Among fans of open-wheel racing, Indiana Sprint Week has become a must-see event.
Fans now come in droves from near and far, and the pits include teams who spend most of their summer on either coast.
It is an event that dates to 1988 with five races staged at Avilla Motor Speedway, Paragon, Bloomington and Kokomo, with the finale held at Lincoln Park.
Then an all-winged affair, by 1990 the style of racing was largely dictated by the preference of each track consistent with their weekly program. Since 1995, non-winged racing has remained the order of the day.
In 1995, the concluding event of the then four race mini-series was held at Kokomo Speedway. The track’s owner Kent Evans and a reasonable crowd watched second-generation sprint car racer Mike Mann blister a stout field.
By now Kent’s mind was churning, and what he saw in front of him was untapped potential.
It turns out that he was right.
“I had watched what the All Stars had done over in Ohio with their Speedweek,” Evans recalled, “and I thought, why can’t we do something like that with non-winged racing?”
Armed with what he considered a good idea, he headed south to the USAC office to meet with the late Gary Sokola, the club’s director of competition at the time. His proposal was to bring Indiana Sprint Week under the USAC banner.
To his surprise, he got a cool reception. “Sokola wasn’t all that interested,” Evans says with a laugh, “but I persisted and told him that USAC needed more dirt races in Indiana.”
The truth was that, in 1995, USAC staged just five dirt races in their home state, with two at the Terre Haute Action Track.
Not content to let matters slide, Evans arranged a meeting at a Martinsville, Ind., restaurant attended by Keith and Judy Ford from Paragon Speedway, Mike Miles from Bloomington, announcer/writer Pat Sullivan, along with Dick Jordan and Bill Marvel from USAC.
It took some persuading, but with three promotional teams willing to give it a try, Marvel did his part and convinced Sokola to give the idea the green flag.
Marvel rolled up his sleeves and rounded up a few sponsors including a small promotion whereby the winning driver would earn a $100 bonus for taking a swig of milk in victory lane. By the time the brief three-night tour reached Kokomo Speedway, it was clear that this event had a chance to become a home run.
In a poignant moment, Brad Marvel, who had yet to win a USAC National race, moved to the front of the field in the waning stages of the race. It’s a memory Kent Evans cherishes to this day.
“With about 10 laps to go, Bill Marvel was pulling on my arm he was so excited,” Evans says,” and when Brad won Bill starts running to meet him and I’m screaming at him to remember the milk.”
In the end, Bill Marvel handed his son the bottle in what was a dream come true for both men.
The next day, Evans toured the grounds and everything he saw confirmed his hunch about the future of this event.
“On Monday afternoon there were still about 30 motorhomes in the lot,” he recalls “and they were from places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and California. I talked to those people, and they all said they would be back. I thought we were on to something, and it has been fun to watch how much it has grown.”
This year’s edition of Indiana Sprint Week opens Friday at Gas City I-69 Speedway and moves to Kokomo Speedway on Saturday.