4/5/2023
Lincoln Park Speedway
Larry Raines
Larry Raines entered the 2022 season convinced it would be his last as an active competitor. It had been a good ride but he reasoned that the time had come. He would blow out 60 candles on the birthday cake and his brother and right-hand man Jim Raines was struggling physically. Then a funny thing happened. “Jim got some medicine that helped him tremendously,” Larry revealed, “but after the last race I still thought we were done. Then he told me he could go one more year and said our sister Pam also wanted to keep going.” After all, it would have been hard to walk away after a championship run, so the decision was made to give it a go one last time. Nonetheless, he insists 2023 will be his swan song. “This will be our 25th year,” and, he adds, “That’s enough.”
It has been a great but improbable ride. Raines grew up in a racing environment. While no one in his family competed his parents Robert and Ernestine were great fans. “My parents travelled with Jim and Betty Warren who owned the Goodyear tire store in Brazil,” Larry says, “and the Warren’s still own it. They travelled all over the country. They went to the Indianapolis 500 at least thirty straight years and they would go to the Milwaukee Mile and Pocono, but dad really loved sprint car racing.” Robert passed in 1981 and Larry, who graduated from Brazil High School settled into a pattern of working on the family farm and at the Federal Prison in Putnam county. It was after a divorce that he decided to branch out in a new direction. “I told my mom we’re going racing,” he says with a laugh, “and her exact words were you are absolutely crazy. I said maybe, but that is what I am going to do.”
It was a tall order to try and launch a career from scratch. He decided on a modified as his choice of racecar and found one for sale in a racing trade paper. It set him and Jim on an adventure they will remember for the rest of their lives. “I found a car in Manitowoc, Wisconsin and my brother and I decide to go look at it. We went to work from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and we got in a pickup truck and headed north. I don’t even have a trailer so I decided if we bought the car, we would just get a U-Haul and bring it home.” It is at this point that the journey got interesting. “We go right through Chicago,” he recalls, “and it was not good. You know, you got a subway right in the middle of the road and a big ole’ farm boy who has really not been out of nowhere. I was not happy. I told Jim if this pickup gets a flat tire, you drive on the flat tire. If the tire falls off, you drive on the rim. If the rims come off, you drive on the hub because we are not stopping. We got there about 4 o’clock or 4:30 in the morning and the car is at a junk yard. We parked across the street in a driveway of a dairy farm because the junk yard opened at 6. I walk in the gate and there is the car sitting across from the scales and it was the biggest piece of crap you have ever seen in your life. It was all beat to hell.”
It seemed a wasted trip but then Larry recalled seeing another modified for sale in Iowa City, Iowa. In an age with few cell phones he called his mother and asked her to scan the racing paper and find the correct contact information. Having done her part, Larry and Jim although already sleep deprived headed west to Iowa. This time they struck gold. “I look at the car and it was pristine,” he says, “It was a Johnny Spaw racecar that had won races at places like Burlington and West Liberty, so I bought it. Now we needed to get a U-Haul trailer to get it home. I call everywhere and no one had one. We drove 152 miles to pick up the trailer and then drove back. We got the modified loaded up at about 8:30 at night and headed to a motel about 70 miles away.” By the time the Raines boys returned home they were exhausted, but far from defeated. “We were as proud as two peacocks,” Larry says, “We were feathered out. That is how my racing career started.”
Understand this. Larry Raines was as raw a newcomer as you are going to find. “I had never even driven a go-kart,” he admits. Now he was going to go modified racing. The early results were predictable. “I looked like a monkey with a football,” he says with a chuckle, “I was always doing those little figure eights trying to keep the car going so I wouldn’t get two cautions on me and be out. My sister taped every one of my races. In those days you could hear her and other people yelling attrition, hoping I could make the feature. I have a picture of the car and the money I won the first time I made a race. It was over at Charleston, Illinois and Shane Cottle was there and he was just getting started too.”
Jim Raines also gave racing a try, but his career had a short shelf-life. One night the brothers were in the same heat race when Larry saw the red flag come out. Recalling the moment he says, “I stopped and saw his car in the infield on all four wheels and thought everything was okay. I had no idea why the red was out but I guess he made it all the way over and landed on his wheels. That was the end of that.”
However, as a team they improved and in his fifth year he took his first checkered flag at Lincoln Park Speedway. It was with understandable pride that he says, “I beat Ray Humphrey and in fact I won two in a row. The next week I was leading but the track was rough, and my foot came off the pedal and Ray got me.” With a few wins under his belt Raines decided to give late model racing a try and had real success. He purchased a new C. J. Rayburn car and won the second time out at Twin Cities Raceway Park in North Vernon. From there he routinely raced at Kentucky Lake Speedway on Friday, Paducah on Saturday, and on Sunday he would move to Union County in Liberty, Indiana. Closer to home he turned many laps at Boswell.
Like so many competitors Larry can be guilty of dwelling on races that got away more than those he won. On that account a date at Liberty comes quickly to mind. “Union County had a $10,000 to win race the night before the World 100. I led that sucker until the last lap and my nerves got to me. I came off the bottom and Mike Jewell got underneath me.” It was still a good night as Raines took home $5,000 for his efforts.
Despite the success the travel and the maintenance that came with late model racing just proved to be too much. “It will absolutely wear you out,” he says, “one problem is that we were so far away from everything. I nearly totally burned my brother out.” It was time to make a change, and once again Raines was in for an adventure. He put his car up for sale and found a buyer in Tennessee. He towed his racecar on a gooseneck trailer behind a four-door International 4600 truck and arrived at a beautiful home with an impressive garage. This is when the unexpected happened. “I’ll be darned if he didn’t buy it all,” he says, “He bought my truck, my car, and my rig,” Now a bit perplexed Raines reminded the buyer that this was a cash only proposition. To Larry’s surprise that did not prove to be a problem. “He told me to come into his laundry room,” he recalls, “and he got the cash out of a dryer. I do not know where it all came from all I know is that it was a lot of money.”
Using the cash from the sale, Raines decided to put together a new Bob Pierce modified. It satisfied him for a time, the condition of the racetracks and a range of factors resulted in a decision to step away for a time. There was a lot going on. Larry had four daughters (including triplets) in four different colleges. Nonetheless, he was getting a persistent nudge to get back into the game. “Linda Leann Ray is the downfall of Larry Raines,” he says sarcastically. While it may be true that his partner put the bug in his ear, it is also obvious that he was a willing listener. Before he jumped back in he spent two weekends watching the Lucas Oil late models because of his strong friendship with Jimmy Owens. He also had one eye on the modifieds. After the road trip he had an epiphany. Returning to modifieds was out of the question. He felt he was a bit too old for the class and also reasoned you needed to race often to be good at it. Then the persistent Linda Leann found a super stock that was listed for sale. That got his attention.
He adapted well and found victory lane quickly. Then an accident that resulted in a separated shoulder put him on the sidelines for a time, but it hastened a decision to build a new car. In 2023 he will carry this piece into battle for the sixth season. “That car has eighteen wins and I have finished third in the national points twice with it,” he says, “so I am kind of partial to it.” Last year was a dream campaign with eight victories and twenty top-five finishes. He is rightfully proud of what was accomplished. “We won it the right way,” he says, “We won it with a solid car, solid driving and one hell of a mechanic in my brother. He does all the maintenance on the car. I can get in that car and never worry about it. Every week all the old bolts came out and new bolts went in. We decided we were going to win that championship come hell or high water.”
As Raines and family made their way to the Lincoln Park banquet the 2022 super stock champion was getting roasted by his peers. The subject of their barbs was his shoulder length hair. There was a reason he was donning a new look. At just 28 months old his daughter Summer Dawn was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She was in treatment for three difficult years. “It was rough,” he says, “It was three years of no white blood cells in your body. At one point we almost lost her.” An infection had developed, and the source was unclear. Luckily, her attending physician Dr Jakacki left a seminar in England and flew home to help. It was a lifesaving moment. Today Raines can name all the supporting cast at Riley Children’s Hospital who made the difference. It is easy to remember all the those trips through the halls of the facility pulling his daughter in a red radio flyer wagon. Summer Dawn is now thirty-four, healthy, and a mother. Her father’s hair will be gone soon, and the locks donated in support of those going through a treatment journey.
Clearly, there will be no tears of sadness when the scissors are applied. “You don’t know how hard it is to take care of it,” he says, “I have done everything. I have different shampoos and conditioners. Man, it is a job. I feel for every woman in this world who has long hair. Every morning it is a ritual I sit down on my stool and Linda pulls my hair into a ponytail.”
As for the championship, he feels the greatest joy for those who have always supported him. “I can’t tell you how much it meant to Linda, my sister, and Jim,” he shares, “They have been with me through thick and thin from when I was doing little figure eights all the way to winning a championship.” One more thing is important. This may be his final season, but the car has been powder coated, a new deck and cockpit have been constructed, and in his words, “it is really a new car.” Larry Raines plans to go out on top.
Article Credit: Patrick Sullivan
Submitted By: Jill Spiker