Not an earthquake. Not cancer. Not a bad crash. Nothing stopped Shawn DeForest from racing and his perseverance paid off. Finally, he won his first championship, earning it in the Xtreme Late Model Series with a 27-year-old Rocket Chassis late model.
The Earthquake
After two seasons of racing a street stock, Shawn put in the offer on his first late model right before the Loma Prieta earthquake hit on October 17, 1989. This was the earthquake that famously disrupted the broadcast of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics.
The round trip to pick up the car normally would take three hours. Because of the damage the roads sustained from the earthquake, that haul turned into 10.
The Cancer
Shawn bought the late model he still runs today in 1998. A few years later, after he returned from racing in Australia, he made a startling discovery.
“I woke up one morning [in February 2002] with a big lump in my neck,” Shawn says. “I thought it was just a swollen lymph node. The doctor said I needed an X-ray. He gave me antibiotics and I went on my way — I never got the X-ray because I didn’t want to wait in the waiting room. When I went back to the doctor, because the lump was still there, he demanded I get an X-ray. That led to a biopsy. The day before Thanksgiving, 2002, they told me I had cancer.”
Shawn then went through grueling treatments, but still did what he loved. He crewed for Dino Tomassi at the Chili Bowl.
“I had started chemo and radiation,” Shawn says. “The doctors gave me ‘The Stanford Five,’ a cocktail of drugs, including mustard gas. It felt like a kick in the teeth. The doctors said the right dosage inserted into my veins would cure the cancer. It was tough, but here I am today.”
The Crash
In September 2021, while leaving his race shop and heading home, a motorcycle T-boned Shawn’s pickup truck.
“A Harley going 100 mph ran a red and hit me in the driver’s door,” Shawn says. “His helmet crashed through the door window, hitting me in the head and splitting it open. I was in the hospital two days when the California Highway Patrol told me that he died. It was so tough to hear — I broke down and cried. He was married, a young man just starting out in life.”
The accident broke Shawn’s back in three locations. He could wiggle his toes, but could not walk. Shawn spent the next six months in rehab.
“I questioned whether this was my new reality — not being able to walk,” Shawn says. “Rehab worked. Against the doctor’s wishes, I drove a race car pretty quick. I took Mike Enos’ IMCA modified out for a spin. It was hard to do — so painful — I told him it hurts so bad I can’t drive if the track is bumpy.”
The Car
Racing certainly has changed since Shawn first bought his Rocket in 1998.
“There’s a photo of me driving my car at Hanford [California’s Kings Speedway] 27 years ago with the left-front 4 feet off the ground — it looked like it was ready to go over,” Shawn says. “Now that same car is sealed to the track. The left front is stuck in the dirt. The spoiler is up in the air as high as we can get it, and the left rear is up on the chain limiter.”
The Rocket isn’t the same car Shawn bought in 1998. Far from it.
“There is a long list of improvements we did to the car: raised the right-side frame rail, raised the center member, raised the strut rod cross member, relocated upper control arm mounts, raised the engine and more,” Shawn says. “This year we got a Wehrs spring smasher and then a CTW shock dyno. The spring smasher was huge — when we got the car done, we knew it was going to go fast.”
In fact, the investment in the new tools allowed Shawn to save money elsewhere.
“We were able to take inexpensive Afco Blue- and Silver-line shocks and make them work for us,” he says.
The Championship
“Over this past winter, [my son] Ryan was planning a wedding and didn’t think he would be racing in 2025,” Shawn says. “Ryan said, ‘Dad, we have to focus on getting you a championship.
“Deep down inside of me, I believed if I was ever going to win a championship, this would be year,” Shawn adds.
Shawn, who builds engines, pulled off the shelf a power plant he built in 2014 for his late model.
“It was an old IMCA 406 cubic-inch engine — iron block, iron head, flat tappet, no rollers and even pedestal rockers with a stud girdle,” Shawn says. “What was unbelievable was that we were running a two-barrel Holley when the rest of the field was running four barrels. I had to take the air cleaner off and prove it to people who were in disbelief.”
When the engine began to tire later in the season, he swapped in a 396 cubic-inch engine to finish the year. He went into the last race of the season at Marysville Raceway with a 16-point lead over Ray Trimble.
“It was a nail-biter right up to the end, when things fell our way,” Shawn says. “I was amazed how emotional I got after winning the championship — I never won one before. It was just a dream for 34 years, and this year that dream came true.
“It’s been a long road, but here we are today,” he continues. “After all that — the earthquake, the cancer, the crash, the ups and downs of racing — everything in my life became more meaningful.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
