In late summer 1988 Jimmy Sills was a broken man. He was homesick, beaten mentally and physically, and heartsick following the devastating crash that paralyzed his good friend Brad Doty. Survivor’s guilt? Sills had lined up alongside Doty prior to that fateful opening-lap crash that previous July 23.

After weeks of soul searching, Sills decided that at age 35 he’d had enough. He was ready to retire from racing. From the depths of that moment came one of the most enduring and heartwarming stories in motorsports—the birth of Luke Warmwater. In his 2019 book Life With Luke the incomparable Sills tells the tale.

 

I had seen a lot of guys try to step away from the sport, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy. But I was determined that I was going to completely retire from driving a race car, once and for all.

Conflicted? Damn right I was conflicted.

On one hand I liked the idea. I had visions of maybe reconciling with Karen, and we could have a normal life as a family. That appealed to me, a lot. We had a young daughter and I was excited about the idea of time at home with her, living like a normal person.

But there was a ton of uncertainty in my mind. It was like this emotional battle inside my head; for an hour or so I would be content with the idea of quitting, and then a voice took over my thought process with something along the line of, “Are you crazy? You are a race driver and that’s all you’ll ever be! It’s what you’re supposed to be. How dare you think you could ever be anything else!”

Back and forth, all day and all night, for the next few months.

I landed a job with Dick Anderson of Carrera Shocks, and also James Standley of DESIGN 500 Racewear. Neither position was a 9-to-5 job in the traditional sense; I was a factory rep, traveling to the races to represent each company and would earn money on sales.

It was painful to be on the sidelines at most of the World of Outlaws races the next few weeks in California. As the days passed I started to formulate an idea about how I might end my career in style.

Doug Wolfgang had just split from the Marks & Kepler ride, and they inquired if I’d be interested in running the car. The final event in the California swing was the Gary Patterson Memorial race at Baylands Raceway Park (not officially sanctioned by the Outlaws), a race that had eluded me the past few years. I finished behind Steve Kinser two or three times, and that bugged me. Gary was a friend of mine and I really wanted to win the race named in his honor.

I called David Vodden, the promoter at Baylands. I told him my plan: I wanted to run one final race, and then I would be retired. And, oh by the way…how about if the track kicked in $1,000 show-up money? I had won a lot of races at Baylands and I figured the fact that it was my final race could sell a few additional tickets.

Vodden agreed, but he was skeptical about the retirement part. “You’d better not be lying to me, Sills!” he said.

“I’m serious,” I told him. “I am totally, completely serious. This is my last race.”

“We’re going to publicize the hell out of this,” Vodden insisted. “You’d better not come back racing next March!”

The idea of running one final race made good sense, particularly since it was at Baylands. I had won 49 races there, and it would be cool to make it an even 50. The idea of it happening at Gary Patterson’s race was even more special.

The night of the race they did indeed make a big deal out of my retirement. Dave Pusateri from Trophy City presented me with a plaque during a presentation before the race, and it was all very nice. I want everyone to know that at that moment I was completely serious about retiring. It wasn’t a game.

I ended up finishing second, again to Steve Kinser. When the race was over I changed into my street clothes and stuffed my helmet and gloves and driving uniform in my bag and zipped it closed.

Just like that…as I zipped the bag closed it was like I was bringing an end to my driving career. After 14 years, I figured the whole deal had run its course. Over. Done. Retired.

Winter came, and it was time to go on with my life. I was now a “normal person” (I have to admit, that label didn’t work at that time, and it still doesn’t work today) and I was going to make my way in the mainstream world. That was my plan and I was seriously focused on making it work.

For a little while.

I was struggling financially at that time, mainly because it was the off-season. That made it tough to earn any commission, and it’s not fun to watch your bank account steadily drop as the weeks pass by.

And there was no getting around this fact: Life was boring without racing. A racer looks forward to the weekends because they’re exciting, and when you take those weekends away, life suddenly feels boring and empty.

Right about the time my bank balance was flirting with negative numbers I got a call from my friend John Kelly in Australia. John wanted to know if I would come to his track, Archerfield Speedway outside Brisbane, to drive a few races.

I told John that would be okay, but he had to keep everything quiet. I made the trip and ran several races, winning two—one of which was the Queensland State Championship. So my official retirement lasted about three months, which is pretty much everybody’s off-season anyways.

Jimmy Sills, aka Luke Warmwater, in 1985 (Marty Gordner photo)

 

This deal is a lot like a guy who has a criminal skill—safe cracking, for example—and he goes to jail for a while. When he gets out he has every intention of going straight, but he is streamlined into the real world with no job skills—other than cracking a safe. He has no money coming in, and almost everyone in his circle—friends and former “co-workers”—is involved in illegal activity. Pretty soon he’s wondering where his next meal is coming from and somebody calls and asks if he’s interested in cracking “just one more” little safe. What are the odds the guy is going to say yes? I’d say they are pretty high.

All I knew was racing. That’s all I had done since I was 18 years old. When I tried to quit, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was struggling financially, I was recently divorced—and maybe a little bit lonely—and I was just kinda lost. So when John called it made sense to take him up on his offer, because my bank account was in a desperate place.

I didn’t want to quit racing because I didn’t love it. I never stopped loving racing. It’s just that it’s so damned hard, it wears you down. You’re on the road nearly all the time, and you’re wracked with guilt because being gone so much probably makes you a lousy father. When you’re home you’re antsy because you aren’t making any money, but when you’re on the road you’re feeling bad because you’re away from your family.
You see what normal people do on weekends—camping, boating, family reunions, concerts—and that looks pretty attractive.

Plus, racing is hard on your body. Even if you’re fortunate enough to avoid death and total destruction, you’re old before your time. Concussions, broken bones, burns, highway accidents; I don’t care who it is; racing sprint cars will eventually take a toll on your physical state.

That’s what led me to try and step away. I was completely serious about quitting, no doubt about it. But what I discovered was that it’s very, very hard to quit, especially when you’re only 35 years old.

Just before I left for Australia I heard from Jim Wellington, who asked if I’d be interested in running his midget at Chico in May. I agreed to drive the car, but I told Jim that my participation had to be top secret. In fact, I told him I’d probably not even use my own name.

Lots of racers through the years have raced under an alias, for different reasons. Maybe you didn’t want your employer to know you were driving a race car, or maybe you didn’t want your wife to know you made an extra $300 this past weekend. Sometimes you used an alias because you’d get in trouble with another racing club for running outside their group.

In my case I was thinking about that big retirement ceremony they did for me at Baylands the previous September. I felt pretty bad about a retirement that didn’t even last six months.

So I came up with a new racing name: Luke Warmwater, from Hot Springs, Arkansas.

May rolled around and I headed for Chico. The promoter, John Padjen, respected my privacy and agreed they wouldn’t use my real name in any of the results or news stories. But I ended up winning the damned race and I had to go to the front straightaway for the trophy presentation.

I was still sitting in the race car when John came walking up with a big grin on his face.

“What are you going to do now?” he said.

“I’ll just leave my helmet on,” I answered.

“No, you’ve got to take it off,” John insisted. “The fans will be wondering what’s going on if you don’t.”

I reluctantly took off my helmet, and it wasn’t five seconds before I heard someone up in the stands—as clear as day—say, “Oh, bullshit, that ain’t no Luke Warmwater…that’s Sills!”

But the wheels were in motion. The next weekend I drove Jerry Ponzo’s sprint car at Chico, with Richard Brown wrenching. It was a NARC event, and Brent Kaeding was a board member with NARC and he insisted that we put rookie stripes on the car because he had never seen Luke race before. Well, Luke won again.

The following week it was another NARC race at Grass Valley. As Luke passed Tim Green for the lead the red flag waved, and by NARC rules they reverted to the previous lap for the restart lineup. But before the race could resume it was called due to a curfew, and Luke was officially scored second.

Now Luke has two wins and a “woulda.”

A few days later my phone rang, and it was Jim Burrow of Washington. Jim’s son Bobby had punched an official and was suspended for a week, and they were leading the car owner points at Skagit and needed somebody to drive their car this weekend. Luke sprang into action and headed north, where he won a 360-ci race and finished second in a 410-ci race.

By this time everybody seemed to know that Luke Warmwater of Hot Springs, Arkansas was really a guy named Sills from Placerville, California. The PA announcers were starting to say, “This is Jimmy Sills, racing as Luke Warmwater…” and that took all the fun out of it.

My retirement from racing was short-lived, definitely. By June of 1989 I was once again driving race cars for a living, and I wasn’t looking back.

Luke Warmwater was all in good fun, and it was a chapter of my life that I’ll never completely put behind me. I continue to be amazed that all these years later, whenever my name comes up somebody inevitably refers to me as Luke Warmwater. It was a small episode, really, that lasted just a few weeks. But I’ll never live it down.

Which is okay. I have no problem with people having fun with it. I have fun with it, too.
Who would have ever dreamed that an offhand alias—Luke Warmwater from Hot Springs, Arkansas—would stay with me for the rest of my life? Life with Luke has been pretty good.


Postscript: Jimmy Sills continued his championship career until the late 2000’s. In 2006 he was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame.

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To learn more about Life With Luke, click here: https://daveargabright.com/life-with-luke-1/

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