The Tangled Web of the US National Championships

[nigelred5]

I will only point out something the Daniel Patrick Moynihan said: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."



The management of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway worked ceaselessly to turn the annual Decoration Day -- later Memorial Day -- running of the International 500 Mile Sweepstakes into a major American and international sporting event, with little to no regard to American automobile racing as a whole. In doing so, they planted the seeds that later sprouted as weeds and not flowers. If there is one factor that has in the long term managed to create many of the problems that has plague the "US National Championship" concept and its various series, it is Indianapolis.

By the mid-Twenties, the Indianapolis event was the premier US event in automobile racing; by the Thirties, it was just about the only US automobile race that people knew about. During this period the AAA Contest Board and the IMS management were synonymous, to the detriment of any other racing event or series attempting to gain national recognition. If you take a step back and look at the problems that have beset the "US National Championship" for at least the past four decades, Indianapolis is always the root of the problem -- and rarely the solution.

I don't dispute any of that, but the fact remains, good or bad, Indy has defined the top level of open wheel racing in the US for almost 100 years.

[Don Capps]

I don't dispute any of that, but the fact remains, good or bad, Indy has defined the top level of open wheel racing in the US for almost 100 years.

Okay, then take it to the next dots to connect: Why? and, So what?

[Don Capps]

There has been a long, interesting, and generally over-looked, ignored or misunderstood history of discord and emity within the American racing community. Even I often have trouble at times keeping them all straight and remembering what they were fighting over at the moment. Below, are a few of the highlights.

When the American Automobile Association (AAA) was formed in 1902, one of the founding clubs was the Automobile Club of America (ACA) which was founded in 1899. Having been the US club that was in existence when the ACF was the host club for the Coupe Internationale, the ACA became the de facto US national club on the international scene, a status cemented when it was one of the founding clubs of the AIACR in 1904. However, rather than looking to the ACA, of which he was a member, in 1904 "Willy" Vanderbilt asked the AAA to sanction the event for the cup he was donating. The ACA took some askance to this given that this was definitely an international event and, therefore, within its realm. Although there was much talk, little of it was heated, in no small part due to ACA members being not only on the AAA Racing Board, but the chairs during this period. Life went on.

In the late 1907, early 1908 timeframe, the AAA changed the method by which the fees of its member clubs were assessed. This led to something of a rebellion within the AAA, one which had already been brewing for several years at this point. This had a large effect on the ACA and its displeasure led to not only heated words, but the club withdrawing from the AAA -- along with a number of other clubs it must be noted. Only after this issue of the fees had been raised did the issue of the 1907 Ostend Agreement (there is a very, very brief mention to all this here at RVM Vol 8 No 2]come into play. Contrary to what has been accepted as gospel among "racing historians," the spat twix the ACA and the AAA was centered first and foremost on the issue of fees, this leading to the arguing about other issues, the Ostend Agreement being among them.

The ACA ensured that the AAA did not get a voice in the AIACR discussions, leading to both the Vanderbilt Cup being run to its own rules and the ACA reviving its Racing Committee and creating the "Grand Prize for the ACA Gold Cup" in Savannah in November 1908. However, between the first shots fired in early 1908 and the Grand Prize race on Thanksgiving, much happened to the relationship twix the two organizations.

During the Summer of 1908, there was a battle royal twix the AAA and the ACA. After the usual exchange of adverse comments, the AAA and ACA came to an arrangement that led to the ACA continuing as the US club for international racing and the AAA being the club for national racing. This also meant that the existing problem regarding the acceptance of records recognized by the AAA but not by the AIACR as "international" record continued and would not be resoleved until the late-Twenties.

In late 1908, the AAA then folded its Racing Committee, renaming it the Contest Board by incorportating the Tours Committee into the new board. In the meanwhile, the Motor Contest Association had been formed by one group of the manufacturers and had rejected asking the AAA to take on the duties of its contest board. However, in early 1909 the MCA and the AAA reached an agreement that the AAA would perform the functions as the MCA Contest Board. The ACA and the AAA eventually reached an agreement regarding the Vanderbilt Cup and Grand Prize events, creating a holding company to manage the races. This arrangement lasted until 1916 when the last Grand Prize and WK Vanderbilt Cup races were held at Santa Monica.

In 1915, the emity between a number of promoters and the AAA Contest Board reached the boiling point and the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA) was formed. The root cause was the Contest Board's referring to any driver, promoter or event not toeing the line as an "outlaw." The reason for the Contest Board's constant, unending efforts to control racing and enforce its sanction over national racing was that part of the agreement in the creation of the Contest Board was that it had to be self-sustaining, a financial problem that plague the Contest Board for most of its life. When the Contest Board ceased operations soon after the US entered the Great War, the IMCA moved into place as the organization running US racing. In April 1918, the AAA Contest Board announced that it was returning to operation "due to popular demand," that was met with more than a little skepticism given the ill-will twix the AAA and IMCA, the latter moving into the territory that was considered as part of the AAA's domain -- at least by the AAA. The emity between the IMCA and the AAA would continue for years to come.

There is much more, of course, but these at least scrratch the surface a bit.

[call_me_andrew]

The Indy 500 is like Melange: whoever controls the spice controls the universe.

[escargokie]

I got into this group in 2003, and forgot about it until I got a "Happy Birthday" note.

Thanks.

Re: Wikipedia - It continues to improve, but it should never be considered true or accurate.

For example, the 1950 Sebring Endurance Race winner is shown as "Fritz Koster and Ralph Deshon, driving a Crosley Hot Shot". This was a six hour race, honoring the late Sam Collier.

Koster/Deshon were winners in their S750 class; the entrant was Victor Sharpe, Jr.

They were twenty laps behind the overall winner, Fred Wacker, driving an Allard/Cadillac with co-driver Frank Burrell, in class S8.0.

Other well-known drivers and entrants included Briggs Cunningham, Phil Walters, Jim Kimberly, George Weaver, Bill Spear, Luigi Chinetti, Alfred Momo, John Fitch, Paul O'Shea, Tom Cole (killed at Le Mans, and buried there), and Robert Wilder (killed at Bridgehampton).

Last week there was an outstanding article in The New York Times about Briggs Cunningham's "production cars", needed to homologate the Cunningham racing cars. Great photos of many of the surviving examples of the C-3.

I am one of the researchers for Motorsport Memorial.

I have a complete list of all the SCCA National Champions (with two questioned, who may have been DQed). More than a thousand drivers, many of them outstanding.

Escargokie (also known as E. R. Kelly, Oklahoma City)

[D-Type]

Welcome back, Rick. Your contributions will be welcomed here.

[Don Capps]

(1) The SCCA National Championships and the events for each season are another whole kettle of fish and headaches. It does not take long to realize just how "amateur" the SCCA was on so many different levels. Despite there being seveal instances of "adult" of "professional" leadership trying to save the SCCA from itself, ultimately those attempts were unsuccessful. That the SCCA has allowed someone to peddle their archives -- for profit, of course -- is both an irony and a source of frustration given that it apparently does not include the materials from the "pro" racing series, or at least very few.

(2) The Wiki concept is a nice one, a concept that seems great at first thought, but it is deeply flawed in execution and intent.

(3) Apparently, there is a new book coming out soon on the C2K, by the way.

(4) I have rarely visited the Motorsport Memorial site for any number of reasons. At some point I stopped making any notes regarding fatal racing accidents to possibly send to M2. I just did not see the point, I guess.

(5) Somewhat back on track, so to speak, I came across something by accident within the past week which was something of if not a surprise, at least a reason to activate the thought processes once more.

It has long been something of an article of faith that the first season review that C.G. "Chris" Sinsabaugh wrote for "Motor Age" was for the 1909 season. I had never given it much thought and simply accepted it as what others had long realized. So, it was interesting to find an article by Sinsabaugh entitled "Road Racing at Home and Abroad in 1908" in the 7 January 1909 (Vol. XV No. 1) issue of "Motor Age." In addition to the article on road racing, there were also additional articles -- no bylines but probably written by Sinsabaugh -- entitled "Reliability Runs of the Past Season," "Hill Climbing Popular Sport in 1908," "Other Branches of Motoring Sport," and "Support Given Competitions by Makers."

The Sinsabaugh "Motor Age" season reviews as well as others that can be found in "Horseless Age" and "The Automobile" and "Motor" among others during these years, provide nicely encapsulated views into the Zeitgeist of the world of motor contests in the latter part of the first decade of the 20th Century and into the second decade of the century. Though they rarely contain any of the detailed information so longed for my the data-miners, these reviews provide a window into the age and allow the historian to "see" the events though the eyes of those involved in the racing scene. Nothing very earth-shaking in that revelation one can safely assume, but when strung together and viewed from a distance of many decades, one can begin to examine and study the material and come to some thoughts or intrepretations regarding various aspects of the era.

One failing of most historians is the constant urge to seek out relationships and connections so as to create the "So-and-so Era" or determine the temporal parameters of an "era." Or simply to have some form of rough boundraries for one's inquiries. In the case of the Sinsabaugh review of the 1908 season, which when linked with other season reviews and information regarding the automobile contests of the period, the on-going organizational issues regarding the AAA, ACA, MCA, and WAA and later IMSA over the period of, say, 1908 to 1920, appears to be a period which could be considered as a possible discrete area of study.

This leads, then, to the consideration that there is a period of American automobile racing that somewhere in the 1907 or 1908 timeframe ends and another timeframe which then runs from those years to roughly 1920. It is not an unrelated occurrance that much of the confusion and messiness regarding the "national championship" and other similar issues is during this period.

At any rate, more to follow on this.

[Mark in Oshawa]

Geeze....is it any wonder why people are confused by the machinations of Open Wheeled racing in the USA?

I read some of the great research Don and others have done and I knew a lot of it, but didn't know all the details.

Compare this, to the linear sometimes not so benevolent history of NASCAR and one realizes why the France's really are the anal power mad types they were...because left to its own devices, the racing world makes the boxing world look simple!

To put the Indy spin on things, let me just state that for the great unwashed, and casual race fans, for YEARS the race was Indy. It didn't matter if it was AAA or USAC running the show, it was THE SHOW. The CART people were ok with it...they ran the rest of the series, USAC ran Indy, and it was an uneasy peace at times, but until Tony decided he wanted it all; it worked. What kills me, and what always killed me was when we had two series both trying to claim the crown. Look back in all that history, and there was never any confusion really about the crown, or where the top guys were. It really puts into focus just how pointless the split was.

The sport has been for YEARS been not always run as a business so much as a battle of egos for control over it all. IMS didn't help matters either with their blind allegiance to the USAC boys when it was clear some of their ideas were just 20 years behind the teams and/or technology. In the end, though, I have hope. We have one body running the sport, a leader who has the backing of the people writing the checks who is growing the sport bit by bit, new cars coming and a firm resolve to politely shove the owners back when they want too much, or resist change. For the first time in a millenium, I think the management of the series (with the exception of Brian Barnhart) gives me hope. What is more, the team owners, for all their squaking know they dropped the ball. They also know that a neutral party like the management of the series will in the end make racing better for them and the fans. They may not like it (2012 is coming and the teams are pushing back a little but hey...it is their money) but it is coming....

Excellent read guys....Don, I commend you for doing all this research.

[Don Capps]

AAA Contest Board

AAA was established in Chicago, Illinois on 4 March 1902, by June of the same year AAA also established the Racing Board. Arthur Rayner Pardington was appointed chairman and the board sanctioned its first race, the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup held in Long Island, New York. It is unclear as to why William Vanderbilt had AAA sanction his race as opposed to the Automobile Club of America, the predominant sanctioning body for major US racing at the time.

With the success of the racing board's experience sanctioning automobile events in 1904, the board announced a national track championship for 1905. Though not historically considered a true national championship due to it only including short dirt oval sprint races, it was the first time in American racing history that a points system was used to decide a year end champion. From 1906 through 1915 the racing board, inexplicably, held no official championship title season. It did continue to sanction individual, one-off events, the Vanderbilt Cup and events at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

In 1908 the ACA created the American Grand Prize, the first traces of Grand Prix style racing in the US along with the then established Vanderbilt Cup. This race started a feud between the ACA and AAA. Later in 1908 it was decided that AAA would sanction all big time racing nationally and the ACA would sanction all international events held on American soil. On 2 December 1908, AAA dissolved the Racing Board and created the Contest Board later the same day. Though the rationale for this decision has been lost with time, the move was most likely done to allow AAA to oversee all automobile events and not just racing contests.

The Manufacturers Contest Association (MCA) urged AAA to organize racing so American manufacturers could race mostly stock configuration cars and ban the pure race cars being imported from Europe. The stock car style rules continued until 1916, when the Contest Board relaxed the rules allowing purpose built machines back into competition ahead of its first true championship season in 1916. Although AAA did not award national champions during 1906 through 1915, the American automobile journal Motor Age published who they regarded the most outstanding American driver during the years of 1909-1915. These picks have become the de facto national champions of the day.

During World War I, AAA suspended the national championship and almost stopped sanctioning races as a whole. This time also saw the demise of the American Grand Prize and the ACA totally folded during the war. American manufacturers saw the absence of European racers, and the relaxed rules due to no national level sanctioning as a chance for the US to catch up to the European racers who had dominated racing internationally up until that point. The Racing Board picked up the pieces and regularly held national championships from 1920 until the outbreak of World War II in 1942. Post WWI, the race car specifications for the national championship were mostly aligned with what the Indianapolis Motor Speedway wanted to run during its Memorial Day classic, and this still holds mostly true today. AAA, again, restarted the championship with the close of the war for the 1946 season and continued uninterrupted until 1955 which saw AAA completely pull out of auto racing following the 1955 Le Mans disaster. The United States Auto Club took over the void filled by AAA's departure. During the last half of the Racing Boards existence they sanctioned many forms of racing such as midgets, sprint cars, sports cars and stock cars as well as top level championship car racing.

Controversy: In 1927 the Contest Board changed the results of the 1909 season, the 1920 season, and awarded retrospective national championships for the years of 1917-1919 during WWI. In 1951 The board, again, retrospectively awarded titles from 1902–1908 and changed the results of the 1905 season. These actions have made it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction regarding AAA sanctioned national racing.

The 1909 AAA Championship Car season consisted of 24 races, beginning in Portland, Oregon on June 12 and concluding with a point-to-point race from Los Angeles, California to Phoenix, Arizona on November 6. There were three events sanctioned by the Automobile Club of America in Lowell, Massachusetts. The de facto National Champion as poled by the American automobile journal Motor Age was Bert Dingley. Points were not awarded by the AAA Contest Board during the 1909 season. Champions of the day were decided by Chris G. Sinsabaugh, an editor at Motor Age, based on merit and on track performance. The points table was created retroactively in 1927 keeping Dingley as champion. In 1951 the championship standings were reworked, stripping the traditional champion of his title and giving it to George Robertson. All championship results should be considered unofficial.

The 1910 AAA Championship Car season consisted of 19 races, beginning in Atlanta, Georgia on May 5 and concluding in Long Island, New York on October 1. The de facto National Champion as poled by the American automobile journal Motor Age was Ray Harroun. Points were not awarded by the AAA Contest Board during the 1910 season. Champions of the day were decided by Chris G. Sinsabaugh, an editor at Motor Age, based on merit and on track performance. The points table was created retroactively in 1927, all championship results should be considered unofficial.

The 1911 AAA Championship Car season consisted of 21 races, beginning in San Francisco, California on February 22 and concluding in Savanna, Georgia on November 30. The de facto National Champion as poled by the American automobile journal Motor Age was Ralph Mulford and the winner of the inaugural Indianapolis 500 was Ray Harroun. Points were not awarded by the AAA Contest Board during the 1911 season. Champions of the day were decided by Chris G. Sinsabaugh, an editor at Motor Age, based on merit and on track performance. The points table was created retroactively in 1927, all championship results should be considered unofficial.

Can anyone here spot -- and correct -- the errors with the information current on Wiki regarding the AAA Contest Board and the information on the three seasons listed? Yes, this is a trick question.

Of course, it does beg the question in the first place that if these were NOT "national championship" seasons why that false impression, disclaimers aside, is still being perpetuated....?

The prize is that YOU get to correct the Wiki information!!!!

[Don Capps]

Looking at the listing of those involved with the WikiProject American Open Wheel Racing, one would think that they would do a better job vetting material that gets placed on the Web for public use. Other than Mark Dill, who is much more of an enthusiast/writer than an automotive historian -- although he is getting there to be sure, nary a soul seems to be an actual automotive historian. I could be mistaken, however, but the errors and sloppiness of some of the entries that seems to be attributed to this group does little to inspire confidence. In a number of cases previous entries have been changed to better reflect what we know, but there is still room for improvement as the Contest Board entry demonstrates. One hesitates to point out the old adage of "Garbage in, Garbage out," but this does seem to be the case in a number of instances, unfortunately.

At some point, we old guys are going to depart the scene and others -- perhaps some of YOU -- will have the opportunity to pick up the fight and carry on. I hope you are up to it.