I want to my first “big car” race at Williams Grove in June, 1959. The race itself was stopped at 16 laps by one of the heaviest downpours I’d ever seen in my life (this was back when the grandstands were still all wood and the place had a roof), but not before the Grove’s third turn had tragically ended Van Johnson’s life. This would also be the last year the same upright-style Offys that had run in the Indy 500 would barnstorm to huge crowds at dirt tracks across the nation during the summer months. In hindsight, the cars we saw race at the Grove, although driven by the Brickyard stars, were probably shorter wheel-base sprint cars instead of the longer wheel-base Champ cars many teams ran at Indy. In the last few years of the classic Offenhauser-powered upright era, with many older sprint cars having been crafted from lighter midgets whose original wheelbase was extended, most anything was possible. Despite the almost total domination of equipment specially-built for just the Indy 500, Indy winners did come from the ranks of pure upright-style Offy-powered dirt sprints.  

Note: 
My own personal-favorite classic sprint image would have to be the distinctive tail-tanks of the Meskowski-crafted cars!

The end of the dual-purpose dirt/pavement upright-engine era began with the introduction of the “roadster” style of Indy car, in which the by-then ubiquitous Offy engines were laid over to reduce the height and front cross-section of the car bodies for less wind resistance. These lumbering behemoths proved somewhat heavy and too wide for most dirt tracks and their suspensions were a tad too sophisticated for the rough and tumble style of dirt racing. Rumors still abound of at least one, and perhaps more, front-drive attempts in this time period. These newer cars themselves soon became prey to the ultra-light, monocoque construction of the F1-style Lotuses with their rear-engines and pavement-only suspensions, severing the link between dirt tracks and Indy, until slots were once again opened up by the newly-formed Indy Racing League.

Tony George, of the Indianapolis Speedway Georges, decided to set up a series to recapture Indy’s roots and give talented open wheel dirt-track racers like Tony Stewart their shot at the Brickyard. The IRL, since renamed the Indy Car Series has done just that. Outstanding drivers from both dirt and pavement open-wheel ranks now have a viable path to Indy and other series. Why, one even became the NASCAR champion!

Once the attorneys had squeezed everything they could out of the various IRL and CART naming rights scuffles, CART was re-christened the Champ Car World Series, although I do wish USAC would have kept the Champ Car name for their Silver Crown cars. I also question the “Big Bucks Cup” name for NASCAR’s top series. Grand National Stock Cars was a perfectly good name for their premiere division. Maybe the real reason the France family opted to change things was that the current Busch Grand National crowd argued that the “Sportsman Division” name wasn’t sporty enough.

Lots of us ‘older folk’ bemoan the passing of various ‘eras’ of racing. I miss the simpler times and sure do wish some fondly-remembered earlier kinds of racing, racers, race tracks and cars were still around. However, I’ve realized something quite important. The cars may have changed a lot over the years since I first became involved with dirt-track racing and my hair may be mostly grey now, but make no mistake about it;  

We’re still goin’ fast !

© 2003
Will Eberle

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