Midget Car Racing

Midget cars, also speedcars in Australia, is a class of racing cars. The cars are very small with a very high power-to-weight ratio and typically use four cylinder engines. They originated in the United States in the 1930s and are raced on most continents. There is a worldwide tour and national midget tours in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

Cars

Typically, these four cylinder engine cars have to and weigh . The high power and small size of the cars combine to make midget racing quite dangerous; for this reason, modern midget cars are fully equipped with roll cages and other safety features. Some early major midget car manufacturers include Kurtis Kraft (1930s to 1950s) and Solar (1944–46). Midgets are intended to be driven for races of relatively short distances, usually 2.5 to 25 miles (4 to 40 km). Some events are staged inside arenas, like the Chili Bowl held in early January at the Tulsa Expo Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There are midget races in dirt track racing and in asphalt (paved tracks).

There are three-quarter (TQ) midgets which developed from "midget midget" cars of the late 1940s. Quarter midgets are the one quarter the size of a full midget car.

History

The first organized Midget car race happened on June 4, 1933. The sports' first regular weekly program began on August 10, 1933 at the Loyola High School Stadium in Los Angeles under the control of the first official governing body, the Midget Auto Racing Association (MARA). After spreading across the country, the sport traveled around the world; first to Australia in 1934 at Melbourne's Olympic Park on December 15, and to New Zealand in 1937. Early midget races were held on board tracks previously used for bicycle racing. When the purpose built speedway at Gilmore Stadium was completed, racing ended at the school stadium, and hundreds of tracks began to spring up across the United States. Angell Park Speedway in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin (near Madison) is another major track in the United States operating since the first half of the twentieth century.

The AAA Contest Board soon started sanctioning midget races across the country, facing opposition from independent drivers and racetracks. After the AAA withdrew from sanctioning races in 1955, the United States Auto Club took over as the major sanctioning body of midget car racing in the United States. NASCAR had a midget division from 1952 to 1968.

Soon after in Australia, speedcar racing became popular with the first Australian Speedcar Championship being contested in Melbourne in 1935, its popularity running through the country's "golden era" of the 1950s and 1960s. Australian promoters such as Adelaide's Kym Bonython who ran the Rowley Park Speedway, and Empire Speedways who ran the Brisbane Exhibition Ground and the famous Sydney Showground Speedway, often imported drivers from the US, such as the popular Jimmy Davies

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