was able. Bob paid for the car about 6 months later, and although he only made one more start that year, it was a 3rd place finish at Dayton Speedway. Bob of course went on to an illustrious career in ARCA as stated above, but the incident I just described wasn’t his only or even biggest indication of the racing ‘family’.

Bob Schacht has centered his life around racing, to the point that he married one of his fellow racing competitors in 1990. But, Patty Simko Schacht isn’t just any racing competitor, she is the fastest female stock car racer in history, setting that distinctive record in 1987 at Talladega Superspeedway with a speed of 199.604 mph. She is also the first female top 5 finisher in ARCA history with a 3rd place finish at Toledo Speedway in the same year. And today she is the co-owner of The Grand National Super Series Presented By ECC with husband Bob Schacht. A series they run with a family atmosphere. Indeed a true series by racers for racers. I got a close up look at the series as they made their first trip to Lonesome Pine Motorsports Park on July 13th. An event that saw young 15 year old dirt track racer Austin Vaughn make his first start in the series, and on asphalt for that matter. And an event that saw points leader and former Cup star Jeremy Mayfield sweep the night and expand his points lead. But in essence, that’s what this series is about. A place where a veteran can come race an old school, hard to handle, high horsepower stock car against a young and upcoming racer that wants to cut their teeth in one of the hardest cars they can get into that can more than prepare them for the new era Late Models that are the stepping stones to the premier NASCAR Series today. But more than that, it’s a series that is itself a family of sorts as I found the comradery among the competitors on the tour as good as I’ve ever seen. Bob and Patty along with daughter Priscilla see it as their mission to give every one that comes to race in their series whatever they can manage to see that they can not only compete fairly, but that they feel they are also part of a family of racers. One of which is Bob Schacht himself, a racer in his 5th decade of racing competitively, proving what they say is indeed true, old habits are hard to break.