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  • Driver Ego: The Key to Building a Successful Racing Series

    Driver Ego: The Key to Building a Successful Racing Series

    The Stephen Cox Blog is Presented by McGunegill Engine Performance

    The easiest way to increase car count in short track racing and amateur road racing is to keep your drivers happy. Really happy. Fortunately, there is a very effective and affordable way to do that.

    It was four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, August 29, 2004. It was blazing hot at the Hallett Motor Racing Circuit just outside of Tulsa. Although we missed the setup and were posting slower-than-usual lap times, we won the GT-2 qualifying race after the leader retired with a broken supercharger belt.

    I climbed out of the race car drenched in sweat, knowing that I’d won a race I didn’t deserve. The track owner, the late Mike Stephens, was setting up victory lane and preparing to hand out trophies to the day’s winners. I stopped by to chat with him just before the main event and jokingly asked which trophy was mine. Mike laughed and then responded with some of the most truthful words ever uttered in motorsports.

    “Stephen, I’m not in the racing business. I’m in the ego gratification business. I promise we’ll take care of you.”  

    World Racing League championship ring

    The racing driver in me doesn’t like to hear that, but it’s true. Drivers want to participate in events that reward their ego. They’re interested in events that leave behind detailed records so that future generations can see and recognize their efforts.

    Records matter. Even the small ones. Heat race wins, track records, qualifying race wins, entry lists… these things are important to many racing drivers. They want to know that the series keeps careful records that will be made widely available and preserved long after their careers are over.

    Some may call this nothing more than childish ego. Your drivers and teams will consider it an honest, justifiable pride in years of hard work. But ultimately, what we think doesn’t really matter because human nature remains the same.

    The World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series is now re-writing their record book to include drivers who won A-main races during multi-day events. Previously, drivers who had won feature races on anything other than the final night of the event weren’t credited with official wins. Now they are. This brings a host of new, officially recognized winners into the record books. It makes a lot of drivers and teams very happy, and it didn’t cost the World of Outlaws a cent.

    World Racing League president Joey Todd offers a championship ring to the winners of the U. S. Endurance Championship at the Circuit of the Americas every December. Almost every racing driver I’ve ever met would trade all the trophies and accolades he’d ever earned for just one championship ring.

    It’s also a smart public relations move because a ring is worn regularly and continues to advertise for the series for decades to come. Championship rings hold a special mystique. Nobody gets a ring for participation. Few people will ask about a trophy after it disappears into a closet, but everyone wants to know, “Hey, how did you get that ring?”

    Midvale Speedway has begun posting the names of their track record holders on the front page of their website. It gives drivers something to shoot for. It shows that the series is interested in promoting their own teams and recognizing achievement at their track. It’s a great move that costs the track nothing.

    Every racing series and local track should have a master record book that is digitally distributed at no charge to the racing media, permanently posted on the series website and sent to every online racing database after each season. It should include every team and driver possible, and every record imaginable.

    It costs nothing to include short track heat race wins, track records and class champions in your record book, but your teams and drivers will take notice. They will appreciate the recognition.

    For better or worse, I really believe that Mike Stephens was right. We’re not in the racing business. We’re in the ego gratification business.

    Stephen Cox

    Sopwith Motorsports Television Productions

    Driver, FIA EPCS sports cars and Super Cup Stock Car Series

    Co-host, Mecum Auctions on NBCSN

  • GHOST TRACKS: Revisiting Indiana’s Armscamp Speedway

    GHOST TRACKS: Revisiting Indiana’s Armscamp Speedway

    “No Trespassing” signs were everywhere. I had taken a wonderful 90-minute ride on my Triumph Bonneville to see the old race track and I didn’t want to go home empty-handed. It took half an hour to find someone who assured me that I could take a few quick photos of the former Armscamp Speedway in Alexandria, Indiana.

    There’s not much left. The south concrete wall still stands, marking the asphalt track’s fast main straightaway. The smaller infield track, which circles inside the quarter-mile main facility, is easier to make out. Half-century-old trees have grown up and through everything, including the old track surface itself.

    Built in 1941, Armscamp Speedway was at its zenith in the 1950s under the watchful eye of owner Paul Karnes, universally known as “Whitey.” If you could travel back in time and attend an average night at Armscamp Speedway, there is absolutely nothing that you would not recognize. You would feel right at home.

    You could watch races on Friday or Sunday nights. Occasionally a special double feature would be held with a complete midget show running Sunday afternoon at 2:30 pm, followed by a “hardtopper” show at 8:30 pm the same evening for stock cars. For a dollar, you could watch them both (about $6.50 in today’s devalued currency).

    The entire nightly routine would feel familiar to a modern short track fan. See if there’s anything here you recognize…

    Qualifying, or “time trials’ as they were then known, began an hour before the first race. If you could run the quarter-mile bullring in about 17.5 seconds, you were among the fastest cars.

    Fifty or more “hardtops” would enter the event, divided up into a trophy dash and four 10-lap heat races. The faster cars advanced into one of two 15-lap “semifinals,” with the fastest semifinal cars transferring to a 25-lap feature event.

    Amateur racers competed in “pleasure cars,” sort of an early version of street stocks. All other drivers were listed as professionals if their class paid a purse. The fact that most of them held day jobs mattered not. If you got paid, you were a professional racing driver.

    Just like today, a handful of the fastest open-wheel touring pros could make a decent living by racing full time. When Bob Breading of Indianapolis won the first of his three eventual Consolidated Midget Racing Association titles in 1946, his earnings for the year totaled $14,000. He would spend more than half of that on travel and car maintenance, but $6-7,000 was an upper middle class living in 1946 when the average US annual salary was barely $2,600.

    Special events paid more. A $2,000 total purse for a special main event was a big payday in the early 1950s, and a common sum for special touring series events or 100-lap championship features.

    Does all this still sound familiar?

    Drivers and officials at Armscamp Speedway argued over fairness and budgets just like today. Whitey Karnes introduced a new rule for the 1952 season declaring that any car winning three features must be sold to the first bidder for five hundred dollars. If no one bought it, the driver was free to continue competing in it. The “claim” rule is standard for many Midwestern short tracks today.

    Armscamp’s 1953 rules package was exactly ten sentences long. This is an exact quote: “Motor… anything you can’t see (is okay). If the motor looks stock outwardly, it’s okay. No tear downs!”

    The successful drivers were well known to race fans throughout the region. Names like Huston Bundy, Audie Swartz, Johnny Arnold, Francis Morris and Bill Holloway were in the newspaper every week.

    In 1953, Holloway was a 29-year-old from Muncie who built his own cars, managed the family garage, held a full-time position at Delco and ran four or more short track races every week. The previous year he had set single lap, 5-lap, 10-lap, 15-lap and 50-lap speed records at Armscamp while posting more Hardtop feature wins than any other driver. He raced for thirty years in stock cars and midgets before taking up motorcycles. He was still riding a 1200cc bike (rapidly) at age 83. If they’re going to build a Hall of Fame, guys like Holloway belong in it. He was typical of the local heroes who lit up Midwestern tracks every weekend in the middle of the 20th century.

    Armscamp Speedway ran its final race in the summer of 1967, after 26 years as a mainstay on the Indiana/Ohio short track racing circuit.

    If you could travel back in time to Armscamp Speedway in the 1940’s and 50’s, every single moment of your experience would be familiar. It would feel like home. You would instantly become comfortable with the format, the atmosphere and even the fans. It is shocking how little has really changed throughout the history of short track racing.

    The ruins of Armscamp Speedway can be found about a hundred yards northwest of the Centennial Steel building on the north side of State Road 28, less than a mile west of the junction with State Road 9 in Alexandria, Indiana. There’s not much to see, but I still considered it worth the trip. It’s like having your own personal time machine.

    But be sure and ask first. There are “No Trespassing” signs everywhere.

    Stephen Cox

    Sopwith Motorsports Television Productions

    Driver, Super Cup Stock Car Series & FIA EGT Championship

    Co-host, Mecum Auctions on NBCSN