Biography

Being a heavy equipment mechanic by trade served Howie Hammer well in racing and frustrated many opponents over the years as well.  His training in mechanics enabled him to engineer and assemble competitive race cars and his driving ability insured that the car was going to be driven to it's limit. Many of his competitors will recall the frustration they had when timing in for a night of racing and holding the fast time for the night, they then had to watch Howie show up late, unload his car and without warming it up or testing it snatch that fast time from them.

After getting out of the service in 1973 and being a spectator for two years at Big Sky Speedway Howie decided in 1975 to give stock car racing a try.  He bought a '57 Chevy and entered it into the C-stock class where they ran inline 6 cylinder motors.  With help from Cliff Button, who worked on powering the motor, They ran the C-Stock circuit and won the season championship in his first year just beating out Bob Keller and his '67 Chevelle.

In 1992 in the Street Stock Class Howie powered his Camaro with a V-6 engine and set the track record at the old Pablo track and later on put in a 400 ci V-8 and continued to win.

Two of Howie's fondest memories were racing in the Apple Cup in Yakima, WA. where he set 2nd fast time and had just made the pass for the lead when his transmission went out. And also coming out of turn 2 at Raceway Park and driving up and over the right rear wheel of Mike Thoennes and taking a huge portion of the concrete wall out with his car.  For that spectacular move he was awarded the trophy for the worst wreck at the banquet which consisted of a piece of concrete from the wall with a wrist watch mounted on top and the words "took a lickin' and kept on tickin' " inscribed. He finished that race and afterwards remarked about how much fun he had.  But that was Howie Hammer.  Whether he was racing in Kalispell, Pablo, Yakima, Belgrade or Calgary, it was all about having fun.