11 replies to this topic

[Delsaux]

Does anyone know anything about the IMCA championships (dirt tracks big cars)? In 1942, it is said for instance that Gus Schrader is IMCA champion for the sixth time.
Were there heats with points? How much points per heat, where,... ?
It seems that IMCA was at least as important and powerfull than AAA. Is it true?

[fines]

IMCA was the leading 'outlaw' sanctioning body in the USofA in the twenties and thirties, and that means it was at least as important and powerful as anything other than AAA. I guess it would be right to say that IMCA challenged AAA in certain fields, and Big Car racing would certainly be one. But... many drivers that became successful with the IMCA would switch over to AAA as soon as they could, mainly because of Indy! So, that one event established the true hierarchy beyond all doubts.

As for IMCA "statistics", there's not much I can find without a lot of digging. I have the following (incomplete) list of "Big Car Champions" from Gordon White's book "Offenhauser":

1937 Gus Schrader
1938 Emory Collins
1939 Gus Schrader
1940 Gus Schrader
1941 Gus Schrader
1942-45 no championship (sic!)
1946 Emory Collins
1947 Emory Collins
1948 Emory Collins
1949 Frank Luptow
1950 Frank Luptow
1951 Frank Luptow
1952 Deb Snyder
1953 Deb Snyder
1954 Bob Slater
1955 Bobby Grim
1956 Bobby Grim
1957 Bobby Grim
1958 Bobby Grim
1959 Pete Folse
1960 Pete Folse
1961 Pete Folse
1962 Johnny White

I'll see if I can dig out more.

[David McKinney]

Some earlier winners:
1925 Fred Horey (first national champion)
1926 Fred Horey
1927 Sig Haugdahl
1928 Sig Haugdahl
1929 Sig Haugdahl
1930 Sig Haugdahl
1931 Sig Haugdahl
1932 Sig Haugdahl
1933 Gus Schrader
1934 Gus Schrader
1935 Gus Schrader
1936 Gus Schrader

Schrader's 1941 title was awarded posthumously

[bpratt]

Determining how a champion was crowned seems problematic for the IMCA. I've found info from news reports in the early years that only one race of the six scheduled, the final 15 lapper of course, would count ten points to the winner toward the "World's championship".

That info comes from 1919 in the Calgary Herald. There also seemed to be a Canadian championship worked into the series of races in Canada.

As the records for the IMCA from the pre-WWII are pretty much entirely gone due to a fire details on the champions and how they were determined are gone except for the news items.

Also, as the popularity of the IMCA grew, there would be more than one tour of drivers hitting the fairgrounds at any one time. Drivers like Gus Schrader and Emory Collins might not meet each other except at the big events (like the Minnesota State Fair around Labour Day). The same can be said for the post-WWII era when Collins and Jimmie Wilburn would not race head-to-head very often. They'd be the headliners on their circuits.

Buzz Rose has published a book on the IMCA. It's a good start. Check

http://www.roseracingpublications.com/

for more info.

[Jim Thurman]

Originally posted by fines


I'll see if I can dig out more.

http://forums.atlasf...nt Car question

Scroll down about six messages (I still can't link directly to a post).

fines, I'm disappointed...;)

Other posts in the thread also feature some IMCA discussion.

[fines]

Oh... I clean forgot about that one!

So, nobody can accuse me of copying everything I see!

[fines]

Oh... I clean forgot about that one!

So, nobody can accuse me of copying everything I find!

[Delsaux]

Hi everybody,

many thanks for your invaluable informations. Does anyone know a book on the history of motorsport in Canada? It is of course a pity that the records of IMCA before WWII are gone!

[bpratt]

For a couple books on Canada try http://granvilleisla...itles/index.htm

[Michael Ferner]

In other posts, here on this board, I have repeatedly expressed the opinion that the IMCA started awarding point championships only in 1937, and that the listings of earlier champions was somehow "faked". Well, it seems I was wrong about the earlier part of that statement (the second still holds at least partly true, as I will explain) - imagine my surprise when I found two articles in an Alabama newspaper of 1927, detailing parts of the point standings before and after the Alabama State fair meeting, last on the IMCA schedule that year! Mind you, as with everything connected to the IMCA, this info will have to be taken with a pinch of salt, and I will have to look into this more deeply soon; but for the moment here's the final IMCA standings of 1927:

 

1 Fred Horey 950

2 Curley Young 910

3 John de Palma 855

4 Swan Peterson 825

 

This contradicts the widely circulated list of earlier champions, as posted by the late David McKinney earlier in this thread, but that was no surprise to me:

 

 

Some earlier winners:
1925 Fred Horey (first national champion)
1926 Fred Horey
1927 Sig Haugdahl
1928 Sig Haugdahl
1929 Sig Haugdahl
1930 Sig Haugdahl
1931 Sig Haugdahl
1932 Sig Haugdahl
1933 Gus Schrader
1934 Gus Schrader
1935 Gus Schrader
1936 Gus Schrader

Schrader's 1941 title was awarded posthumously

 

 

No surprise, because I knew already that Sig Haugdahl could not possibly have won the 1927 and '28 titles since he was semi-retired from 1926 to '28 inclusive, competing only in a handful of meetings each of those years. I have, however, always kept an eye open for IMCA "championship claims", and will come back later with a revised list of (possible) IMCA champions 1915 to 1936. The 1927 Alabama newspaper mentioned that this was Horey's fifth "world dirt track championship", and I figure that he won his earlier titles in 1916, '17, '23 and perhaps in '25. Louis Disbrow was, apparently, the first champion in 1915, and both Haugdahl and George Clark were mentioned as 1918 champions, then Haugdahl and Larry Stone in 1919/'20 and so on. I will prepare a more detailed analysis of the different claims later on.

[DCapps]

Every time that I have taken a look at the IMCA history, I get a migraine it seems. What a mess. The Buzz Rose book is essentially next to useless for all intents and purposes. I could pretty much hang with it in the early seasons, but then it gets pretty much surreal.

 

Your are a brave man, Michael. Dealing with both CSRA and IMCA simply produces the above-mentioned migraines at which point and I toss it all aside for another day.... 

[Michael Ferner]

Brave or foolish, I don't know. But yes, I do know that migraine very well... it seems to get better, though, once you start detecting patterns, and I think I have found one for the early IMCA champions. What looked like a haphazard and randomly conducted practice of promoting certain drivers with the grand title of a "world's dirt track champion" is now beginning to form the impression of a possible list of annual IMCA "circuit" champions! I'll have to do a bit of checking and re-checking, plus a bit of reading up and then I'll have another go...