An incredible journey that included time as a teenage push-truck driver and featured a pair of Knoxville Nationals victories will conclude Saturday, June 1, when Gary “Deuce” Turrill is inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame.
Turrill, who turns 70 later this month, is a second-generation racer who used tools and a tape measure instead of a steering wheel to secure his place in sprint car racing history.
“I’m not sure if I can put it into words,” Turrill told SPEED SPORT when asked what it will mean to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. “When the whole Hall of Fame thing became a reality, I saw the guys that were starting to go in and I’m thinking, ‘Man, what a great way to preserve the past.’ I never really thought about being included until I got older and actually quit racing.
“Now, that I’m going in it’s just unbelievable. I’ll be joining guys that are my heroes and guys who mentored me, so to go into the Hall of Fame and be recognized with those names and those people is a feeling I can’t even describe. It’s unbelievable.”
Turrill’s father was a local dirt-track racer in 1954 when a devastating illness forced the family to leave their home in Belpre, Ohio.
“About four months after I was born, my brother, Terry, got sick with polio. Of course, that changed everybody’s world because he was very, very sick. We had to move to Columbus, Ohio, to be at the children’s hospital,” Turrill explained. “We spent eight, maybe 10 years, up there.”
Despite growing up in Ohio’s largest city, the youngest Turrill developed a passion for everything automotive.
“From my earliest memories, everything was always about cars and later on about race cars. That’s all I studied, that’s all I thought about,” he recalled. “My dad had a car lot, so I was always around the car lot, driving the cars.”
The Turrill family eventually returned to their hometown along the Ohio River.
“We moved back to Belpre and I discovered there were three dirt tracks around that area. Skyline Speedway ran on Friday nights; Ohio Valley Speedway in Parkersburg, W.Va., just across the river from us ran on Saturdays: and Hilltop Speedway on Sundays,” Turrill said. “And they ran sprint cars, so here we go. These three tracks were within a 30-mile radius of where we lived.”
During a special event at one of the tracks, Turrill made a discovery that broadened his racing horizons.
“There was a guy walking around with this newspaper called National Speed Sport News. Well, I bought one and when I got home that night – I can remember it like it was last night – I immediately filled out the subscription form and sent it away. That opened up a whole new world,” he recalled. “My brother and I – he was in a wheelchair but I took him everywhere I went, took him to the races – we would sit with that SPEED SPORT and read about Williams Grove, Kenny Weld, Jan Opperman and Ascot Park. Then, we’d get our atlas out and figure, OK, if we leave from Belpre, how would we go to Williams Grove, how would we go here, how would we go there?”
A driver’s license opened the next door on Turrill’s racing journey.
“When I turned 16, I had an old pickup truck and I pushed race cars. One reason was I got in free; and another was that I was in the pits, meeting the guys, meeting the racers and they were good about talking to my brother,” Turrill reflected. “We got to know Steve Ungar. He was a racer from Garrettsville, Ohio, and he drove a car from Belpre.”
Turrill eventually became friends with Ungar’s son, Rick.
“In 1971, I was sitting at my uncle’s house, my dad’s brother – my dad had passed away – and there was a body shop next to his house. This red-and-white pickup truck pulled in and it had ‘Steve Ungar’s Rockland Body Shop’ on the side. I’m thinking, ‘Man, that can’t be.’ The door opens and Steve Ungar gets out of that pickup truck,” Turrill said. “I immediately put my jacket on and walked over to the body shop. I could tell he knew me, but he didn’t really know me, because he was used to just seeing me at the race track. I introduced myself and he said, ‘Oh yea, how you doing?’
“He said, ‘We just moved here a few months ago, and I’ve got a son your age. You need to meet him. He doesn’t have any friends here.’ I eventually met his son, Rick, and we struck up a friendship. A couple weeks later Rick calls and says, ‘Dad and I are driving over to Morgantown, W.Va., to Jasper Petite’s house to get a race car I’m going to run next year. Do you want to go?’ Well, hell yea. They pick me up and we take off to Morgantown to get this race car, and we bring it back. Rick and I start hammering on it, this and that, getting it ready to race.
“That was the 1972 season and I helped Rick all the way up until 1978,” Turrill continued. “He drove for different people during that time in western Pennsylvania, up in Ohio for the Nickles Brothers. I always went with him. We became best friends. I was always going to the races helping out – toting fuel, mounting tires, doing whatever I could do. Just being a stooge.”
Before Turrill’s journey goes much further, it should be noted that his nickname is not rooted in racing.
“That came from my father. He loved to play poker,” Turrill explained. “He called my brother Ace and called me Deuce. I don’t know why mine stuck because Ace didn’t stick with Terry.”
Deuce’s first paying gig as a sprint car mechanic started just weeks after he and Ungar participated in the inaugural World of Outlaws race at Devil’s Bowl Speedway in March 1978. Hired to turn wrenches for Butch Barr, Turrill relocated to Grand Isle, Neb.
The next decade was a whirlwind as Turrill established a home base in Memphis and his roster of drivers included Shane Carson, Ungar, Brad Doty, Sammy Swindell, Sheldon Kinser and Mike Ward. His list of victories included the 1983 Knoxville Nationals with Swindell and car owner Raymond Beadle, and he even spent some time at Challenge Chassis in Des Moines.
“I’d always wanted to have my own race team, that was my goal. That way there were no surprises at the end of the year,” Turrill said. “As a mechanic, you always have to move to where the car is. Once we had Eric, our first son, that got harder and harder. So I thought if I could get my own race team at least I would know at the end of the season if I was going to be able to race again the next year.
“I asked Doug Wolfgang if I could put a sure enough deal together, would he drive it? He said, ‘Sure, I’m always looking for good opportunities.’ He let me use his name and his records to put together a portfolio. I wasn’t having much success and then I was introduced to a young guy named Danny Peace at the end of 1988 at a race in Little Rock, Ark.”
The details were ironed out in a matter of weeks and DP Motorsports was born. Peace retained ownership of the team, but Turrill and Wolfgang had full control of all competition aspects.
“Boom, boom, boom and we were in business. This was like the end of November and it takes a while to get motors built and cars built. We had to get a shop organized,” Turrill recalled. “My friend Robert Hubbard, from right there in Memphis, I had him lined up to help.
“I felt like if everything went well, we’d win some races. In the past, when Doug had the parts and pieces that he wanted, that he felt comfortable with, he was a contender. Look at what he did with Bob Weikert — unbelievable,” Turrill continued. “I kind of felt we were in that same boat because he had worked with John Singer enough that Singer knew the kind of motors that he liked. The car was what Doug wanted. He physically took the tubing and bent it and notched it, set it and welded it up exactly the way he wanted it. I knew we were going to be OK there.
“We just clicked. A lot of it was timing because they were doing that USA thing, so Steve (Kinser), Sammy, Dave Blaney, they were all kind of focused on that stuff. We were just out racing. We’re sitting the map down and circling from Memphis, Tenn., it’s this far to an Outlaws show or from Memphis, Tenn., it’s this far to a USA race; what’s the best thing for us? That’s how we focused our whole season, and we had a tremendous year.”
The combination won more than 40 features, including the Knoxville Nationals, in what turned out to be the first and only season for DP Motorsports.
“Doug and I raced together again in 1990 with the Williams Brothers,” Turrill noted. “That started out to be race anywhere you want. Then, when USA folded, ‘Oh, we’ve got to run the Outlaws.’ That’s what the Williams Brothers wanted. Doug and I didn’t want to do that, but we did because otherwise we didn’t have a job.
“We ran second in the points, we had 13 Outlaws wins, we won the Kings Royal, and we did the alphabet at the Knoxville Nationals – that’s a story in itself. At the end of the year, we were fired.”
Turrill went on to have success with Kenny Jacobs, Terry Shepherd and Brooke Tatnell. He hosted technical seminars and driving schools, worked for Frankland Racing and even did some spotting at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“My boy raced a little bit for a couple of years, but I didn’t have the money,” Turrill recalled. “That’s when I said, ‘Time out, we’re done.’ That was 2005, I guess. After that I was just a working stiff – driving a truck, doing normal stuff.”
Today, Turrill and his wife, Susan, live in Flora, Ind. Their boys, Eric and A.J., are nearby and there are two grand kids – ages 2 and 9.
Turrill streams as many of the sprint car races as possible and closely follows the sport, but a back injury has kept him away from the track.
“I fell a couple years ago and really screwed my back up,” he said. “Last October, I had to have surgery where I was flat on my stomach for 10 hours. Now, I’m in recovery mode.”
But on June 1, in Knoxville, Iowa, Gary “Deuce” Turrill will switch to celebration mode as he takes his place in the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame.
THIS ARTICLE IS REPOSTED FROM THE APRIL 10th EDITION OF SPEED SPORT INSIDER
SPEED SPORT Insider is the ad-free premium extension of SPEEDSPORT.com. Insider is dedicated to the best and brightest in motorsports journalism – created by the best writers, photographers and reporters in the business. From veteran Hall of Fame writers like Bones Bourcier, Dave Argabright, Pat Sullivan, Keith Waltz, Ralph Sheheen and Editor in Chief Mike Kerchner, to behind the scenes SPEED SPORT reporters like Grace Woelbing, David Hoffman and more.
By subscribing to Insider, you not only get exclusive access to this premium content, but you support the journalists that are vital to telling the stories that matter most. Subscriptions are just $5/mo or $44.95 for an entire year. View plans and details.
SPECIAL OFFER! Subscribe now with this link and save $5.00!
