Rathmann, who went on to win the Indianapolis 500 in 1960, said, “I figure it (stock car racing) will last a couple of more years and when the stocks are gone there’ll also be something else to race.”
Flaherty, another California transplant and future Indy 500 winner, was crowned the stock car champ at the Rockford Speedway, which, like Soldier Field, was run under the sanction of Andy Granatelli’s Hurricane racing organization.
A crowd of 36,875 saw Paul “Potsy” Goacher, of Anderson, Ind., win the fifth annual Chicago Park District Police Benevolent midget race on Sept. 17 at Soldier Field. The 100-lap AAA-sanctioned midget headliner saw Goacher, who was crowned the overall midget titlist at the “Field” in 1950, defeat Tony Bettenhausen and Frank Burany. Burany won the 100-lap Mid-Season Title race on July 30.
Besides his local midget activity, Bettenhausen won three AAA National Championship (Indy car) events.
On May 28, Frank Luptow, of Tampa, Fla., won the 20-lap IMCA “big car” headliner at Aurora Downs. A reported 8,000 fans witnessed the fourth annual visit of the sprinters to the Chicago area horse track with Ohio’s Deb Snyder and Kentucky’s Bert Hellmueller chasing Luptow to the finish. Snyder set fast time, touring the half-mile dirt oval in 25.63 seconds.
Promoter Rudy Leger and track owner Harry Molenaar also presented a “big car” race at Molenaar’s Schererville Speedway on May 28 with fast-qualifier Don Carr, of Jackson, Mich., winning the main event. The race was scheduled for 25 laps but was called after 11 laps after a car flipped and struck two men. Both were seriously injured.
Stock car action also took place on Sunday afternoons at the Schererville, Ind., speed plant. Michigan driver Willie Fedewa, Eddie Nichols, Harold “Stogy” Steindinger and Nick Trgovich were among feature winners. Raceway Park champion Hal Ruyle closed out the season with a Nov. 5 victory.
Lou Fegers, of Glenview, Ill., was the stock car champion at the Waukegan Speedway Park. In its second year of operation, the quarter-mile dirt oval saw Fegers win a 100-lap main event on Oct. 22. A week later, Keith Custer wheeled his ’47 Pontiac to victory in a 200-lap chase. Local stock car racing also took place at the Kankakee Fairgrounds Speedway and at the Savage Speedway in Gary, Ind.
For the fourth year in a row, Ray Elliott was the midget driving champion of the United Auto Racing Ass’n. Elliott and his Leo Melcher-owned Ford V-8 were again big winners during the season.