Posted 07 January 2018 - 01:32
US Midget great Mike McGreevy died yesterday, aged 92. From the Bay Area in Northern California, McGreevy did also very well in Big Cars, which is little known - he was the American Racing Association Champion in 1956 and '57, racing at Oakland Speedway, Eureka (Redwood Acres), Vallejo, Bay Meadows, Clovis, Pacheco (Contra Costa) and Calistoga, of course, and also up to the Idaho State Fairgrounds in Boise. He first went east in the summer of 1953, racing AAA Midgets in Indiana, and repeated the following two years before concentrating on his successful ARA campaign. He then forsook the Big Cars for the small ones and, staying in California, was the Bay Cities Racing Association Champion in 1958, '60 and '62, as well as winning that club's special Indoor Championship in 1965, besides taking in the various USAC Midget races in the area with good success, but no wins. He also tried to qualify, without success, for two USAC National Championship dirt track 100-milers on the West Coast.
In 1962, his long-time Midget car owners/mechanics, Maurice "Moe" and Porter Goff, bought a three-year-old roadster off the George Bignotti/A. J. Foyt team, and went to Indianapolis, where McGreevy quickly reeled off the necessary laps for his rookie test early in the month, but the very next day during a test ride with veteran driver Jimmy Daywalt at the wheel, the car crashed and burned. It was quickly repaired, but McGreevy couldn't get over 142 mph at a time when a low 146 would have been considered "shaky", and neither could a succession of guest drivers, including Duane Carter who hopped an incredible ten cars during practice and qualifying! It didn't matter that the car hadn't done much better when new, and driven by Jud Larson (142.2 in '59) or Foyt himself (143.4 in '60) - it was never even pushed into the qualifying line. Ten days later, McGreevy and the Goff brothers went to Milwaukee, but qualified way back for the consy, in which they finished 6th, out of the main race, out of the money, and out of luck. End of chapter.
So, McGreevy went back to his first love, the Midgets, and began a serious attack of the USAC National Championship, which at the time typically consisted of 70-plus races all over the US - a daunting task! The first year, 1963, he won a race at Islip Speedway on Long Island in late summer, and finished 11th in points - not bad. The next year, he had another win at Cloverleaf Speedway in Ohio in early June, plus many runner-up finishes, good enough for 4th in points, just over a hundred points back of a young Iowan who won his first title in his third year of trying: Mel Kenyon. Starting his own third year in 1965, McGreevy changed to the successful team of Jack London, an old acquaintance from the BCRA days, and already a 19-time winner in the USAC National series, mostly with A. J. Foyt - Mike won numbers 20 & 21 for London in California in April, and added several top three finsihes before fate came knocking at his door: on June 20, Kenyon, the runaway-leader of the Midget standings and already a seven-time winner in the still young season, was critically injured in a fiery Indy car accident at Langhorne Speedway, ending his season prematurely. Mel's Midget team, owned and run by his brother Don Kenyon, then chose McGreevy as their substitute driver, and Mike wasted no time in quickly establishing his position: three more wins in the Midwest with Kenyon, plus another couple in California in October with local owners Fred Gerhardt and London, helped secure the National title on the strength of 26 top three finishes.
The next year, Kenyon was back in the team of his brother, and in a year-long battle McGreevy, driving for California's Myron Caves and Indiana's Kincaid brothers, won another five races to narrowly beat Kenyon into second, before Midget racing's superstar turned on the wick: 17 wins against McGreevy's six in 1967, and eleven against four in '68 left only distant runner-up finishes in points for the Californian, although well clear of the rest in both years. By now driving for another legendary owner, Howard Linne of Illinois, McGreevy managed another six wins and fourth in points in 1969, ending the season in the old Kincaid car, now owned by the Terre Haute contractor Ed Lark. Five days after winning the second race for his new owner, Lark suddenly died of a heart attack, and McGreevy finished the season driving for the widow, Betty Lou Lark, with a fine second in the Turkey Night Grand Prix. Over the winter, Betty Lou Lark became Mrs. Mike McGreevy, and with another fine finsih of fifth in another Midget Classic, the Hut Hundred in his new hometown Terre Haute, McGreevy called it a day.
His Midget statistics are impressive, with two National Championships and as many runner-up finishes in just four years, plus his thirty wins in seven. Included are a win in the second oldest Midget classic, the Night Before the 500 (in 1967) and the third oldest, the Hut Hundred (in 1968), plus two thirds in the latter. He was also second and third in the oldest of all Midget classics, the Turkey Night Grand Prix, and had a 5th in a 100-miler at Du Quoin as well as a second in a 100-lapper on the five-eights track of Indianapolis Raceway Park. In 1965 and 1966, McGreevy returned to the Speedway in Indianapolis for the 500-mile race two more times, but was replaced even before taking a time trial both years. In between, he attempted a few Indy car races, but qualified to start only twice, each time retiring within ten minutes or so of taking the starting signal. The last of those was the Jimmy Bryan Memorial race at Phoenix International Raceway in March of 1966, driving a rear-engined monocoque chassis - who would've thought that back in 1947, when his career began?
Donker raced track roadsters/hot rods in the Pacific Northwest in the late 40s/early 50s, where he was one of the top drivers (and raced against Pete Lovely, who would go on to a long career and even race as a privateer in F1).
It should also be noted that despite being known in open wheel circles, Mike McGreevy also drove hardtops on Bay Area tracks and did some stock car racing as well. An interesting feat came in 1956, when he drove in all three races (midgets, sprints, hardtops) in the "Cavalcade of Auto Racing" on the one mile Bay Meadows track in San Mateo.
