A Mini History of Racing in Minnesota
No. 2 in a Series
by Harvey WestSprint Car Racing...The shrinks tell us that our lives can be changed by memorable events in our childhood. Mine sure was, and the resulting obsession has cost me thousands and thousands of dollars since. The year was 1941. I was six, and my parents made the mistake of taking me to the sprint car races at the Minnesota State Fair. They weren’t called sprint cars in those days, but just race cars or big cars (to differentiate them from the then popular midget race cars).
That day in ’41, two Midwest racing legends were facing off. Emory Collins and Gus Shrader were the headliners of the IMCA, which sanctioned most races at state and county fairs at the time. Collins and Shrader drove 318 cubic inch Offenhausers, the largest ever built. The IMCA had wide open rules on such things, compared to the AAA, which preceded USAC as a sprint car sanctioning body. The sound of those oversize Offies as they accelerated down the backstretch, their Riverside knobby tires spewing rooster tails of dirt, and the exotic reek of burned castor oil lubricant was just too much of a sensory overload for an impressionable six-year-old, and my fate as a life-long motorsports addict was sealed.
My euphoria was put on hold when World War II broke out, and my interest temporarily shifted to building balsa wood fighter plane models rather than race cars. Auto racing was the only sport banned by the government during the war. In 1946, the State Fair was cancelled due to a horrendous polio epidemic, but the following year, I was in the stands on opening day. My boyhood idol, Emory Collins in his red No. 7 Riverside Tires Offy was there, but sadly, Shrader was not, having been killed at Shreveport, Louisiana a few weeks after I saw him race in ’41. Emory blew them all away that day in ’47, to my delight. Sprint car races were an eagerly-awaited annual event at the State Fair, and at many Minnesota county fairs, as well. Last year, in visiting with a long-retired IMCA sprint car driver, I was a little disillusioned to learn that the promoters often "encouraged" the front runners to make the finishes close. The Collins-Shrader rivalry was an effective promotional gimmick, and runaway finishes just wouldn’t pack the grandstands with farmers at Faribault, Owatonna, Albert Lea, Austin and elsewhere.
In the forties and fifties, only the higher-buck drivers drove Offies. The field was filled out by flathead Ford and Mercury V-8s and other stock
blocks. Overhead valve conversions of the Ford Model A and Model B were quite common. These used full-pressure lubrication and heads manufactured by Riley, McDowell, Hal, Cragar and others.
The liberal IMCA rules also permitted the powerful 440 cubic inch Ranger aircraft engine, which was run inverted from its aerial application. The Hisso was also used (the racers’ name for the Hispano-Suiza aircraft engine).The fifties saw the addition of AAA as a State Fair sanctioning body. These races were held on the opening weekend of the Fair, and Indy 500 luminaries such as Johnny Parsons and Troy Ruttman competed, giving the event some big-time hype. On Labor Day weekend, the IMCA drivers took over, and on the final day, a special Minnesota State Championship race was held, featuring only Gopher State drivers.
Sprint Cars, continued on page 5
Tonneau On-Line April 2001
Page 3
Copyright 2001, Land O'Lakes Region Last revised: March 13, 2003
