Hot Rod Gay Driver Will be Racing With His Racer Painted Rainbow

Travis Shumake, will be making history as the first openly gay driver to compete at NHRA nationals.

BY DAVID HUDNAL

 National Hot Rod Association competition in Topeka. 

Attendees will be greeted by a surprising counterweight to American motorsports’ historically conservative culture: a 25-foot, 4,000-horsepower, rainbow-colored car designed by Pride Kansas and driven by Travis Shumake, who will be making history as the first openly gay driver to compete at NHRA nationals.

 “Honestly, I’ve been surprised by how welcoming the racing community has been to me,” Shumake, 37, said on Tuesday afternoon while applying that rainbow wrap to his dragster at Randy Meyer Racing, in south Johnson County. “I think maybe it’s a little like Kansas in that way. It doesn’t necessarily have the most tolerant reputation. But you come here, and it is.” TOP VIDEOS Top Videos Salvador Perez’s homer key part of4-run inning in Royals win over the Sox × Shumake currently lives in New York City, but he has deep roots in the Sunflower State. His mother, Susie, grew up in Wyandotte County and later worked at Don’s Speed Shop in Lawrence. In 1971, she went to the Kansas state drag racing championships in Manhattan and met a race car driver named Tripp Shumake in the pits. 

They drove off together, got married, and settled in Phoenix, where Travis was raised. Drag racer Travis Shumake will make history at Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka this weekend as the first openly gay driver in an NHRA national event. Visit Topeka and Pride Kansas are sponsoring Shumake’s alcohol-fueled dragster, which he decorated in this rainbow motif Tuesday in Johnson County. Chris Ochsner cochsner@kcstar.com Get unlimited digital access Subscribe now for just $2 for 2 months. CLAIM OFFER Tripp Shumake was a well-known figure in the world of drag racing. He appeared in three Funny Car finals, winning two of them in 1981 and 1982. Travis grew up absorbing the culture of the sport until Tripp died in a motorcycle accident in 1999. “I used to race competitive shifter karts, which are go-karts that go about 100 miles per hour,” he said. “But when my dad passed away when I was 15, we sold the go-kart and I went into competitive cheerleading. 

That’s when I got really gay, I always joke.” Drag racer Travis Shumake works with race team manager Megan Lingner to get sponsorship decals added to the dragster Shumake will be competing in at Heartland Motorsports Park in Topeka this weekend. Chris Ochsner cochsner@kcstar.com News alerts in your inbox Sign up for email alerts and be the first to know when news breaks. SIGN UP This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Racing faded into the background as Shumake pursued a career in events planning and nonprofit work in the Phoenix area. 

When the pandemic hit, he was living in New York City and started thinking more about the future. He realized he still wanted to race. “Instead of learning to make sourdough, I started putting pen to paper to figure out how to make this happen,” Shumake said. Shumake has spent the last two years flying to Florida to do test sessions and get properly licensed for various speeds by the NHRA. There have been some hiccups along the way. “Last year, I hit a wall at 300 miles per hour and absorbed 18 lateral G’s to my chest and broke three ribs,” he said. Since recovering, Shumake has been competing at regional events, mostly on the West Coast. But Friday’s competition at Heartland Motorsports Park, televised on Fox Sports, will be his national NHRA debut. “The first big-boy event, with big crowds and TV and all the pro categories,” he said. Shumake is renting his dragster and pit crew from Randy Meyer, a former racing champion who’s built up a successful motorsports business in Stilwell over the last 45 years and whose daughters are world champion NHRA racers in their own right. “Randy is the best of the best,” Shumake said. “Working with him gives me a level of street cred, I think. 

He’s this very all-American race car driver from Kansas, so it’s sort of a thing of, well, if Randy Meyer is cool with Travis being gay, I guess we’re all cool with Travis being gay.” Travis Shumake adds decals to the dragster he will be racing in Topeka this weekend. Shumake has deep ties to Kansas and the NHRA.

 His mother grew up in Wyandotte County, and his late father, Tripp Shumake, was an NHRA national funny car champion racer. Chris Ochsner cochsner@kcstar.com The barrier-breaking nature of Shumake’s race this weekend also dovetailed nicely with the marketing aims of Visit Topeka, the city’s tourism agency, which has lately been working to bleach the stain of Topeka’s reputation as the land of the notoriously anti-LGBTQ Westboro Baptist Church. Together with Pride Kansas, which is hosting the state’s first weeklong Pride celebration starting Sept. 17, Visit Topeka is sponsoring Shumake’s car, which will be wrapped in familiar Pride rainbow colors and outfitted with matching parachutes. “Recognizing the LGBTQ+ community of Kansas on such a large scale really demonstrates that inclusivity is a core value of Kansas,” said Shawn Zarazua, director of Pride Kansas. “We want people to see that Kansas has a very diverse population and culture,” Shumake said he’s glad this historic moment for the sport is happening in Kansas. “We actually used to come to this race in the summers when I was a kid,” he said. “And I still have family in Wyandotte County. So competing here at nationals, it’s meaningful on several different levels.”

 The Menards NHRA Nationals will be held Friday through Sunday at Heartland Motorsports Park, 7530 S.W. Topeka Blvd., Topeka. See heartlandmotorsports.us.

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