Historic Racing - Printable Version

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Historic Racing - JasonB - 2nd-Dec-23

For anybody that is interested in the history of motorsport, then Historic Racing have both a website and a facebook page which have some interesting content.

Their website looks a little uncared for, but it has some good articles...
https://historicracing.com/

Their facebook page posts more frequently, but it could just be old content from the website...
https://www.facebook.com/historicracing

I wouldn't normally scrape other people's content, but since I'm promoting them here I hope they won't mind, and I thought this was QI. Not my usual area of interest, but there you go.

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Quote:There were 24 boardtracks built between 1910 and 1928. The 21 years of boardtrack racing is probably the most fascinating period in American racing history.
The first was the Los Angeles Coliseum Motordome at Playa-Del-Rey in Venice, California. It opened on April 8, 1910 and was based on the French velodromes used for bicycle racing. The track and others that followed were built using 2x4 inch (51x100 mm) boards with banked corners.

From the 68 tons of nails used to build the 1.25 mile oval at Cotati, California, on the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, to the fastest track of the lot, the 1.5 mile 45 degree banked oval in Atlantic City, NJ, each had many unique stories in their all too short history.

Miller, turned in a lap of 147.299 mph. To put this in perspective, this was ten years and only 24 mph short of the 171.78 mph race lap set by Bernd Rosemeyer on the Avus banking in 1937 and was not exceeded at Indianapolis until Jim Hurtubise's lap of 149.056 in 1960.
Barney Oldfield and a sideways Jim Parsons, Venice, Calif., March 17, 1915.

Lockhart was good but the King of the Boards was evenly divided between Jimmy Murphy and Tommy Milton. Murphy turned out 50 times and won 18 of them, Tommy raced 85 times on the oil soaked timber tracks but only won 17, though he did have 43 top three finishes. No one else came close on the boards, Peter DePaolo ranked third in wins, but Peter could only claim nine wins in 48 starts. Tommy's 17 wins between 1916 and 1926 netted him a total of $134,185 and he covered a total of 10,988 miles.

The one-mile oval at Fresno, California, had the honour of lasting the longest. It opened on October 2nd 1920 and closed its doors on October 2nd 1926. Seven years of sun, rain and lack of upkeep had finally made the surface to dangerous to race on.

The shortest lifespan was Carl Fisher's 1.25 mile oval at Fulford-by-the-Sea (now known as North Miami Beach), Florida. The first race and, although no one knew it at the time, the last was held on February 22nd 1926. The race was a great success but a hurricane turned the venue to matchsticks on September 19th that year. Fulford had the dubious honour of having the steepest banking at 50 degrees. It took a speed of 110 mph just to stay on the track.
The track at Beverly Hills, California, holds the record for the closest race in the history of boardtrack racing. After 100 miles at speeds of between 110 and 115 mph Jimmy Murphy edged Benny Hill (no not that Benny Hill) by just .06 second, which equated to about 10 feet.

Whereas the largest margin of victory went to Louie Meyer when he beat Fred Frams to the finish line by eight minutes, on the 1.25 mile oval at Altoona in Tipton, Pennsylvania, and it's 4,000,000 board feet of lumber. The track was destroyed by fire on 19th May 1936, and the site is now playing fields and a parking lot.
Altoona's turns were banked at 32 degrees and were responsible for the fatal crashes of Howard Wilcox (4th April 1923); Joe Boyer (1st September 1924, the same year that he won the Indy 500); and Ray Keech (15th June 1929, just seventeen days after winning the Indy 500).

Another notable driver that failed to meet his wellness potential was Gaston Chevrolet, winner of the Indianapolis 500 in 1920 and who also perished that same year, on November 25, at a Thanksgiving Day race at the Beverly Hills Speedway.

As the angle of the banking increased so did cornering speeds. As fans sat on the outside of the track looking down at the action, any excursion outside the bounds of the circuit would often result in spectators playing a more direct role in the proceedings. On September 8th, 1912, Eddie Hasha was killed at the New Jersey Motordrome near Atlantic City. The accident killed 4 boys and injured 10 more people. The story made the front page of the New York Times and the press started calling boardtracks "murderdromes".

The last of the 24 tracks to be built was in Woodbridge, New Jersey, in 1927 but was replaced by a dirt track in 1933 due to the high cost of maintaining the boards. Tracks needed new 2x4 boards every five years and during the last decade of racing, carpenters would often have to repair the track from below as holes appeared during races.
This high cost coupled with the high cost to 'chaps' spelled the end of this era of American Motorsport.

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