FORT WAYNE, Ind. — It’s Sept. 2, 1985, and Mike Fedorcak is on fire.
Following a successful season that saw Yoder, Indiana’s Mike Fedorcak named World Wide Auto Racing (WWAR) Midget champion. He pulls into Ohio’s Toledo Speedway for an evening of Supermodified and WWAR Midget racing, where he plans on racing in both halves of that evening’s doubleheader. He wins the WWAR Midget feature and leaves victory lane to strap into Tom Brewer’s Supermodified.
The Rumble will be broadcast live by SPEED SPORT affiliate Pit Row.tv.
As the field completes the third lap, Fedorcak is moving up quickly and is gaining on the leaders. Charging down the main straight at maximum speed, he looks to make quick work of the two cars in front of him when they touch. The contact sends Ricky Otts’ rear-engined machine into the path of Fedorcak who collides with his car and is sent hurtling, airborne, into the turn one wall.
The impact is enough to rupture the fuel cell and Fedorcak slides to a stop alive, but in a twisted piece of metal, parked in a 15-gallon pool of burning race fuel. The safety crew performed heroically to extricate him from the wreckage, but not before he suffered third degree burns to his legs and hands. He will spend the next three months in a hospital.
Thanksgiving 1986, it’s more than a year after the accident and Fedorcak is traveling to Louisville for further surgery on his hands, so he can continue his work as a machinist and get back in a race car. As he takes I-465 east, he sees a sign for the Indianapolis Speedrome. Previously the least-known of all the race tracks in the city, the Speedrome had reached national prominence as a still-new ESPN had debuted a program called “Thursday Night Thunder” which featured United States Auto Club (USAC) Midget racing on the short, flat oval.
As the sign faded into the distance, Fedorcak started thinking about building a car specifically for that track and that series. By Aug. 1987, the new car was completed and it was fast. So fast, that it won the UMARA Midget feature on debut at Grundy County Speedway in Illinois. So fast, that he was told to never bring it back. A week later, Fedorcak unloaded the car at the Speedrome, and the world was introduced to his creation.
Playing off the midget theme, he dubbed the powder blue car “the Munchkin.” Any giggles and stares the new car drew, stopped when the green flag went in the air. Starting fifth, Fedorcak quickly moved to the lead and would lap the entire field in route to a win in the 50-lap feature. A week later, he would do it again.
Weekly Midget competition would cease at the Speedrome at the end of 1987 and Fedorcak went into the offseason with a dozen people looking to buy copies of his creation. But those sales vanished in an instant when, fearing obsolescence of the current field of cars, USAC mandated seven changes to their 1988 National Rulebook for Midget Construction, looking to take away the Munchkin’s advantage. Fedorcak would find traditional cars to drive throughout 1988, before bringing out a longer, next generation Munchkin in 1989.
He would win three times with the new design, including another televised show on ESPN, before further rule changes saw the Munchkin largely relegated to a place in the back of his workshop.
Rumble
In 1998, the Rumble in Fort Wayne was created and saw indoor midget racing return to Fort Wayne, but not in the traditional Arena, but the new 100,000 square foot Expo Hall. After watching the field for nationally sanctioned midget racing dwindle year upon year, Rumble officials decided to make their own rulebook for the one-weekend-a-year show that would be a hybrid of traditional midgets, older cars and midgets from other non-traditional disciplines.
This opened the door for the Munchkin’s return. A late-night phone call from a mutual friend brokered a deal to have future NASCAR star Tony Stewart drive for Fedorcak at the 2001 Rumble, even though the two had never met. Running under the alias of “Mikey Fedorcak Jr.” the new duo won with Stewart surprising, fans by revealing the ruse when he took off his helmet in victory lane.
Fedorcak would win for himself in the car in 2002 and would later sell his two of his three creations to Tony Stewart Racing, with the original awaiting restoration, but not for racing, at Mike’s shop in Yoder. In 2005, Fedorcak would partner with the late Mike Streicher to build eight new Munchkins, based on the original design, under Streicher’s Hawk Chassis banner.
A Hawk-Munchkin carried Lou Cicconi to a Rumble win in 2005 and NASCAR crew member Ryan Flores to a win on opening night last year. Earlier this summer, Fedorcak completed principal construction on an additional five “next generation” Munchkins which are expected to make their Rumble debut in 2025.
On Dec. 11, Fedorcak turned 70 years old and enters the Rumble coming off a pair of top 10 finishes in 2023. If he makes the field in 2024, he will join the legendary “King of the Midgets” Mel Kenyon as the only other septuagenarian to make a starting line-up, with Kenyon finishing ninth in 2009 at the age of 76.
Should he win, he will take back his record of “oldest winner” from Russ Gamester, who won in 2021 at the age of 56. Gamester and Fedorcak also stand alone as the only two drivers to win midget races in both the Arena and the Expo Hall of the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum.
Joining the Midgets at the Rumble this year will be the North Baltimore Custom Cuts Outlaw Winged 600cc Midgets, LiUNA Non-Winged 600 Micro Sprints, six divisions of Baker Racing Engines Quarter Midgets, eight divisions of Coe Heating & Air Conditioning and Economy Auto Parts Go Karts, and two divisions of Wedge Innovations Wedge Karts.