bob jennings' WORLD O' RACING 03/04/2000
Dan Drinan (33), Jay Drake (15), Jimmy McCune (36), A.J. Fike (69), Ed Carpenter (3) and others line up in turn four during a USAC Midget program at Winchester on September 19, 1999
Bob Jennings
Look at that old pavement and those high banks at Winchester Speedway. This place is something else. The way the USAC boys throw the midgets and sprints around this place amazes me. I bet the USAC cars with their high and narrow sense of gravity are about as twitchy as a four-wheel vehicle can be. What do you suppose a USAC midget feels like going in excess of 100 mph over those old Winchester bumps?
If I'm not mistaken Winchester Speedway is the third oldest continuously operated racetrack in the United States. Only the Milwaukee Mile and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway have been going longer than Winchester where racing started in the 1930s. Winchester Speedway represents what makes me most happy to be from Indiana and that is the way automobile racing is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of the state all over the state.
It's not just the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that makes Indiana so dynamic
but it is the influence of the Speedway on all the little racing facilities
around the state that makes it all come together for me.
The essence of that
is what I was trying to capture when I went to Lincoln Park Speedway in
Putnamville, the Indiana State Fairgrounds, Anderson Speedway, Salem Speedway,
16th Street Speedway, Indianapolis Raceway Park, the Terre Haute
Action Track and Winchester Speedway in 1999. That Tony George was in the
pits at Winchester on a September Sunday working with his stepson on a USAC
racing midget program is what makes me support the Indy Racing League so
strongly. Here is one of the four or five most powerful racing people in
the entire world and he's at a rickety old half-mile speedway in the middle
of nowhere in eastern Indiana on a Sunday September afternoon. That Indiana
continues to produce speed hungry guys like Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman, Tracy
Hines, Dave Darland and Tony Elliott who want to drive race cars for a living
in the tradition of Wilbur Shaw and Steve Kinser shows the personality of
this state. Basketball is often referred to as "Indiana's game" and that's
true. But racing cars is Indiana's passion.