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Board track racing was a type of
motorsport Motorsport, motorsports or motor sport is a global term used to encompass the group of competitive sporting events which primarily involve the use of motorized vehicles. The terminology can also be used to describe forms of competition of two ...
popular in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
during the 1910s and 1920s. Competition was conducted on circular or oval race courses with surfaces composed of wooden planks. This type of track was first used for motorcycle competition, wherein they were called ''motordromes'', before being adapted for use by various different types of
racing cars Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various sorts were organise ...
. The majority of the American
national championship A national championship(s) is the top achievement for any sport or competition, contest within a league of a particular nation or nation state. The title is usually awarded by contests, ranking systems, stature, ability, etc. This determines the be ...
races were contested at such venues during the 1920s. Board tracks proliferated in part because they were inexpensive to construct, but they lacked durability and required a great deal of maintenance to remain usable. Many of the tracks survived for as little as three years before being abandoned. With the onset of the
Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
in the early 1930s, board track racing disappeared rapidly. However, several of its most notable aspects have continued to influence American motorsports up to the present day, including: A technical emphasis on raw speed produced by the steep
banking A bank is a financial institution that accepts deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital markets. Because ...
; ample track width to allow steady overtaking between competitors; and the development of extensive grandstands or stadium-style spectator seating surrounding many of the courses.


History

The first board track for motor racing was the circular
Los Angeles Motordrome The Los Angeles Motordrome was a circular wood board race track. It was located in Playa del Rey, California, and opened in 1910. In addition to automobile racing, it was used for motorcycle competition and aviation activities. The Motordr ...
, built in 1910 in the area that would later become the city's
Playa del Rey Playa del Rey (Spanish for "Beach of the King") is a seaside community in the Santa Monica Bay and the Westside region of Los Angeles, California. It has a ZIP code of 90293 and area codes of 310 and 424. As of 2018, the community had a populat ...
district. Based on the same technology as European
velodrome A velodrome is an arena for track cycling. Modern velodromes feature steeply banked oval tracks, consisting of two 180-degree circular bends connected by two straights. The straights transition to the circular turn through a moderate Track tran ...
s used for bicycle racing, this track and others like it were constructed with x boards, often with turns banked at up to 45 degrees. In some cases, such as the track at
Culver City Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. Founded in 1917 as a "whites only" sundown town, it is now an ethnically diverse city with what was called the "third-most ...
, banking was 50 degrees or more. Longer tracks were later built – some up to long by 1915 - and lap speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour became commonplace. Interest in motorsport was exploding during this period and by 1929, at least 24 board tracks had been built around the country, although by 1931, 20 of the 24 had been shut down or abandoned, and from 1932 on there were no more championship-level races run on boards. The tracks were relatively inexpensive to construct compared to more permanent facilities – the total facility cost of the
Tacoma Speedway Tacoma Speedway (sometimes called Pacific Speedway or Tacoma-Pacific Speedway) was a (approximate) wooden board track for automobile racing that operated from 1914 to 1922 near Tacoma, Washington. In its time, the track was renowned nationwide a ...
was just $100,000 in 1915, compared to the $700,000 spent in 1909 just to ''pave'' the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is an automobile racing circuit located in Speedway, Indiana, an enclave suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana. It is the home of the Indianapolis 500 and the Verizon 200, and and formerly the home of the United State ...
. Racing on these tracks often drew large crowds of paying spectators. In 1915, a crowd of 80,000 was reported in
Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...
, three weeks after only 60,000 had attended the Indianapolis 500. Relatively small and isolated Tacoma (population 83,000 in 1910) had turned out 35,000 to see a race the year before. To attract both competitors and fans, race promoters offered what were then considered sensational amounts of prize money - a total purse of $25,000 was not unusual around the time of World War I. After World War I, the
Automobile Association of America American Automobile Association (AAA – commonly pronounced as "Triple A") is a federation of motor clubs throughout North America. AAA is a privately held not-for-profit national member association and service organization with over 60 m ...
's Contest Board resumed and re-organized the National Championship system. From the beginning of the 1920 season to the end of 1931, the AAA sanctioned a total of 123 championship racing events on 24 different race tracks, and 82 of those races were run on wooden surfaces. (Of the remainder, 12 were on the bricks of Indianapolis, and the other 29 were on dirt tracks or
road courses Road racing is a form of motorsport racing held on a paved road surface. The races can be held either on a closed circuit or on a street circuit utilizing temporarily closed public roads. Originally, road races were held almost entirely on ...
.)


Safety

The first track in Playa del Rey was banked at a 3:1 pitch (about 20 degrees), but later tracks were built with higher banking and some motorcycle tracks were banked up to 60 degrees. Even though the physics of such track designs were intuitively obvious, it was not until construction of the Beverly Hills track in 1919 that builders began to incorporate engineering knowledge that had been known to railroads for decades. At Beverly Hills, designer Art Pillsbury, who eventually worked on more than half of the championship-caliber board tracks nationwide, first employed the Searle Spiral Easement Curve, and the effect on car handling was pronounced. According to Pillsbury, a correctly engineered track could be driven without steering input from the driver – the car would steer itself, simply due to the track geometry. The effects of these changes were higher cornering speeds and higher
G-forces The gravitational force equivalent, or, more commonly, g-force, is a measurement of the type of force per unit mass – typically acceleration – that causes a perception of weight, with a g-force of 1 g (not gram in mass measure ...
on drivers, but not necessarily greater safety. Driver fatalities continued to mount on board tracks into the 1920s, and included four
Indianapolis 500 The Indianapolis 500, formally known as the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, and commonly called the Indy 500, is an annual automobile race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in Speedway, Indiana, United States, an enclave suburb of Indi ...
winners, three of which occurred at the Altoona track (another Pillsbury design) in
Tipton, Pennsylvania Tipton is a census-designated place (CDP) in Blair County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 1,083 at the 2010 census. It was a stop on the former Pennsylvania Railroad Main Line between Tyrone and Altoona. Geography Tipton is l ...
, and three in the same years in which the driver won at Indianapolis. Winner of the
1919 Indianapolis 500 The 7th Liberty 500-Mile Sweepstakes was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, May 31, 1919. After a two-year hiatus due to World War I, the Indianapolis 500 returned to competition in 1919. Howdy Wilcox won, accompanied by riding ...
Howdy Wilcox Howard Samuel Wilcox (June 24, 1889 – September 4, 1923) was an American racecar driver active in the formative years of auto racing. Biography He was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana on June 24, 1889. Wilcox won the 1919 Indianapolis 500 ...
died in an Altoona race on September 4, 1923, while co-
1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China hol ...
winner
Joe Boyer Joseph Boyer Jr. (May 30, 1890 – September 2, 1924) was a co-winner of the 1924 Indianapolis 500. Biography Boyer was born on May 30, 1890, in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Joe Boyer Senior and Clara Libby. H ...
and
1929 This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic ...
winner
Ray Keech Charles Raymond Keech (May 1, 1900 - June 15, 1929) was an American board track and brick track racer in the 1920s. He is best remembered for winning the 1929 Indianapolis 500, and for setting a land speed record. Career Land speed record ...
both suffered fatal accidents at the facility in the same years as their Indianapolis 500 wins – Keech's occurring only seventeen days after, on June 15, 1929.
Gaston Chevrolet Gaston Chevrolet (4 October 1892 – 25 November 1920) was a French racecar driver and automobile manufacturer. Early life Born near Beaune, in the Côte-d'Or region of France where his Swiss parents had emigrated to a few years earlier, he w ...
, winner of the
1920 Indianapolis 500 The 8th International 500-Mile Sweepstakes Race was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Monday, May 31, 1920. Ralph DePalma held a two lap lead when the car stalled on lap 187. His riding mechanic Pete DePaolo ran to the pits to get a can ...
, perished that same autumn, on November 25, 1920, in a
Thanksgiving Day Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden a ...
race at Beverly Hills. Even when the cars did not crash, racing on a board track was exceedingly dangerous due to flying wood splinters and debris, and due to the primitive tire technology and head protection of the era. In one oral history taken from a driver, he told a tale of wooden shards driven into the faces of drivers and riding mechanics, and sudden catastrophic tire failures caused by track conditions. Cars were fitted with anti-splinter devices to protect their radiators. Other protective safety devices also hadn't been invented yet (seat belts, roll bars, or fire protection). Drivers often were ejected from their cars and would fall tens of feet (several meters). Drivers and riding mechanics often were driven over by their own or another car.
Pete DePaolo Pete DePaolo (April 6, 1898 – November 26, 1980) was an American race car driver who won the 1925 Indianapolis 500. Biography Peter DePaolo was born on April 6, 1898, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pete saw his first race in 1919, where he w ...
wrote in his book ''Wall Smacker'' that racing on boards was "a great sensation, tearing around a board speedway dodging holes and flying timber." On the motorcycling ''motordromes'', the situation was also very dangerous and the danger was aggravated by the riders' lack of proper safety equipment. Fans sat above the top of the track, looking down at the racers. When a rider lost control, he could slip up off the track and into the crowd. Many fatalities occurred, often involving spectators. The velodrome at
Nutley, New Jersey Nutley is a township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 30,143. What is now Nutley was originally incorporated as Franklin Township by an act of the New Jersey Legisla ...
, a oval banked at 45 degrees (generating lap times of 8 seconds or less) and built from lumber on edge, was "unquestionably the deadliest".''Circle Track'' Magazine, 9/84, p.77.. On September 8, 1912, "Texas Cyclone" Eddie Hasha was killed at a motordrome in Newark, New Jersey in an accident which also killed another racer and four spectators, and injured ten more. The deaths made the front page of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', and the press started calling the short 1/4 and 1/3 mile circuits "murderdromes". The 1913 motorcycle championship races were moved to a dirt track because dirt was safer. The national organization overseeing motorcycle racing banned all competitions on board tracks shorter than in 1919.Pioneers of American Motorcycle Racing
Daniel K. Statnekov; Chapter 15; Retrieved December 10, 2007
One by one, the manufacturers withdrew their support due to the negative publicity.


The end of board tracks

A major contributor to the demise of board tracks was the high cost of maintenance. There was no suitable wood preservative available, and depending on climate, tracks needed new boards every five years on average. Resurfacing required as much as a million
board feet The board foot or board-foot is a unit of measurement for the volume of lumber in the United States and Canada. It equals the volume of a length of a board, one foot wide and thick. Board foot can be abbreviated as FBM (for "foot, board measure" ...
of new lumber per of track, which would have cost around $125,000 at the prices prevalent at the time. Thus, during the last decade of the board tracks, carpenters would repair the tracks from below, sometimes even during a race, while the cars raced overhead at or faster. An additional factor was that as speeds increased, overtaking became more difficult - the fastest car would almost always win the race, as long as it held together long enough to finish. This led to spectators turning their attention to the less-predictable racing that was taking place on dirt tracks. Though board tracks disappeared from the National Championship scene in 1932, a few smaller tracks did continue to operate for some years afterward. For instance, the
Coney Island Velodrome The Coney Island Velodrome was a mid-sized sports arena in Coney Island, Brooklyn, New York City. Designed as a bicycle racing venue, the drome featured a wooden oval track with 45° banked corners and seating for 10,000. It also hosted outboa ...
hosted
midget racing Midget (from ''midge'', a tiny biting insect) is a term for a person of unusually short stature that is considered by some to be pejorative due to its etymology. While not a Medical terminology, medical term like "dwarfism", a medical conditio ...
until at least 1939, and Castle Hill Speedway in the
Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
ran midgets into the 1940s.


See also

*
Centrifugal force In Newtonian mechanics, the centrifugal force is an inertial force (also called a "fictitious" or "pseudo" force) that appears to act on all objects when viewed in a rotating frame of reference. It is directed away from an axis which is paralle ...
*
Plank road A plank road is a road composed of wooden planks or puncheon logs. Plank roads were commonly found in the Canadian province of Ontario as well as the Northeast and Midwest of the United States in the first half of the 19th century. They were oft ...
*
Sport venue A sports venue is a building, structure, or place in which a sporting competition is held. A stadium (plural: stadiums or stadia) or arena is a place or venue for sports or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely ...
* Superelevation *
Velodrome A velodrome is an arena for track cycling. Modern velodromes feature steeply banked oval tracks, consisting of two 180-degree circular bends connected by two straights. The straights transition to the circular turn through a moderate Track tran ...


References


External links


The Board Track In Motion
a silent short film of motorcycle racing on the boards in
Daytona Beach, Florida Daytona Beach, or simply Daytona, is a coastal Resort town, resort-city in east-central Florida. Located on the eastern edge of Volusia County, Florida, Volusia County near the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic coastline, its population ...

Beverly Hills Board Track Racing (1921)
a film about motorcycle racing at
Beverly Hills Speedway The Beverly Hills Speedway (also called the Los Angeles Speedway) was a wooden board track for automobile racing in Beverly Hills, California. It was built in 1919 on of land that includes the site of today's Beverly Wilshire Hotel, just outs ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Board Track Racing Motorsport by type Stock car racing Open wheel racing Motorcycle racing by type