Only eight of the drivers made it into the main event that day, and only Bob Sall had a really successful day by establishing track records in both the time trials and the fast heat, and leading every one of the 50 laps in the feature. Second and third place were taken by Lloyd Broshart and Johnny Hannon (not pictured), while Fox came home fourth ahead of MacKenzie, Theisen and Stubblefield. Winn, Saulpaugh and Rose all retired after holding second place for a while in the main; Rose by crashing into the tail end of the leader less than eight laps from the finish after earlier breaking Sall's ten-lap record in the second heat race. Winnai missed the cut by finishing only third in the consy (behind Henry Ziegenthaler and Vern Orenduff), while Russo flipped on the first lap of the same event, necessitating a restart. Also involved in the Russo wreck was Harris Insinger, who had already crashed in the time trials, along with Theisen, Lloyd Vieaux, Sam Becker and Ed Terry, the latter at the very beginning of a long career that would see him compete in USAC Sprints as late as 1965! So, all in all, a fairly eventful day at the track which had claimed the lives of Frank Farmer and Bill Neapolitan only three weeks earlier...
Racers kept busy in those days, too, as Saulpaugh had just won two main events at Altamont, NY (on Friday) and Reading, PA (on Saturday), with Sall victorious at Mineola, NY and Winn in the second Altamont meet (both on Saturday). Before they reconvened at Woodbridge a week later, Winn had added another couple of wins at Riverhead, NY (Friday) and Allentown, PA (Saturday), with Fox taking taking first at Cobleskill, NY (on Saturday). Others raced at Brockton, MA (won by Fred Frame) or Langhorne, PA (Bill Cummings), or further west in Saginaw, MI (Gene Haustein) and Fort Wayne, IN (Bob Carey), not to mention the Pacific Coast races every Wednesday at Ascot (Kelly Petillo and Chet Gardner) or San Jose on Sunday (Babe Stapp). And for every AAA race, there were two to three independent events going on somewhere in the US, like the pair of races in Kansas within a week (Topeka and Hutchinson), both ending in a Gerber 1-2 with Maynard Clark winning from his boss, Johnny Gerber - within little more than a year, both would be AAA winners at Woodbridge, too. The country may have dwelled on the brink of economical collapse, but there had never been a better time for fans of Big Car racing!
Equally "impressive", on the other hand, is the list of accidents over this double weekend, starting with Danny de Paolo (Pete's brother) at Ascot, Hal Sievert (twice), Harry Whitehouse, Chuck Tabor, Eddie Master, Bill Troutwine, Harold Cromer and Otto Burdick at Altamont, Russ Spohn and Frank Reynolds at Reading, Eddie Beaver and Art Challender at Topeka, Ed Steinbock at Evanston, IL, Hugh McHugh and Bill Mitchell at Saginaw, Bill Carroll and Skinny Jones at Hutchinson, Sam Becker again at Riverhead, Ken Douglas at Langhorne, Speed Adams (fatal) and Red Campbell at Nashville, TN, Ben Ostrander (also fatal), Howard Fetterleigh, Fred Myers and Roy Stedding at Canatosta, NY, Lou Nagy at Fort Wayne, Tom Cosman and Louis Tomei at San Jose, and finally Lloyd Broshart at the second Woodbridge event. Apart from Rose, de Paolo, Challender, Steinbock, Douglas and Nagy ended up with extended hospital stays, and of those only the future Indy winner and Challender ever raced Big Cars again. The younger de Paolo dabbled in stock cars for a time, while "Twenty Grand" Steinbock became one of the most famous track announcers of his time.
Edited by Michael Ferner, 14 August 2011 - 20:59.
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