Post by administrator on Mar 27, 2009 12:03:30 GMT 1
EVERYTHING has its origins, even midget car racing. The general picture of the sport in its pre-World War Two days, the few years between 1934 and 1939, largely centres on the rivalry between the cars built by Harry Skirrow and the Belle Vue Stadium Eltos built by Les Hulme.
In actual fact, when ‘midget car racing was introduced to Britain’ at London’s old Crystal Palace speedway track on March 31, 1934, a form of the the racing had been run at various times for some years on a horse trotting track at Greenford in Middlesex.
The cars which appeared at Crystal Palace were far from custom-built midget cars. They were all Roadsters, many of them used not only on the track at Greenford, which opened in 1928, but also in road racing events on the Isle of Man.
Many of the original Greenford drivers went on to win fame in ‘real’ midget car racing - drivers like South Londoners Les and Lane White were just two of them. They raced at a track which also staged motorcycle racing.
The Whites and Alvin 'Spike' Rhiando became interested in midget car racing when it started in California in 1933 and were confident the American-style small oval car sport could be a success in Britain as it was becoming in Australia and New Zealand.
They helped to introduce the sport at Crystal Palace, where they were able to take advantage of a properly built speedway track following the speedway team’s move to newly-built New Cross Stadium. The original Palace track had been laid in 1928 when speedway arrived in Britain from Australia.
However, what the Whites and Rhiando were introducing was another formula then also developing in the USA. This was Roadsters, a class mainly racing on the big fairgrounds tracks. British racing proved to be relatively safe whereas in the USA many brave drivers lost their lives or were seriously injured in the many crashes that tended to bedevil the formula.
A display at Crystal Palace in 2000 showed many cars of the type that probably appeared in the first car racing meeting at this venue more than 46 years previously. At the ‘Racing 2000’ show there was an Austin 7 Special, built in 1929, and fitted with a 747cc engine. There was also an Austin Seven Sports, again fitted with a 747cc engine, built in 1930, and yet a third Austin Seven, of the same engine size, and built in 1937.
It was cars like these which had first appeared at Greenford, and subsequently at Crystal Palace and Lea Bridge and, according to a Belle Vue programme photo, also at the Manchester track in 1935.
Some of these types of cars survived as midgets until 1937, when they were completely replaced by either the purpose-built Skirrow or Elto midget car.
In 1934, cars like the Austin were soon challenged when Jean Reville and Rhiando came up with cars better-suited for speedway-type racing on cinders. Reville’s ‘The Gnat’ was described as the ‘smallest car in the world’. Rhiando’s first real midget was built at a garage in Guildford, Surrey. And besides delighting the Crystal Palace fans with his car racing exploits, Rhiando used to use the centre green microphone during the interval of meetings to sing to the spectators, accompanying himself on a guitar.
At the first Crystal Palace meeting, on March 31, 1934, RG Nash is credited with winning a race on the quarter-mile track in a 1500cc Anzini Nash at a speed of 40.81mph. Victor Gillow also impressed at this meeting, driving a Riley which he had previously used in road races on the Isle of Man. There were many similar cars in action, but the Frazer Nash and Austin were the most popular. Another favourite with the Palace drivers was the Palmer Special.
The Austin cars were also well in evidence when midget car racing started at Belle Vue in Manchester in 1935, and were also widely used when racing took place on a track at Barnet in Hertfordshire in 1936.
An Australian driver, Tommy Sulman had a lot to do with the eventual development of a bona-fide midget car. He arrived in England in 1932 and became interested in all aspects of car racing. His first track car was a three-wheel Morgan which he converted to a four-wheel car, giving it Ford steering and fitted with a GN rear axle. He used it at the first meeting at Crystal Palace.
In later years, Sulman developed and built his own Singer midget car. This was built around a Le Mans engine and was fully-chromed, upholstered and painted, unlike many cars racing in 1935 and 1936.
Sulman took part in a midget car meeting on wasteland at Brighton in 1935, where the other drivers included Les White (Salmson Special), Spike Rhiando (Austin Special) and Jimmy Raynes (Riley).
In his unpublished autobiography, Sulman also records the debut of the Skirrow at a meeting in Rotterdam, Holland, in 1935. Ten cars including three Skirrows took part. Sulman wrote ‘and the Skirrows were unbeatable’. Walter Mackereth drove one of the Skirrows, Raynes used a Blackburn Special and Sulman raced his Singer.
In British midget car racing, things had to change in regard to the cars if the sport was to develop. Reville was a prime mover in this direction. He said in July 1935 in an interview with the ‘South London Press’, “Previously anything from a 12-tourer to the tiniest racer was allowed. Now things will change.”
In hindsight, it must be accepted that the original small oval car racing on British tracks was in fact Roadsters and not midgets. It puts back by some two years the accepted start of the formula at Crystal Palace in 1934 to probably Coventry or Lea Bridge in late 1936 or 1937. These featured Skirrow and Elto cars only.
Be that as it may, many of the pioneer Roadster drivers did graduate to proper midget car racing and for that reason, British small oval racing must be grateful to those now near forgotten pioneers.
The track at the Palace now forms the base of the athletics track in the National Sports Centre. Belle Vue (Manchester) quickly followed, and up to the outbreak of war in September 1939, other venues that saw racing included Leeds, Glasgow, Coventry, Lea Bridge, Southampton, Stoke, Bristol and Wembley.
In pre-war WW2 days, midget car racing ran under the sanction of the National Association of Speedway Car Racing Circuits. Basically, the format for meetings was the same as speedway with four cars racing over four laps from a standing start.
Guidelines for midget cars, many of them built by Harry Skirrow, was:
(1) Chassis length not to exceed 6ft with a track of 3ft 10ins.
(2) No car could be fitted with an engine exceeding 1,500cc.
(3) Superchargers prohibited.
(4) A body fitted to the chassis of the single seater type.
(6) The exhaust pipe or pipes extend to the rear, level with the back axle but no further, and slotted for silence.
In 1938, the registered drivers for the season were:
(51) Walter Mackereth, (52) Les White, (53) Spike Rhiando, (54) Squib Burton, (55) Eric Worswick, (56) Ron Wills, (57) Vic Patterson, (58) Charlie Pashley, (59) Stan Mills, (60) Bruce Warburton, (61) Jimmy Raynes, (62) George Turvey, (63) Basil de Mattos, (64) Syd Emery, (65) Johnny Young, (66) Syd Plevin, (67) Val Atkinson, (68) Frank Marsh, (69) Gene Crowley, (70) Frank Bullock, (71) Eric Davies, (72) Buster Bladen, (73) Stan Jorgensen, (74) Joe Wildblood, (75) Tiddler Pierson, (76) Skid Martin, (77) Frank Chiswell, (78) 'Bronco' Bill Reynolds, (79) D J Fowdrey, (80) Tommy Sulman, (81) Billy Murden, (82) V Neald.
The Brandon track at Coventry then measured 395 yards and was surfaced with deep cinders which considerably slowed down the cars. The four lap standing-start record credited to Mackereth, was 80.4 seconds, an average speed of 40.53mph. He also held the rolling start record at 75.8 seconds, a speed of 43mph.
Many consider that Mackereth was probably the finest midget car driver produced by Britain. In pre-war days, he was European champion, winning the title in Holland, and also won the British Championship in 1937 and 1938.
Syd Plevin, a former speedway rider, was also a top class performer and won the National Trophy at Belle Vue in 1937 in what has been described as ‘an exceptionally exciting display of midget car racing’. Cyril ‘Squib’ Burton and Frank Chiswell were other former speedway riders who switched to the midgets with success.
Londoner Les White also enjoyed a big reputation and did exceptionally well at Southampton where a 10,000 crowd saw him win an individual meeting on Good Friday 1938. It turned out to be the only pre-war midget car meeting at the track following protests by the speedway team that the cars cut up the track surface.
Hackney Wick also briefly tried the sport. They held a World Championship in 1936, won by American speedway rider Cordy Milne, Then in another meeting at Waterden Road in 1938, Mackereth won the East London Championship in a meeting where Rhiando somersaulted over the safety fence but escaped injury or damage to his car.
Lea Bridge was London’s main track in 1937, but the following year support faded and the then league team switched to Crystal Palace in mid-season.
By 1939, British drivers had ventured abroad, Jean Reville, Ralph Secratan and Bud Stanley toured Australia in 1935-36, Bill Reynolds raced in the USA, New Zealand and Australia in 1938 and 1939. And there was also talk of another British team going to Australia for their 1939-40 season, but the outbreak of war on September 3, 1939, ended that idea.
Midget car racing failed to re-establish itself in Britain after the end of WW2 in May 1945. And an attempt by American promoters to re-introduce the sport at tracks in London in 1948 proved a disaster. They saw attendances dramatically slump after the initial meetings and were gone within a month.
On the British scene, apart from a few meetings in 1947 at tracks like Nottingham and Bell End (Holbeach) pioneered by pre-war driver Gene Crowley, British midgets had been inactive since 1939.
That all changed in 1949 when Northampton baker Dave Hughes, a pre-war supporter of the sport, bought 12 Skirrow cars from various pre-war drivers. Hughes also laid out his own track at Brafield, later to be a motorcycle speedway, then the car racing complex known as Northampton International Raceway.
His early ventures to take the cars elsewhere led to several meetings on grass at Brighton greyhound stadium, and a few meetings were also staged at Eastbourne.
Then in the winter of 1951-52, a Midland Midget Car League involving tracks at Coventry, Leicester, Cradley Heath and Birmingham was formed. But winter racing on rain-soaked shale tracks in December and January killed off that venture.
Hughes moved his operations to Scotland in 1953 and 1954. In that time, meetings were staged at Stepps Stadium, Ashfield (Glasgow), Motherwell and Meadowbank (Edinbugh). Hughes later staged meetings at Oxford, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Southampton and Eastbourne and go to Holland before abandoning his venture at the end of the decade.
With only 12 cars, all built before 1939, there had to be an end to Hughes’ brave attempt to put midget car racing on a firm footing. He cannabalised cars to find spares to keep cars running but in the end there was not enough of them. They managed just five cars for their appearance on a multi-motor sport meeting at Coventry at the end of the 1950s.
An unusual midget car venture was the attempt to popularise rear-fitted 500cc JAP-engined cars, mainly on the northern speedways, in the late 1950s.
When the bigger Skirrows failed to operate, there was still a school of thought - particularly at Belle Vue - that the formula had much to offer. But, to those who have been midget purists, lovers of the front-engined American-type cars, the alternative was a surprise. They were introduced during the late 1950s as half-litre midgets and many were rear-engined. Most were built by Bob Parker from Stretford.
The drive on the car was by chain through a counter shaft, which explained why the speedway bike engine was used. Its controls were a foot-operated clutch and pedals, with a wheelbase of 76inches and track of 4 6ins. In 1958, a completed car cost £275.
The 1956 season was probably the busiest for these midgets. Generally, these midgets remained very much a Belle Vue phenomena. They did get some outings on the speedways at Sheffield and Bradford, once at Wembley, and even staging some ‘private’ meetings on the Ainsdale Sands near Liverpool.
There was a belated effort to establish these midgets as an attachment to speedway in 1959. Promoter Charles Ochiltree decided to break from the standard British formula for speedway with just bikes and ‘to go Australian.’
He ran several meetings on dates when the Coventry speedway team was away from Brandon, running meetings with races for bikes, sidecars and midgets. His main event for midgets was on March 28, 1959, for the Easter Ace Individual Tournament when 15 midgets competed. It was won by Art Crane from Burnley.
In a bid to give a solid basis to the formula, the controlling Midget Car Racing Club called in former Sorrow expert Dave Hughes as their adviser. But too much damage had been done to the formula’s reputation for Hughes to effect major improvements.
Eventually, the formula just faded away - simply because neither fans, promoters nor sufficient drivers were interested in the rear-engined 500cc JAP-engined speedway cars.
The modern concept of midget car racing, currently controlled by the Grand Prix Midget Car Club evolved from a Spedeworth International concept in 1968. The promoting group’s managing director Les Eaton decided the time was ripe to popularise midget car racing on short ovals.
He felt that if the formula was to succeed, it needed to get away from previous attempts in Britain to run it as four-wheel speedway. Eaton believeded, rightly so perhaps, that midget car racing’s future future was with fields of 16, 20 or even more cars on track with races over 15 or 20 laps. He also believed that the cars should be attractive, based largely on the American dirt-track four-wheelers with front-engines.
This idea was also favoured by a Surrey car builder, Geoff Rumble, who was backed by early enthusiasts Pete and John Smith. So it was Rumble who built the first modern British midget car - The Dastle. Besides the Smiths, other early stars were Malcolm Goodman, John Graham, Rod Tanswell and Frank Boyles, while Bob Elson was among the first champions.
Unfortunately, in its infancy the venture was hit by factionalism when a second race group, the Midget Auto Racing Club, was formed in 1971.
Tanswell, Boyles, Roland Parker, Mick Bonner, Basil Craske and Derek Johnson were among the early stars who remained loyal to Spedeworth. meanwhile, the MARC was developing its own stars like the controversial Tony Stubbs, Paul Emery, Brian Spicer, Joe Therstappen and the Smiths.
The MARC moved its operations on to tracks like Harringay, the Mendips Raceway at Bristol, Rayleigh, New Brighton, Northampton and Stoke (Chesterton). But for all their rivalry, there was still contact between the two groups and an inter-change of drivers for major championship meetings.
When Spedeworth dropped their version of midgets in the early 1970s, largely because by then they preferred the non-contact Hot Rod cars, it looked as though midget car racing in Britain was set for another failure. But there was an upsurge of interest when the MARC reformed as the Grand Prix Midget Club and was guided by London policeman Eric Fretten, who also raced. His son Alan was later to emerge as another leading midget car driver.
Spedeworth’s departure as a major promoter also cost the midget cars their regular outings on ‘glamour’ tracks in the south of England. Northampton - on the site of Dave Hughes’ original Brafield track - became their main venue, and Swaffham also staged regular racing.
The GPM has survived , but many of their cars bear little resemblancece to what purists think a midget car should like. They brought in an increasing number of rear-engine cars and many midgets were nothing like the accepted American cars. Many GPM cars indeed took on similarities to Formula One GP cars.
The GPM established contacts with Holland and Germany, where midget cars were then also being regularly promoted. A regular inter-change drivers even led to the establishment of a World Championship.
Mick Bonner and Basil Craske, two former Spedeworth aces, won their biggest glories with the new set-up. Another good trackman was Bill Boarer, tragically to die in a swimming accident, but his son Alf became leading driverer in the 1980s before moving on to National Hot Rod racing.
Among other leading GPM drivers in the 1980s were Harry Sayell, John Calladine, Duncan Long, Peter Shreeve, Ken Elliott and Gordonon Pooley. Besides Northampton, other tracks competed at included Ringwood, Peterbough and Eastbourne.
In the early 1980s, the GMPM also warded off a potential defection of drivers to the National Midget Car Speedway Association which, in its two-year life, managed just two demonstration races as a programme-filler after a speedway meeting at Wimbledon and a practice session at Hackney.
The idea of Namicsa in 1982 was a sincere but ill-founded move to establish racing for front-engined ‘American-style’ midget cars. They believed that GP midgets no longer remained true to the international concepts of the formula.
Namicsa came about when a South African airline pilot convened a meeting of those with similar minds. He was Ian Fraser Kerr, who had raced superstox in Britain and also a front-engined Dastle in GPM events. Kerr wanted to see an alternative midget formula with front-engine cars similarar to those running in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, competing on British tracks.
He found support in car builder Geoff Rumble and the Smith brothers. More veterans of the early Spedeworth midget car days, Dan Hornby, Tony Stubbs and Brian Spicer also showed interest, while then rising star Dermott McGivern who was racing a Dastle with the GPM group also showed interest in the new group. Clive Baker, an Englishman who claimed to have raced midgets in the USA and rally driver Jim Woolford also indicated they would like to join the new group.
From the start Namicsa, who had the author of this book working on a publicity basis for them, made contacts towards speedway promoters rather than the the mainstream small oval car promotions. They staged a two race London Championship demonstrationon at Wimbledon Stadium where Pete Smith won the title. The speedway promotion also offered them practice facilities, as did Hackney speedway promoter Len Silver.
Silver turned up for the practice, held on a Saturday afternoon, about an hour after the session had got underway. He sat in the grandstand for about 10 minutes, then jumped to his feet, shouting, “Get them off my track.”
It was a miserable ending to the day for the drivers, who went back to the pits, washed down their cars, loaded up and went home. No contact was made with Silver at the track and no other contacts were made with him about staging midget car racing at Hackney.
Namicsa also persuaded Dave Hughes to act as their adviser. In linking with the group, Hughes warned them, “You will find it very hard to break down the barriers against midgets racing on speedway tracks.” His warning proved to be stark and to the point.
Namicsa worked hard to get bookings, and by 1983 Exeter, Eastbourne and Ellesmere Port speedway bosses showed interest, as did small oval promoters at Peterborough.
Namicsa also worked hard to get publicity and did outstrip the Grand Prix Midget Club in that direction. But the latter group continued to get bookings for its meetings as regularly as ever. The few front-engined midget car drivers in its ranks declined overtures to practice or race as ‘guests’ in any proposed Namicsa events.
The death for Namicsa came when, for a pre-1983 season drivers’ meeting, just three turned up - the Smiths and McGivern. The booking in eight days time at Exeter was hurridly cancelled and three days later Namicsa folded. The group had proved itself able to organise on a publicity basis but unable to meet its real objective - to provide enough drivers to stage meetings.[/b]
(c) John Hyam 2009
In actual fact, when ‘midget car racing was introduced to Britain’ at London’s old Crystal Palace speedway track on March 31, 1934, a form of the the racing had been run at various times for some years on a horse trotting track at Greenford in Middlesex.
The cars which appeared at Crystal Palace were far from custom-built midget cars. They were all Roadsters, many of them used not only on the track at Greenford, which opened in 1928, but also in road racing events on the Isle of Man.
Many of the original Greenford drivers went on to win fame in ‘real’ midget car racing - drivers like South Londoners Les and Lane White were just two of them. They raced at a track which also staged motorcycle racing.
The Whites and Alvin 'Spike' Rhiando became interested in midget car racing when it started in California in 1933 and were confident the American-style small oval car sport could be a success in Britain as it was becoming in Australia and New Zealand.
They helped to introduce the sport at Crystal Palace, where they were able to take advantage of a properly built speedway track following the speedway team’s move to newly-built New Cross Stadium. The original Palace track had been laid in 1928 when speedway arrived in Britain from Australia.
However, what the Whites and Rhiando were introducing was another formula then also developing in the USA. This was Roadsters, a class mainly racing on the big fairgrounds tracks. British racing proved to be relatively safe whereas in the USA many brave drivers lost their lives or were seriously injured in the many crashes that tended to bedevil the formula.
A display at Crystal Palace in 2000 showed many cars of the type that probably appeared in the first car racing meeting at this venue more than 46 years previously. At the ‘Racing 2000’ show there was an Austin 7 Special, built in 1929, and fitted with a 747cc engine. There was also an Austin Seven Sports, again fitted with a 747cc engine, built in 1930, and yet a third Austin Seven, of the same engine size, and built in 1937.
It was cars like these which had first appeared at Greenford, and subsequently at Crystal Palace and Lea Bridge and, according to a Belle Vue programme photo, also at the Manchester track in 1935.
Some of these types of cars survived as midgets until 1937, when they were completely replaced by either the purpose-built Skirrow or Elto midget car.
In 1934, cars like the Austin were soon challenged when Jean Reville and Rhiando came up with cars better-suited for speedway-type racing on cinders. Reville’s ‘The Gnat’ was described as the ‘smallest car in the world’. Rhiando’s first real midget was built at a garage in Guildford, Surrey. And besides delighting the Crystal Palace fans with his car racing exploits, Rhiando used to use the centre green microphone during the interval of meetings to sing to the spectators, accompanying himself on a guitar.
At the first Crystal Palace meeting, on March 31, 1934, RG Nash is credited with winning a race on the quarter-mile track in a 1500cc Anzini Nash at a speed of 40.81mph. Victor Gillow also impressed at this meeting, driving a Riley which he had previously used in road races on the Isle of Man. There were many similar cars in action, but the Frazer Nash and Austin were the most popular. Another favourite with the Palace drivers was the Palmer Special.
The Austin cars were also well in evidence when midget car racing started at Belle Vue in Manchester in 1935, and were also widely used when racing took place on a track at Barnet in Hertfordshire in 1936.
An Australian driver, Tommy Sulman had a lot to do with the eventual development of a bona-fide midget car. He arrived in England in 1932 and became interested in all aspects of car racing. His first track car was a three-wheel Morgan which he converted to a four-wheel car, giving it Ford steering and fitted with a GN rear axle. He used it at the first meeting at Crystal Palace.
In later years, Sulman developed and built his own Singer midget car. This was built around a Le Mans engine and was fully-chromed, upholstered and painted, unlike many cars racing in 1935 and 1936.
Sulman took part in a midget car meeting on wasteland at Brighton in 1935, where the other drivers included Les White (Salmson Special), Spike Rhiando (Austin Special) and Jimmy Raynes (Riley).
In his unpublished autobiography, Sulman also records the debut of the Skirrow at a meeting in Rotterdam, Holland, in 1935. Ten cars including three Skirrows took part. Sulman wrote ‘and the Skirrows were unbeatable’. Walter Mackereth drove one of the Skirrows, Raynes used a Blackburn Special and Sulman raced his Singer.
In British midget car racing, things had to change in regard to the cars if the sport was to develop. Reville was a prime mover in this direction. He said in July 1935 in an interview with the ‘South London Press’, “Previously anything from a 12-tourer to the tiniest racer was allowed. Now things will change.”
In hindsight, it must be accepted that the original small oval car racing on British tracks was in fact Roadsters and not midgets. It puts back by some two years the accepted start of the formula at Crystal Palace in 1934 to probably Coventry or Lea Bridge in late 1936 or 1937. These featured Skirrow and Elto cars only.
Be that as it may, many of the pioneer Roadster drivers did graduate to proper midget car racing and for that reason, British small oval racing must be grateful to those now near forgotten pioneers.
The track at the Palace now forms the base of the athletics track in the National Sports Centre. Belle Vue (Manchester) quickly followed, and up to the outbreak of war in September 1939, other venues that saw racing included Leeds, Glasgow, Coventry, Lea Bridge, Southampton, Stoke, Bristol and Wembley.
In pre-war WW2 days, midget car racing ran under the sanction of the National Association of Speedway Car Racing Circuits. Basically, the format for meetings was the same as speedway with four cars racing over four laps from a standing start.
Guidelines for midget cars, many of them built by Harry Skirrow, was:
(1) Chassis length not to exceed 6ft with a track of 3ft 10ins.
(2) No car could be fitted with an engine exceeding 1,500cc.
(3) Superchargers prohibited.
(4) A body fitted to the chassis of the single seater type.
(6) The exhaust pipe or pipes extend to the rear, level with the back axle but no further, and slotted for silence.
In 1938, the registered drivers for the season were:
(51) Walter Mackereth, (52) Les White, (53) Spike Rhiando, (54) Squib Burton, (55) Eric Worswick, (56) Ron Wills, (57) Vic Patterson, (58) Charlie Pashley, (59) Stan Mills, (60) Bruce Warburton, (61) Jimmy Raynes, (62) George Turvey, (63) Basil de Mattos, (64) Syd Emery, (65) Johnny Young, (66) Syd Plevin, (67) Val Atkinson, (68) Frank Marsh, (69) Gene Crowley, (70) Frank Bullock, (71) Eric Davies, (72) Buster Bladen, (73) Stan Jorgensen, (74) Joe Wildblood, (75) Tiddler Pierson, (76) Skid Martin, (77) Frank Chiswell, (78) 'Bronco' Bill Reynolds, (79) D J Fowdrey, (80) Tommy Sulman, (81) Billy Murden, (82) V Neald.
The Brandon track at Coventry then measured 395 yards and was surfaced with deep cinders which considerably slowed down the cars. The four lap standing-start record credited to Mackereth, was 80.4 seconds, an average speed of 40.53mph. He also held the rolling start record at 75.8 seconds, a speed of 43mph.
Many consider that Mackereth was probably the finest midget car driver produced by Britain. In pre-war days, he was European champion, winning the title in Holland, and also won the British Championship in 1937 and 1938.
Syd Plevin, a former speedway rider, was also a top class performer and won the National Trophy at Belle Vue in 1937 in what has been described as ‘an exceptionally exciting display of midget car racing’. Cyril ‘Squib’ Burton and Frank Chiswell were other former speedway riders who switched to the midgets with success.
Londoner Les White also enjoyed a big reputation and did exceptionally well at Southampton where a 10,000 crowd saw him win an individual meeting on Good Friday 1938. It turned out to be the only pre-war midget car meeting at the track following protests by the speedway team that the cars cut up the track surface.
Hackney Wick also briefly tried the sport. They held a World Championship in 1936, won by American speedway rider Cordy Milne, Then in another meeting at Waterden Road in 1938, Mackereth won the East London Championship in a meeting where Rhiando somersaulted over the safety fence but escaped injury or damage to his car.
Lea Bridge was London’s main track in 1937, but the following year support faded and the then league team switched to Crystal Palace in mid-season.
By 1939, British drivers had ventured abroad, Jean Reville, Ralph Secratan and Bud Stanley toured Australia in 1935-36, Bill Reynolds raced in the USA, New Zealand and Australia in 1938 and 1939. And there was also talk of another British team going to Australia for their 1939-40 season, but the outbreak of war on September 3, 1939, ended that idea.
Midget car racing failed to re-establish itself in Britain after the end of WW2 in May 1945. And an attempt by American promoters to re-introduce the sport at tracks in London in 1948 proved a disaster. They saw attendances dramatically slump after the initial meetings and were gone within a month.
On the British scene, apart from a few meetings in 1947 at tracks like Nottingham and Bell End (Holbeach) pioneered by pre-war driver Gene Crowley, British midgets had been inactive since 1939.
That all changed in 1949 when Northampton baker Dave Hughes, a pre-war supporter of the sport, bought 12 Skirrow cars from various pre-war drivers. Hughes also laid out his own track at Brafield, later to be a motorcycle speedway, then the car racing complex known as Northampton International Raceway.
His early ventures to take the cars elsewhere led to several meetings on grass at Brighton greyhound stadium, and a few meetings were also staged at Eastbourne.
Then in the winter of 1951-52, a Midland Midget Car League involving tracks at Coventry, Leicester, Cradley Heath and Birmingham was formed. But winter racing on rain-soaked shale tracks in December and January killed off that venture.
Hughes moved his operations to Scotland in 1953 and 1954. In that time, meetings were staged at Stepps Stadium, Ashfield (Glasgow), Motherwell and Meadowbank (Edinbugh). Hughes later staged meetings at Oxford, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Southampton and Eastbourne and go to Holland before abandoning his venture at the end of the decade.
With only 12 cars, all built before 1939, there had to be an end to Hughes’ brave attempt to put midget car racing on a firm footing. He cannabalised cars to find spares to keep cars running but in the end there was not enough of them. They managed just five cars for their appearance on a multi-motor sport meeting at Coventry at the end of the 1950s.
An unusual midget car venture was the attempt to popularise rear-fitted 500cc JAP-engined cars, mainly on the northern speedways, in the late 1950s.
When the bigger Skirrows failed to operate, there was still a school of thought - particularly at Belle Vue - that the formula had much to offer. But, to those who have been midget purists, lovers of the front-engined American-type cars, the alternative was a surprise. They were introduced during the late 1950s as half-litre midgets and many were rear-engined. Most were built by Bob Parker from Stretford.
The drive on the car was by chain through a counter shaft, which explained why the speedway bike engine was used. Its controls were a foot-operated clutch and pedals, with a wheelbase of 76inches and track of 4 6ins. In 1958, a completed car cost £275.
The 1956 season was probably the busiest for these midgets. Generally, these midgets remained very much a Belle Vue phenomena. They did get some outings on the speedways at Sheffield and Bradford, once at Wembley, and even staging some ‘private’ meetings on the Ainsdale Sands near Liverpool.
There was a belated effort to establish these midgets as an attachment to speedway in 1959. Promoter Charles Ochiltree decided to break from the standard British formula for speedway with just bikes and ‘to go Australian.’
He ran several meetings on dates when the Coventry speedway team was away from Brandon, running meetings with races for bikes, sidecars and midgets. His main event for midgets was on March 28, 1959, for the Easter Ace Individual Tournament when 15 midgets competed. It was won by Art Crane from Burnley.
In a bid to give a solid basis to the formula, the controlling Midget Car Racing Club called in former Sorrow expert Dave Hughes as their adviser. But too much damage had been done to the formula’s reputation for Hughes to effect major improvements.
Eventually, the formula just faded away - simply because neither fans, promoters nor sufficient drivers were interested in the rear-engined 500cc JAP-engined speedway cars.
The modern concept of midget car racing, currently controlled by the Grand Prix Midget Car Club evolved from a Spedeworth International concept in 1968. The promoting group’s managing director Les Eaton decided the time was ripe to popularise midget car racing on short ovals.
He felt that if the formula was to succeed, it needed to get away from previous attempts in Britain to run it as four-wheel speedway. Eaton believeded, rightly so perhaps, that midget car racing’s future future was with fields of 16, 20 or even more cars on track with races over 15 or 20 laps. He also believed that the cars should be attractive, based largely on the American dirt-track four-wheelers with front-engines.
This idea was also favoured by a Surrey car builder, Geoff Rumble, who was backed by early enthusiasts Pete and John Smith. So it was Rumble who built the first modern British midget car - The Dastle. Besides the Smiths, other early stars were Malcolm Goodman, John Graham, Rod Tanswell and Frank Boyles, while Bob Elson was among the first champions.
Unfortunately, in its infancy the venture was hit by factionalism when a second race group, the Midget Auto Racing Club, was formed in 1971.
Tanswell, Boyles, Roland Parker, Mick Bonner, Basil Craske and Derek Johnson were among the early stars who remained loyal to Spedeworth. meanwhile, the MARC was developing its own stars like the controversial Tony Stubbs, Paul Emery, Brian Spicer, Joe Therstappen and the Smiths.
The MARC moved its operations on to tracks like Harringay, the Mendips Raceway at Bristol, Rayleigh, New Brighton, Northampton and Stoke (Chesterton). But for all their rivalry, there was still contact between the two groups and an inter-change of drivers for major championship meetings.
When Spedeworth dropped their version of midgets in the early 1970s, largely because by then they preferred the non-contact Hot Rod cars, it looked as though midget car racing in Britain was set for another failure. But there was an upsurge of interest when the MARC reformed as the Grand Prix Midget Club and was guided by London policeman Eric Fretten, who also raced. His son Alan was later to emerge as another leading midget car driver.
Spedeworth’s departure as a major promoter also cost the midget cars their regular outings on ‘glamour’ tracks in the south of England. Northampton - on the site of Dave Hughes’ original Brafield track - became their main venue, and Swaffham also staged regular racing.
The GPM has survived , but many of their cars bear little resemblancece to what purists think a midget car should like. They brought in an increasing number of rear-engine cars and many midgets were nothing like the accepted American cars. Many GPM cars indeed took on similarities to Formula One GP cars.
The GPM established contacts with Holland and Germany, where midget cars were then also being regularly promoted. A regular inter-change drivers even led to the establishment of a World Championship.
Mick Bonner and Basil Craske, two former Spedeworth aces, won their biggest glories with the new set-up. Another good trackman was Bill Boarer, tragically to die in a swimming accident, but his son Alf became leading driverer in the 1980s before moving on to National Hot Rod racing.
Among other leading GPM drivers in the 1980s were Harry Sayell, John Calladine, Duncan Long, Peter Shreeve, Ken Elliott and Gordonon Pooley. Besides Northampton, other tracks competed at included Ringwood, Peterbough and Eastbourne.
In the early 1980s, the GMPM also warded off a potential defection of drivers to the National Midget Car Speedway Association which, in its two-year life, managed just two demonstration races as a programme-filler after a speedway meeting at Wimbledon and a practice session at Hackney.
The idea of Namicsa in 1982 was a sincere but ill-founded move to establish racing for front-engined ‘American-style’ midget cars. They believed that GP midgets no longer remained true to the international concepts of the formula.
Namicsa came about when a South African airline pilot convened a meeting of those with similar minds. He was Ian Fraser Kerr, who had raced superstox in Britain and also a front-engined Dastle in GPM events. Kerr wanted to see an alternative midget formula with front-engine cars similarar to those running in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, competing on British tracks.
He found support in car builder Geoff Rumble and the Smith brothers. More veterans of the early Spedeworth midget car days, Dan Hornby, Tony Stubbs and Brian Spicer also showed interest, while then rising star Dermott McGivern who was racing a Dastle with the GPM group also showed interest in the new group. Clive Baker, an Englishman who claimed to have raced midgets in the USA and rally driver Jim Woolford also indicated they would like to join the new group.
From the start Namicsa, who had the author of this book working on a publicity basis for them, made contacts towards speedway promoters rather than the the mainstream small oval car promotions. They staged a two race London Championship demonstrationon at Wimbledon Stadium where Pete Smith won the title. The speedway promotion also offered them practice facilities, as did Hackney speedway promoter Len Silver.
Silver turned up for the practice, held on a Saturday afternoon, about an hour after the session had got underway. He sat in the grandstand for about 10 minutes, then jumped to his feet, shouting, “Get them off my track.”
It was a miserable ending to the day for the drivers, who went back to the pits, washed down their cars, loaded up and went home. No contact was made with Silver at the track and no other contacts were made with him about staging midget car racing at Hackney.
Namicsa also persuaded Dave Hughes to act as their adviser. In linking with the group, Hughes warned them, “You will find it very hard to break down the barriers against midgets racing on speedway tracks.” His warning proved to be stark and to the point.
Namicsa worked hard to get bookings, and by 1983 Exeter, Eastbourne and Ellesmere Port speedway bosses showed interest, as did small oval promoters at Peterborough.
Namicsa also worked hard to get publicity and did outstrip the Grand Prix Midget Club in that direction. But the latter group continued to get bookings for its meetings as regularly as ever. The few front-engined midget car drivers in its ranks declined overtures to practice or race as ‘guests’ in any proposed Namicsa events.
The death for Namicsa came when, for a pre-1983 season drivers’ meeting, just three turned up - the Smiths and McGivern. The booking in eight days time at Exeter was hurridly cancelled and three days later Namicsa folded. The group had proved itself able to organise on a publicity basis but unable to meet its real objective - to provide enough drivers to stage meetings.[/b]
(c) John Hyam 2009