When the Little 500 is mentioned, the first thought of many is Eric Gordon. Gordon has nine career victories in the Anderson Speedway classic, which is more than anyone in the 73-year history of the race.
When the Little 500 is mentioned, the first thought of many is Eric Gordon. Gordon has nine career victories in the Anderson Speedway classic, which is more than anyone in the 73-year history of the race.
Before Eric Gordon there was Bob Frey. Frey has five Little 500 victories, trailing only Gordon. In 12 starts in the 500-lap race on the quarter-mile asphalt track, Frey has five wins and three second-place finishes.
Frey won some of the biggest pavement sprint car races the sport had to offer. He was one of the best pavement sprint car shufflers to ever strap behind the wheel of a sprint car. One look at Frey‘s career statistics and it‘s difficult to believe Frey has yet to be inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame. Perhaps this slight is the result of time.
Frey claims his interest in auto racing was the result of his father Rudy‘s influence.
“My dad was the one that instilled that in me,” explained Frey. “He was always interested in car racing. As a young man he bought an old dirt-track racer and was gonna design a motor for it. When he did that, he was just starting out in his factory and didn‘t have the time or the money to pursue it. My mom had told me she made him promise her he wouldn‘t drive it himself and that he would get a driver to drive it for him. He never raced himself, but he always had an interest in it. I remember my dad taking me out to Lorain County (Ohio) Speedway when it was still dirt and I was just a little tiny tike.”
Frey, who was born in Elyria, Ohio, was 20 when he began racing at Lorain County in 1970.
“My dad would go out and watch the races from the grandstand. My buddies and I were just developing those old Rat Racers,” he said. “Of course, you know how they would run a lap, spin out, crash and all that. My dad said that kind of racing is gonna teach you bad habits. If your gonna race you should get into something that‘s a little more advanced than those old jalopies. If you come up with half the money, I‘ll come up with the other half and we‘ll get a sprint car.”
They purchased a sprint car with a carbureted engine and began racing on the dirt at Hilltop Speedway in Millersburg, Ohio.
“Those cars that were running there at the time were just carbureted gasoline cars,” Frey said. “They were affordable. After we ran in Millersburg for a while, being that they were open-wheel sprint cars of a type, the next thing was progressing up into the supermodifieds at Loran County and Sandusky.
“We sold that old, carbureted sprint car and ended up buying Steve Lehnert‘s roadster that he had built,” Frey continued. “We ran it at Lorain County and Sandusky. I remember in 1972, we finished second with that old roadster to Armond Holley in Bill Hite‘s rear-engine car. Then we went to Anderson in August and I ran second to Butch Wilkerson in an ASA show.”
Frey met and married Joyce Ensign, who was the daughter of Ernie Ensign, who had previously owned race cars but had been battling a drinking problem.
“After I married his daughter, he knew I had been racing and told me, ‘I want to get a nice sprint car and I want to get back into racing. The money I used to spend on drinking I now can spend on a race car,” Frey related. “He ended up getting with Paul Leffler and had a brand-new sprint car built over the winter of 1972.”
The new Leffler car put Frey in victory lane almost immediately and he had the best season of his career in 1973. Frey captured his first victory on April 29 during an ASA sprint car event at Tri-County Speedway in West Chester, Ohio. He finished ninth in his first Little 500 start and added another ASA victory at Anderson. He also won several times at Sandusky.
“I really began to wonder if I‘d ever win a feature,” Frye remembered. “When I won that first one almost immediately, we started winning at Lorain and Sandusky. I began to think maybe I really can do some things in these cars. Maybe I will be an Indianapolis 500 driver, which was my ultimate dream. It was all because of the success I had suddenly found with Ernie Ensign.”
Frey won a supermodified feature at Miami-Hollywood Speedway to kick off the 1974 season and also claimed the Florida Winter championship for the low-slung cars.
But things soon moved in a different direction.
In those days, qualifying for the Little 500 was held two weeks before the event like the Indianapolis 500. Frey set one- and four-lap records to win the pole. However, Frey raced at Sandusky Speedway the following day and was involved in a violent crash and broke his left forearm.
“Paul Leffler suggested to Ernie that he put Larry Dickson in the car,” Frey recalled. “Dickson was retired and came out of retirement to drive the car after Ernie offered him the ride. Ironically, they were gonna give him that front row starting spot for the Little 500.
“They set my arm in a cast and I knew I would be out for a while. My arm was still killing me. I went back to the doctor and they said it all came back apart. They told me they were going to have to operate and put a steel plate in, then do a bone graph around the break. It was a serious deal and I was heartbroken. I went in the weekend of the Little 500 and had the procedure done.