Chicago’s auto racing heyday
67 years ago, a NASCAR event in Soldier Field ended in a razor-slim victory by Fireball Roberts
The NASCAR drivers who will shortly roar around Michigan Avenue and DuSable Lake Shore Drive in downtown Chicago were preceded by stock car racers circling a track inside Soldier Field 67 years ago. The 1956 Grand National 100-mile race, considered the first NASCAR cup series race held in Chicago, was witnessed by 14,402 fans, who saw Fireball Roberts win by a car length over Jim Pascal, who was ahead until Roberts passed him on the 194th of 200 laps.
Stock car racing evokes images of county fairs and Southern racetracks, like the one in Roberts’ hometown that hosts the Daytona 500. But Chicago’s urbanites were passionate devotees of races at Soldier Field, which hosted a number of them during the mid-20th century.
“The thing I’ll never forget is being in the front row on the wall,” Art Fehrman Jr., whose father drove in the race, told Autoweek many years later. “My hands were right on the wall, and I was looking down on the roofs of the cars as they whizzed by.”
The sport’s appeal was due to predictable crashes. Andy Granatelli, promoter of races at Soldier Field, was accused of scripting the violence, just as wrestling opponents are assumed to do.
“Granatelli had five guys on his payroll whose job was to wreck you,” said Tom Pistone, a NASCAR alum who grew up in Chicago, said in the Autoweek article. “It was crazy racing, but it brought out the people.”
Whether the collisions were planned or accidental, stock car racing was dangerous.
“In the 13th lap, the car driven by Les Olsen of Glenview was rolled over twice sideways and end over end three times before smashing into the south turn after being struck by a car driven by Roy Czach of Chicago,” the Tribune reported of a July 13, 1956, race in Soldier Field.
In 1954 the Tribune’s “Wake of the News” column noted: “Mrs. Pistone is so upset by the spectacle of her husband screeching around the quarter mile, asphalt track that she no longer attends but sits at home in custody of the four young Pistones.”
Overhearing the comments from Pistone, another driver responded.
“Huh,” he snorted, “my old lady’s out for every race and gives me the devil ’cause I never catch Pistone. Always keeps asking if I’m afraid to step on the gas.”
Granatelli also offered Sunday races at the 87th Street Speedway, which operated for a handful of years at 1111 E. 87th St. in Chicago. The International Amphitheater on Halsted Street hosted a winter season for midget race cars, scaled-down versions of their big brothers that competed in the Indianapolis 500.
Stock car racing was a derivative of America’s love affair with the automobile. Chicago’s alleys were a proto-hot rodder’s proving grounds.
The fascination of Chicagoans dates to an era when there was no agreement about what to call a self-propelled vehicle. Eventually it would be known as just that: an automobile. In 1892 the first to appear on a Chicago street was ticketed as a “horseless carriage” by a police officer, who wrote the driver up for speeding. When the driver complained that he hadn’t exceeded 7 mph, the officer informed him the limit was 6.
In 1895 the publisher of the Chicago Times-Herald offered $5,000 in prize money for a race from Jackson Park to Milwaukee and back by “self-propelling road carriages.” The event was inspired by the world’s first automobile race the previous year in France.
Bad roads in Wisconsin led organizers to shorten the race to Evanston and back, a distance of about 54 miles. Run on Thanksgiving Day, the event gave Chicago bragging rights to America’s first automobile race.
There was a heavy snowfall shortly before the race. One car cracked up, trying to get to the starting point via slippery streets. Only four of the six starters finished.
Considering the conditions, Frank Duryea’s winning time of 7 hours, 53 minutes wasn’t bad. In second place was a German-made car whose driver fainted from the cold along the route.
A race official riding with him took over. The car crossed the finish line with the official steering with one hand while holding on to the driver with the other. The rules required a driver to stay with his car or be disqualified.
The 1895 event having demonstrated street racing’s inescapable problems, the Chicago Cycle Racing Association went looking for a dedicated venue. The next year it promoted automobile races at Tattersall’s, at Dearborn and 16th streets.
The Chicago branch of a London horse auctioneer, the indoor hall’s income came from stabling thoroughbreds, and it was supplemented with the hosting of circuses, indoor football games, bicycle races and, finally, automobile races.
“No more than two vehicles will be permitted on the track at a time, as the speedway will not be wide enough for more,” the Tribune noted ahead of the race.
Other venues’ proprietors recognized auto racing’s potential for profit. In short order drivers and jockeys were alternatively speeding around Hawthorne Racetrack in southwest suburban Stickney. The Erie Railroad advertised special trains from Chicago to the auto races in Crown Point, Indiana.
The County Fair in northwest suburban Palatine touted its seven auto races as “The Greatest Racing Event in Cook County.”
Auto racing was warmly welcomed at Soldier Field, which opened in 1924. The neoclassical amphitheater was something of a white elephant.
It mimicked a stadium the Romans might have used for chariot racing or Olympic events. American team sports could only awkwardly be accommodated.
Soldier Field’s management was happy to add automobile races to the regular and greatly varied fare of pageants and performers. Its first event featured a chariot race and motorcycle polo. Al Jolson, star of the first sound movie, and W.C. Handy, father of the blues, sang there. The annual Chicago Tribune Music Festival featured hundreds of musicians.
Midget auto races on a wooden track with banked curves began in 1935 in Chicago’s lakefront stadium. The wood was replaced by dirt and then an asphalt track. Stock cars joined the midget racers, the common denomination being the excitement fans got for a $2.50 ticket, which was guaranteed by Soldier Field’s architecture.
“The big, thick concrete wall — it was 8 or 9 feet tall got big and came at you in a hurry,” said John Carollo, who raced there. “You wondered if you were going to make it or eat the guardrail on the inside.”
Demolition derbies stripped the sport down to essentials. The object was to bang into other cars until they weren’t drivable. The last car running won.
Granatelli’s promotions would draw 40,000 spectators. Yet racing in Soldier Field ended in 1968. Some pit-stop mavens think they were done in by neighbors’ objections to the noise and exhaust fumes. Others charge it was up to the vagaries of Chicagoans’ entertainment preferences.
Whatever the case, NASCAR drivers on July 2 will roar past the north end of a silent Soldier Field. Yet that could change, should the Bears make good on their off-again, on-again threat to ditch Soldier Field.
That would knock a hole the size of a souped-up bulldozer in the budget of its owner, the Chicago Park District. Perhaps renewed stock car racing could take up the slack.
The blueprint could be drawn from Granatelli’s ads, which guaranteed: “DANGER! THRILLS CHILLS SPILLS.”