Kip Stockwell's Back At TR- And Boy, Is He Ever Back
By Justin St. Louis
Special to The Herald

Kip Stockwell of Braintree is pleased as punch to be back at Barre's Thunder Road, especially with three wins under his belt.

The name "Kip Stockwell" may not have been familiar to some of the newer stock car racing fans at Barre's Thunder Road before the start of the season, but the name is quickly attaining household status. Stockwell has been winning everything under the sun at Thunder Road lately. And it shouldn't be that big of a surprise: For Kip Stockwell, Thunder Road is home.

Last Thursday, his wife Amanda spotted for Kip over the team's two-way radio as he ripped off his second-straight feature win and third of the season,

The Late Model driver from Braintree is certainly no stranger to those that have been around a while. In fact, the 2007 season conjures up memories of ten or twelve years ago.

For the more experienced Thunder Road fan, their memories may stretch even further back to the 1960s, when Kip's dad, the legendary Lennie "The Tiger" Stockwell, owner of Stockwell's Garage in Braintree, was doing the same thing.

Let's start from the beginning: When Thunder Road founder Ken Squier began a "semi-late model" division in the early 1960s, a colorful cast of characters turned out. The class was known as the Flying Tigers by 1965, and Lennie Stockwell began showing up wearing a tiger-striped jacket while he raced. He was instantly popular with the fans, and was successful from the beginning, driving a baby blue Chevrolet, #00. The wins continued throughout the late 1960s at Thunder Road and sister track Catamount Stadium in Milton with the now-trademark baby blue.

In 1970, Lennie built a new Limited Sportsman car to compete with the likes of Bobby and Beaver Dragon, Ron Barcomb, and Tom Tiller, but the season- and Lennie's career- would be short-lived. A nasty wreck vaulted his car over the Turn 3 wall at Catamount, landing its driver in the hospital with a severe back injury.

Lennie Stockwell's driving career was done, just five short years after it began.

Go-Kart Artist

Fast forward to 1979, as a five-year-old boy called Kip (his real name is Howard) straps into a homemade go-kart at Bear Ridge Speedway, a 1/5-mile dirt oval in Bradford.

"It was painted white and red with the number 16, like Stub Fadden's Patten Gas car," remembers the five year-old, 28 years later.

The youngster raced as often as he could during his formative years, with success coming at Joey Laquerre's Hidden Valley Speedway in East Montpelier, Pine Grove Speedway in Lyndonville, and Sugar Hill Speedway and Rattlesnake Raceway in New Hampshire. Folks soon saw that the second-generation racer was talented; the first of a handful of karting championships came at Pine Grove in 1983.

In 1987, before turning 14, Lennie purchased a four-cylinder "Pro-4" Modified car that his boy could race under the Northeast Midget Association (NEMA) umbrella. The NEMA racing and go-kart racing continued through 1988, when the decision was made to try full-sized race cars at the place where it all started- Thunder Road. In 1989, Lennie, Kip, and the Stockwell's Garage gang built a V8-powered Chevrolet Caprice Street Stock. They painted it the same baby blue that Lennie made famous decades earlier.

"It was a tank," Kip recalls. "We only ran that car for maybe five races at the end of the year, and my dad decided it was time to get serious and build a Flying Tiger car. That was back in the days when the Tigers ran the 10" slick on the right-front corner and street tires on the rest of the car. We started with that car in 1990 and won the Rookie of the Year titles at both Thunder Road and Airborne."

Kip took his first feature win at the Airborne half-mile in Plattsburgh, NY in 1991, and finished in the Top 10 in overall standings at both race tracks that year.

On to the ACT

The next rung on the ladder was the American-Canadian Tour (ACT) Pro Stocks. The kid- still just 18- was now racing against North American short track stock car racing royalty: Robbie Crouch, Junior Hanley, Dave Dion, Mike Rowe, Ralph Nason, Jean-Paul Cabana, and local heroes Kevin Lepage and Dan Beede, winners all at the highest levels of their profession.

"We had an old car that Claude Leclerc had crashed at Claremont. Steve Poulin rebuilt it and it was okay, but we quickly realized we needed something better," Kip said. "We built several new cars, and the best one we ever had was in 1995. I finished third in the opener at Thunder Road, and then six laps into the next race (at Oxford, ME) I destroyed it. We put eight months into building that car, and it was gone just like that. Then ACT folded at the end of the year and we got into the Late Model division."

The increasingly hefty kid, now 22 years old, suffered major health issues, however. A series of heart attacks temporarily derailed everything in the spring of 1996, but the comeback was encouragingly quick and the on-track performance never suffered. In just his second start in the Late Model division, Kip won the Mekkelsen RV Memorial Day Classic- one of Thunder Road's most prestigious races. He followed it up with a second win in August and three more the next year.

The 1997 season saw the beginning of the next chapter in the Stockwell racing history book, as Lennie purchased a NASCAR Busch North Series car. In the team's first-ever race with the car, Kip won the nationally-televised Jiffy Lube 150 in the series' first-ever race at Thunder Road. Over 150 laps, he held off Thunder Road legend Dave Dion and Kip's own childhood hero, Stub Fadden. It was the undisputed upset of the decade.

The Stockwell bunch began touring full-time with the Busch North Series the next season, but found themselves outclassed in terms of money, personnel, and experience. For nine long years, the baby blue Chevrolets and Pontiacs based in Randolph struggled against the teams with Roush Racing engines, ex- Earnhardt race cars, wind tunnel-tuned bodies, and million-dollar sponsors. In the 137 starts that followed the 1997 victory, Kip cracked the Top 10 just a dozen times, with only a single Top 5 finish in 2001 at Waterford, CT. This year, he's back in a Late Model at Thunder Road.

"We just got tired of it," Kip said. "NASCAR made the series into something we didn't want it to be - they went from the northeast to Nashville, to the Carolinas, the Midwest, California- and we decided to come back home to Thunder Road. It's the same thing Brian Hoar did this year, and Dennis Demers did a few years back. We had a great time while we there, but it stopped making sense to race there."

Sugar in the Air

Stockwell says racing at Thunder Road makes him feel like he thinks he should when he goes to the races- like he belongs.

"I swear there's sugar in the air. Every week when I get to the bottom of Quarry Hill to go up to the track, I get a weird feeling, I get excited.

"It's strange how one place can do that to you, but Thunder Road is home to me. It's what I grew up around, it's what I've known my whole life. We sleep in our own beds every night after the races. We had a 13-day trip to California one time for a NASCAR race. The second time we went out, I almost missed the birth of one of my sons. I didn't want to do that anymore. This is home to my family."

And for Kip Stockwell, now 34 and a husband and father, the best part is that his family is a part of his addiction.

"All I want is for my family to be here with me, doing what we all love to do," he said. "And when my boys grow up, I want them to be able to look at the record books and read my name in all the important places. I want to win a track championship at Thunder Road, and I want to win the Milk Bowl. I'd trade every win I have for the Milk Bowl."

And the Stockwell children are beginning to understand how much racing- racing at Thunder Road- means to their family.

"Cam, our three year-old, looked at my trophies from this year the other day, and he said, 'Daddy, we won those at Thunder Road.'" Kip said. "How cool is that? "And Avery, even at 10 months, is beginning to understand that I'm a racer. (My wife) Amanda told me that he was saying 'Da da da' and pointing at the race track a couple weeks ago. It's so great that we're all involved, and we're all doing it together at Thunder Road."

Last Thursday, after Amanda spotted for the team on the way to victory lane, Cam and Avery hugged their daddy in front of the cameras and during the interviews. Lennie and the crew celebrated with each other. The whole family played a part.

At Thunder Road, Kip Stockwell is home.