Obituary: Drag racer built cars for the track

Veteran dragster John Shoemaker pioneered blown alcohol racing, built race car chassis and advocated safety of the sport.

He died March 8 when he lost consciousness while driving his nostalgia Top Fuel race car at Auto Club Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield. His car failed to slow down after passing the finish line. Instead, it flipped over a dirt berm and landed upside down between the berm and a nearby orange grove. He was 65.

According to the coroner's report, Mr. Shoemaker had extensive heart disease that no one knew about, said his wife, Judee Shoemaker.

Mr. Shoemaker was in high school when he built his first dragster. He paid a quarter to drive an eighth-mile pass at the former Sacramento fairgrounds site and became hooked.

"He's been in the garage ever since," said his wife. "He lived in his race car and existed just outside of it."

Mr. Shoemaker was one of the first to build and race blown alcohol dragsters, winning the first class at Irwindale's Grand Premiere in 1975. That same year, he was runner-up at the National Hot Rod Association Winternationals and set a national record at the Nationals at the Sacramento Raceway.

For four decades, he entered races throughout the country. In 1989, he won the NHRA Division 6 Championship. He won Top Alcohol Dragster at Winternationals in 1994 and won again at the Autolite Nationals in 1998. In 2000, he began racing his nostalgia front-engine dragster.

Mr. Shoemaker was named one of the top 20 blown alcohol racers of all time by a group with the NHRA for his longevity and success, said his wife.

He started his own chassis business in the 1960s, soon after selling a few cars that he'd built for himself.

His chassis were widely regarded as among the best in the country. Gary Ormsby, a 1989 world champion dragster, bought two of them.

Pushing for driver safety, he put roll cages in all his cars long before it became standard practice to include them, said friend Steve Glucoft.

John Charles Shoemaker was born in Berkeley and raised in Sacramento. His love for cars started as a teenager when he and his friends drove hot rods. A 1960 graduate of El Camino High School, he married the former Judee Holland in 1964. Together they had three sons. Their first-born son, John, died in the early 1990s.

Mr. Shoemaker worked as a cabinet maker for a few years before building chassis. He also worked as a heliarc welder.

Mr. Shoemaker was a jovial straight-shooter who told people what he thought, said friends and family.

"You had to accept what was on his mind," said Glucoft. "If it needed to be heard, you were going to hear it. But he cared. He always cared."

At race time, Mr. Shoemaker's demeanor changed. He became "very intense. It was about getting stuff done, doing stuff right and not messing around," Glucoft said.

"Everybody in the crew went cottonmouth every time he went in the cars," recalled friend and former crew member Roy Neal, who worked on Mr. Shoemaker's clutches. "By the time the pass was over, and he was out of the car, he was back to joking."

When kids lined up around the car, Mr. Shoemaker talked to them about racing, answered questions and put them behind the wheel for pictures.

He mentored young racers on the importance of knowing the car and cockpit when reaching 250 mph in less than 6 seconds.

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