Okay, so yesterday I was messing around, trying to figure out this whole Ricky Stenhouse Sr. thing. I mean, I saw some chatter online and figured, “Hey, why not dig in?”
First thing I did, naturally, was fire up Google. Typed in “ricky stenhouse sr” and just started clicking on whatever looked remotely interesting. Got a bunch of stuff about Ricky Stenhouse Jr., the NASCAR driver, but that wasn’t what I was after. I needed the senior version.
Kept digging. Eventually found some older forum posts and articles mentioning him in the context of racing back in the day. Seems like he was a pretty well-known figure in the local racing scene around Memphis, Tennessee. Not a national superstar or anything, but definitely a respected name.
The tricky part was piecing together the actual details. A lot of what I found was just snippets and anecdotes. So, I started making a little notepad file to keep track of things. Nothing fancy, just a plain text doc.
- Ricky Stenhouse Sr. – Memphis area racer
- Dirt track racing focus
- Mentored Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Possible engine builder? (Need to verify)
See, the engine builder thing was interesting. I saw a couple of mentions of him working on engines, but nothing concrete. So, that became my next target. I started searching for variations like “Ricky Stenhouse Sr. engine building” and “Stenhouse Racing engines”.
That led me to some older racing classifieds and forum discussions. Bingo! Found a few posts where people were talking about Stenhouse Racing engines and how they were “built tough.” One guy even claimed they were “unbeatable on the short track.”
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. So, I added that to my notepad:
- Ricky Stenhouse Sr. – Memphis area racer
- Dirt track racing focus
- Mentored Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
- Engine builder – Stenhouse Racing engines
Then, I tried to find some actual photos or videos of him racing. This was tough. The internet wasn’t exactly overflowing with content from the ’80s and ’90s local racing scene in Memphis. I spent a good hour just sifting through grainy images and low-res videos.
Finally, I struck gold! Found a super low-quality video on some random video site. It showed a race at a dirt track. The quality was terrible, but you could clearly see a car with “Stenhouse Racing” on the side. And the announcer mentioned Ricky Stenhouse Sr. during the race. It was blurry, but it was him!
After that, I tried searching social media, hoping to find some old racing buddies or family members who might have some more info. No luck. Either they weren’t online, or they didn’t have much of a digital footprint.
So, yeah, that’s pretty much where I ended up. It’s not a complete biography or anything, but I managed to piece together a decent picture of who Ricky Stenhouse Sr. was and what he did. He was a local racing legend, a mentor to his son, and a talented engine builder. Cool stuff. Maybe I’ll dig some more later.
