Team Members: Tim Winker

Tim Winker at the
1996 Saab 900 Talladega Challenge

Tim Winker has an eclectic motor sports background. He began by working and competing in time-speed-distance rallies and autocrosses with the University of Minnesota Sports Car Club. He also worked races at Donnybrooke (now Brainerd International Raceway) as a tech inspector, corner worker, timing and scoring, and did announcing for the professional road races.

His first wheel-to-wheel experience was at the 1977 St. Paul Winter Carnival Cup ice race, where he drove a 1960 SAAB 93F owned by his employer at the time, John Sanford of Old Volks Home. (Tim now owns that same car.) He continued in ice racing and stage rallies with a Datsun 510. He later raced a Mazda GLC on ice, and a Saab 99 in SCCA Improved Touring road races, ProRally, and ice racing.

His experience as a navigator and a writer put him on teams for such nationally known events as One Lap of America, the Alcan 5000, the Downeast 3000 and Targa Newfoundland. Winker was also part of a team that helped Saab to establish several world speed records at Talladega Speedway in 1996 (see photo).

The arrival of the ChumpCar World Series in 2010 got Winker behind the wheel again, aboard a 1992 Saab 900S. With a team of other drivers he races under the banner of Fart-hinder Racing (Swedish for Speed-bump).

Winker helped to establish the Arrowhead Sports Car Club Winter Rally Series in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan over 20 years ago, and puts on at least one event in that series each year. He was the Winter Rally Series champion in 2009 and 2013.

Winker lives near Duluth, Minnesota, on a 30-acre hobby farm where he has several old Saabs.