Driver

Although his race-anywhere mindset kept him from piling up records within a single sanctioning body, Opperman’s prodigious skills put him atop many experts’ lists of all-time best sprint car specialists and helped pave the way for today’s World of Outlaws. This original “outlaw” progressed in his 20s from motorcycles to midgets and sprint cars. In 1970 he attacked the tough Central Pennsylvania tour, winning first time out at Selinsgrove and Williams Grove. The following season he copped two jewels of the sport’s Triple Crown, the Knoxville Nationals and Western World Championship. In 1972 he won a staggering 44 of 90 main events and capped a successful 1976 season by winning the Hulman Classic. Opperman also had three Top 10 finishes in nine IndyCar starts. His career was cut short by two crashes. The first, at the 1976 Hoosier Hundred, inflicted head injuries that seemed to diminish his abilities. A 1981 accident at Jennerstown left him paralyzed. Opperman was an inaugural 1990 inductee into the Sprint Car Hall of Fame.