‘It’s essential for the future’: An openly gay NHRA racer prepares to make history
Travis Shumake may have been stopped for a variety of reasons.
Shumake intended to made his debut as the National Hot Rod Association’s first openly homosexual driver nearly two years ago.
As the son of NHRA Funny Car drag-racing veteran Tripp Shumake, the younger Shumake grew up in that milieu, attending drag races at Kansas Speedway every summer and racing shifter karts with his father in the late 1990s.
Shumake’s father died in a motorbike accident in 1999, yet something kept drawing him back to the sport – back to following in his father’s footsteps.
So he began driving.
“I came in 18 months ago thinking I’d be a world champion, driving the fastest cars on the planet,” the Phoenix resident claimed. “Things were just going to go my way.
Nothing has since gone his way.
First, he wrecked at a November Funny Car qualification event in Las Vegas, severing his mentor Randy Myer’s car in two. Shumake avoided the incident with only two damaged ribs, despite having raced well enough to meet his licensing criteria on a previous run.
Then, during a Pomona racing event, Shumake’s expensive safety equipment was taken from the pit area. Shumake failed to qualify for a separate event in Las Vegas, the first time the Myer’s dragster he was driving had done so in more over eight years.
After all of this, Shumake has learned to moderate his expectations, even as he prepares to become the first openly homosexual drag racer at the NHRA Camping World Series at Heartland Motorsports Park this Friday.
He’ll do it in a rainbow-colored dragster adorned with rainbow parachutes, due to a one-of-a-kind sponsorship agreement between Visit Topeka, the city’s destination marketing group, and Pride Kansas, as the organizations strive to promote the city in an inclusive manner.
Leave a Reply