Wooden tracks were fast, dangerous and popular
Races featured large purses, but with no safety equipment, crashes were often fatal
One of the highlights of the upcoming Pan American Games in Southern Ontario will be bicycle racing on the new velodrome in Milton. This wooden oval track will be 250 metres in length, seven metres wide with 42-degree banking on the turns, and built with 68,000 metres of Siberian Spruce. Now how about a wooden oval track 3,218 metres in length, built with 2,438,400 metres of wood and constructed almost 100 years ago? There were two dozen of these unique tracks built during motorsport’s informative years.
While a velodrome is not a common sight in Canada, the history of this sporting venue goes back to the late 19th century when bicycle racing was a popular sport. By the beginning of the 20th century, motorcycles and then automobiles began racing on larger versions of these board tracks as an alternative to racing on dirt ovals when the sport was still in its infancy.
By the time of the First World War, several board tracks had been built. Highway travel was still in its infancy, with concrete and asphalt roads still a few years in the future. Following suit, almost all race tracks were dirt, the most notable exception the fourkilometre oval at Indianapolis, which was paved in brick.
But during this time the building of board tracks exploded. They were cheap to build and their builders wanted to exploit auto racing. From 1910 until 1931 board tracks operated across the U.S., from Washington state to Florida and from New Hampshire to California. Some tracks were less than a kilometre in length, some, like Sheepshead Bay outside of New York City, were 3.2 kilometres long, but the majority were 2.4 kilometres long.
Board tracks started in California, as did many auto-related trends, with a 1.6-kilometre circle of wood in Venice known as Playa-Del-Rey, which operated from 1910-13. Of the 24 tracks built, seven were in California. Most major centres saw the building of a board track, including Chicago, Kansas City, Miami and several in the populated North East.
Many of the speedways were constructed by an Englishman named Jack Prince, a pioneer in bicycle velodromes. A former mechanical engineer and manager of the Daimler-Mercedes racing team, Fred Moscovics, was also instrumental in the design of early board track racing, but it was Prince who capitalized on the construction of these tracks.
The Playa-Del-Rey track, which cost about $75,000, was ready for racing in 1910, and the opening-day crowds witnessed pioneer racer Barney Oldfield hit 160 km/h, utilizing the 20-degree corner banking, something unheard of on the dirt tracks or at Indy.
Prince and others soon learned that the steeper the corners, the faster the cars would travel, and the banking on subsequent tracks reached double the 20 degree at Playa-Del Rey. Of the two dozen tracks built, Prince was involved with 17, including Des Moines, Beverly Hills and Atlantic City, his last track. The banking on the Atlantic City boards was 45 degrees, and the average speed for the opening 482-kilometre race in May of 1926 was just over 215 km/h.
A week later at Atlantic City, Frank Lockhart ran the fastest lap ever obtained on a board tracked, 236.942 km/h. To put this into perspective, Lockhart started the 1927 Indy 500 on the pole with a speed of 193 km/h. Lockhart’s record would remain the fastest lap on an oval track until the 1959 Daytona 500, and his record would stand in open-wheel, Indy car racing until 1961.
Board tracks were constructed of wood, using gigantic amounts of pine or hemlock or spruce, in the standard two-by-four-inch measurement, laid on edge side by side. Most were built over a wooden foundation, while some of the later tracks used steel to support the wood surface. As an example, the oval built in Cincinnati in 1916 used about 2,438,400 metres of wood for its 3.2 kilometre length, 70-foot width and 33-degree banking for a total cost of almost $430,000.
Board track racing was sanctioned by the Contest Board of the American Automobile Association (AAA), which also presided over the rest of the National Championship events, including major dirt tracks and Indy. Spectator seating at many tracks was at least 20,000, while venues such as Atlantic City boasted of audiences of 50,000. Early drivers included Jimmy Murphy, Louis Chevrolet and Harry Hartz. Tom Milton, Ralph DePalma and Pete DePaolo were also some of the stars who braved death to win purses of up to $30,000 for a race.
The race cars were purpose-built machines with no thought to driver safety. Early makes such as Mercedes, Peugeot, and Maxwell gave way to the Millers, Duesenbergs and Frontenacs. A rear-drive Miller chassis with a 91-cubic inch straight-eight engine cost about $10,000 in 1926 and developed 155 horsepower.
While the cars were expensive, the major costs in this pre-sponsorship era were travel and tires. There were several auto company-backed teams, such as Hudson and Stutz. Most drivers owned their own cars, and used special railroad cars to travel. Once at a city’s train station, more often than not the car would be driven to the speedway. A car could easily go through $3,000 worth of tires in a season on the boards and Firestone was the prominent tire throughout the era.
With such large purses at these races, a driver could make a respectable living, but it was a very dangerous living. There was absolutely no safety equipment on the car or on the track itself, and many were killed.
No seatbelts, no roll cages, no helmets and no fire protection. The only defence a driver wore was a soft leather skull cap and a pair of goggles, and quite often the goggles would get smashed from an errant piece of wood off the track.
As the surface of the wood deteriorated, ruts and holes would show on the track, and the skinny tires of the day were no match for a hole wider than the tire. If a car lost control, it could easily break through the wooden fencing along with corners and tumble off over the track. Drivers were also impaled on the wood railing if control was lost and the car went smashing through the barricade.
Population growth took its toll on the board tracks. Originally built outside of their city, the tracks were torn down as the city expanded and land became more valuable. The Oakland track lasted only two seasons before it was torn down for city expansion.
Inclement weather and the cost of maintenance also helped put the board tracks out of business. Some succumbed to fire. The northern area tracks rotted in the colder months. Most tracks lasted only three seasons. The two-kilometre Altoona track in central Pennsylvania lasted the longest of any AAA-sanctioned board tracks, from 1923-1931. It was also the last of its kind.
With its first and only race held in February of 1926, a 300-lapper won by DePaolo in a Duesenberg, Fulford-by-the-Sea Speedway outside of Miami succumbed to the 240 km/h winds of a hurricane in September of the same year, reducing the board track to splinters. Tim Miller is a regular contributor to Toronto Star Wheels. For more Toronto Star automotive coverage, go to thestar.com/autos. To reach Wheels editor Norris McDonald email nmcdonald@thestar.ca