Biography

    

    Every racecar driver and crew member at Montana Raceway Park is familiar with Bruce Krause. He is the man who heads the crew tasked with cleaning up the mess after a wreck or inadvertant cruise through the infield. While this is a formidable job, this is just a small piece of who this man really is.

    Bruce has worked at Raceway Park since it opened in 1991. He worked for Able Body Shop who for the first few years supplied their wrecker and Bruce to pull disabled cars off the track. When John Slack & Sharon Slack, the owners and builders of the track, bought their own wrecker they recruited Bruce to run it and he can be seen this year again cleaning up the mess that accompanies tight competion. However, he will not only be leading the "rock" crew but also setting up the pits for races, cleaning and setting up the stands and even picking up trash if needed. Bruce's love for racing translates to doing anything needed to make sure that the show goes on.

    Bruce started in racing by pitting for Kelvin Stinger in 1978 at Big Sky Speedway. Then in 1981, in an effort to get more people involved with racing at a reasonable cost, he and Dave McManus started the Bomber class. This was a class of large, full framed cars that required all glass and trim to be removed and for the driver's protection concrete in the drivers door and a piece of well casing behind the drivers seat. Everything else, including tires was stock. For awhile they even had a "tap to pass" rule which meant you could'nt pass anyone without hitting them first. This class became wildly popular. Bruce drove a Bomber built by Essential Speed Products owner and track announcer Doug McDougal for awhile before switching to an old Cadilac. He then bought a Buick Skylark from Ken Lapp and raced it in the street stock class.

    One of his fondest memories is racing one of Gary Gudmundson's Nostalgia racecars in a tour of Billings and Belgrade in the late "80's. He also vividly remembers seeing the underside of Ron Dexter's Late Model as it passed over the top of where he and his wrecker were sitting after Dexter got hit and took a ride through the dandelions in the 2000 Montana 200.

Bruce Krause has done it all and more for his love of racing. From driving, rule making and crew leadership to collecting trash and hauling off wrecked cars, he has more than earned his place as one of the 2016 inductees into the NWMSCRA Hall of Fame.