Holbrook racing icon zooms into Hall of Fame

LINCOLN, Neb. — The Nebraska Auto Racing Hall of Fame showcased and enshrined and elite eight individuals on Saturday evening at the 2024 Nebraska Auto Racing Hall of Fame Induction ceremony and banquet at the Courtside Banquet Hall.

The new members of the Hall of Fame included Jim Dalrymple of Gothenburg; Jerry Jacobs of Phillips; the late Kim Lingenfelter of Norfolk; Gale Murkle, formerly of Lincoln; the late Elmer Saathoff of Beatrice; Ron Sardeson of Greenwood and Don Vonderfecht of Holbrook.

Former Nebraska Auto Racing Hall of Fame board member, the late Dallas Whiting was honored as the 2024 Gordie Shuck Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Whiting’s children; Jeff Whiting, Jared Whiting and Monica Noel were present to receive the award on his behalf.

The new members were honored by a capacity sold out crowd of friends and family who also heard pertinent details from honorees and several stories were exchanged during the banquet.

Well-known driver, car owner and engine builder Don Vonderfecht stepped into the limelight to elaborate on many of the experiences and memories that he had during his famed career in auto racing.

Vonderfecht had developed a fascination with automobiles and all things mechanical at a young age and still finds great enjoyment with automobiles.

Some highlights from his profile submitted the NARHF:

In 1962, while working for an automobile dealership in Holdrege, Vonderfect began his racing career, competing in a 1940 Ford Sedan at the newly-opened race track in Holdrege, as well as at the fairgrounds track in Oxford.

Using a home-built flathead Ford engine, Vonderfect won nine of the first ten races he competed in at Holdrege, before wrecking the car on the tenth night when a car rolled in front of him on the day before he left for a two-year stint in the military service.

Following his discharge from the service, Vonderfect began putting together the funding and assembling his next race car, a white 1932 Ford Coupe with a 302 cubic inch Chevrolet engine.

He successfully raced the car at both Kearney and Hastings, scoring numerous feature race wins against the sleek, fabricated Sprint Cars which were quickly becoming popular in Central Nebraska at the time.

Although he continued to build all of his own engines, by the 1980s Vonderfect had begun to purchase Sprint Car frames from Kansas chassis builder LaVerne Nance and later from Gambler Chassis in Tennessee.

During the 1984 season, he wheeled his Gambler to 24 wins in 36 nights of competition. Forgoing local racing, Vonderfect began to pick and choose high-paying races and from the mid 1980s through 1993, successfully raced both a 360 and a 410 Sprinter at race tracks in more than a dozen states from Indiana to Texas to Montana.

Vonderfecht’s career in auto racing, as a driver, car owner, engine builder, and innovator has spanned portions of seven decades and continues to this day. As a driver, he won numerous feature races at tracks in Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

He was a two-time track championship at Dawson County Speedway in Lexington and also won titles at Holdrege, Oxford and North Platte. As a car owner, his cars qualified for multiple main events with the most prestigious Sprint Car sanctioning bodies in the country including the World of Outlaws (WoO), the All-Star Circuit of Champions (ASCoC), the American Sprint Car Series (ASCS), and the National Championship Racing Association (NCRA).

He continues to build race engines in his shop near Holbrook.

The Nebraska Auto Racing Hall of Fame is a special tribute for Nebraskans far and wide to be honored for their accomplishments in motorsports.

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If you feel that an individual deserves recognition; please nominate and provide a biography online at www.narhof.com. If you would like to financially assist in the honoring of the Hall of Fame, you can donate to the cause online as well. If you have any questions about the Nebraska Auto Racing Hall of Fame, you can contact a Board of Director member or email the board at narhof1998@gmail.com.