Chance Kinsley - Hoosier racer

Part Four

In this installment we return to follow Hoosier dirt track hero Chance Kinsley’s racing career with the latter part of the 1923 racing season.

Following the twice-postponed July 14 1923 race, Hoosier Motor Speedway General Manager JV Lines announced beginning immediately that the track would stage a slate of weekly races on Saturday nights. The next race, held on July 21, featured 14 starters who raced for the odd distance of 125 laps.  

Worth Schloeman, the Iowa native who was Kinsley’s teammate on the Frontenac team won his second straight race of the ½-mile track. Schloeman finished in time of one hour, eleven minutes and 40 seconds as he was chased across the finish line by his teammate Arthur “Fuzzy” Davidson.

A newspaper photograph of the Roof "Flier"

 

On August 4 1923 the Hoosier Motor Speedway hosted a 100-lap race. The entry list featured Ralph Ormsby as the driver of the tiny Roof ‘Flyer’ which was touted in that day’s Indianapolis Star newspaper as “the smallest race car in the world.” 

The car built by the Laurel Motor Works of Anderson Indiana (in which Robert Roof was a partner) was powered by a four-cylinder Ford engine fitted with a Roof type C 16-valve cylinder head fed by four Zenith HP5A side draft carburetors. Ormsby had defected from the Frontenac team to drive for Roof; the three-car Frontenac team now featured Kinsley, Davidson and Schloeman as drivers.

Another significant entry for the 100-lap race was Lafayette native George Souders behind the wheel of the ‘Schuck Special.’ George had qualified twelfth fastest for the July 100-lap race which was rained out.  Apparently George was not fast enough on August 4 to make the starting field, but he would find great success in 1927 as a rookie at the track located on the west side of town, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.     

A total of twenty-seven cars were entered with twelve of the entrants eliminated through time trials which started at 1 o'clock on Saturday afternoon.  The fifteen fastest cars took the green flag at 3 o'clock and the next day’s edition of the Indianapolis Star reported that Earl Warrick of Covington Indiana grabbed the race lead on the eighth lap and led the rest of the way.

Warrick in his own blue-colored car won the 100-mile grind in a time of 56 minutes and 15 seconds as Chance Kinsley finished second a lap behind the winner followed by third place finisher Claude Fix. Kinsley had replaced the car's original driver, Ford Moyer, on the 35th lap of the race. The Star noted that the Moyer's Ford lost over a lap to leader Warrick in the driver exchange, and that Chance "drove a sensational race in an effort to overcome the lead of the fleet blue leader." 

There was apparently an interruption in auto racing at the Hoosier Motor Speedway for several weeks as a temporary arena was erected onsite to host a boxing exhibition between Argentinian Luis Angel Firpo and Joe Downey from Columbus Ohio. Scheduled for Thursday August 9, on the eve of the fight, Indiana Governor Warren T. McCray instructed Marion County Sheriff George Snider to stop the match.

McCray claimed that Indiana law prohibited prize fighting and that it was “unbecoming to hold a public contest of this nature as the country was in mourning for Warren G Harding,”  the United States President who had passed away suddenly on August 2 1923. The Sheriff also ordered the boxers use 16-ounce sparing (or training) gloves when the rescheduled exhibition was held on August 17.

Before the fight on August 16, track general manager JV Lines had announced that the upcoming Labor Day race at the Hoosier Motor Speedway would be known as the “First Annual 100-mile Hoosier Sweepstakes” which meant 200 laps around the oiled half-mile track. General admission to the grounds for the 100-mile race was one dollar with seats in the grandstand an additional 75 cents or a paddock seat for one dollar. 

The boxing match was described as a “joke” in the next day’s Chicago Tribune which revealed that the fight promoter Jack Druley had disappeared before the match. After a delay of more than an hour Indianapolis Mayor Samuel Shanks climbed into the ring and ordered the boxers to begin the match or go to jail. Wearing the pillow-like 16 ounce gloves “the Wild Man of the Pampas” pummeled Downey for ten rounds and afterwards Downey was admitted to an Indianapolis hospital in a “semi-conscious state” with “severe injures about the head.”  

Fight promoter Jack Druley reappeared days later and explained his pre-fight disappearance. Druley said he had only taken in a total of $4,600 at the gate and that said that after he paid Firpo $2000 of the contracted amount of $4000 and paid Downey $800 of the $1000 he was due that he did not have enough money left to pay Firpo’s inflated hotel room bill.  

Fearing that Firpo’s manager would demand the balance due, Druley fled. There was little public sympathy for the fight promoter, as the fighters on the under card remained unpaid and track manager JV Lines threatened civil action against the promoter unless the track received its promised 1/3 of the gate receipts. Eventually Lines paid the bills which led to Hoosier Motor Speedway entering severe financial straits.   

Arthur “Fuzzy” Davidson won the Hoosier Motor Speedway Labor Day 100-mile race at an average speed of 53 miles per hour as he finished in one hour and fifty-five minutes.  Chance Kinsley meanwhile was at Funk’s Speedway in Winchester but the race there was rained out. 

The next race at the high-banked half-mile in Winchester was held on September 16 1923 and in time trials Kinsley in his Frontenac-Ford turned a lap at 28 & 2/5th seconds which was reported as “the fastest lap ever made on a one-half mile track by cars of 183 cubic inch displacement.”

Chance's success was trumpeted in the Frontenac catalog

click to enlarge

In the 100-mile race that followed, Kinsley led the first 60 miles on the high-banked half-mile, but soon after his car retired with a broken axle which handed the lead to Ralph Ormsby in the Roof Flyer who led the rest of the way to claim victory. None of the five Frontenacs entered at Winchester that day finished the race, and only three cars finished the grind with Ray Butcher of Indianapolis in second place and Claude Fix third.

The full-page newspaper ad for the Bellmont Park races

Click to enlarge

 

Chance Kinsley was entered in the “Discovery Day” races held on October 13 1923 at Decatur Motor Speedway located in Bellmont Park in Decatur Indiana. A trio of races of distances of 10, 25, and 40 miles was scheduled on the half-mile dirt track frequently used for trotter races.  

Kinsley was entered as the driver of the Frontenac owned by Harry Murray from Fort Wayne Indiana while other entries were received from Claude Fix, Ted Hartley in a Rajo, and the Ormsby brothers in a pair of Roof-Fords.     

Neither Ralph Ormsby nor Chance appeared in Decatur and Murray’s car was driven by Charles “Dutch” Baumann (frequently misspelled as Bowman) of Indianapolis. Baumann who would later drive in the 1927 Indianapolis 500-mile race swept the day’s program, as he started the day with the fastest qualifying lap of 33-2/5 seconds, then led all 25 laps in the first race and then repeated as he led all forty laps in the finale to claim the lion’s share of the $1000 total purse.

Despite the “ideal weather” the October race promoted by two local men, DW Berry and JW Meibers, only drew an audience of 1500 fans, down considerably from the 4000 people that had attended the Labor Day races at the same track held on a dark overcast day.

On Labor Day, the track had been a muddy mess from overnight rains, but after skies cleared around noon, gasoline was poured on the track and lit and by 3 PM the races began. The 25 mile race was won by Louis Burkett in a Rajo, and then Burkett finished as the runner-up to Ralph Ormsby in the 50-mile finale. 

Following the October 1923 race, Bellmont Park in Decatur which today is the site of a high school apparently did not host any more automobile races.

Chance was listed as an entry list for the 100-mile season finale at Hoosier Motor Speedway on Armistice Day November 11 1923. “The Hoosier 100 for the Central States Championship to award the J.V. Lines Trophy.” The race was held to benefit the Elks Christmas Fund to “provide Christmas cheer for orphans and children of the poor” according to the Greensburg Daily News. 

This marked the second benefit race at the Hoosier Motor Speedway as the proceeds from the October 21 race won by “Dutch” Baumann went to the Riley Memorial Association which was collecting funds for construction of the James Whitcomb Riley Hospital for Children. 

42 cars and drivers from across three states entered the Armistice Day race but only 16 cars would start the 100-mile feature.  Starters in the feature included Arthur ‘Fuzzy’ Davidson from Chicago, George Lyons from Chicago in his Essex Special and future Indianapolis competitors William ‘Shorty’ Cantlon, Joe Huff, Charles ‘Dutch’ Baumann, Homer Ormsby, and Stuart Wilkinson.

The field consisted of mostly “Fronty-Fords,” which used Arthur Chevrolet’s Frontenac double overhead camshaft cylinder head on a Ford Model T engine block, but included the ‘Hartley Special’ built by brothers Ted and Calvin Glenn ‘C.G.’ Hartley who ran the Hartley Garage in tiny Roanoke Indiana. The engine in the ‘Hartley Special’ used a standard Ford crankshaft, but featured a Bosch battery ignition system built by Harry Bonewitz also of Roanoke.

At the drop of the green flag at 2 o’clock in the afternoon Davidson grabbed the lead but he was soon passed by Lyons, who led until his Essex suffered a broken axle on the 50th lap. Joe Huff in his eponymous racer took command and held the lead until he was forced to pit with engine trouble and he lost two laps while repairs were made.

Ted Hartley took the lead from Huff and held the point the rest of the way without a pit stop to finish the 100 miles in one hour 56 minutes and 29 seconds. Second place went to Joe Huff who had made up one of his lost laps after his return. The Hartley brothers won $260.00 and the J.V. Lines silver loving cup, which was displayed in the lobby of the Farmers State Bank in Roanoke. The J.V. Lines trophy is still displayed in the city of Roanoke in the trophy case of the local historical society.

The Central States Championship was Ted Hartley’s first race victory in what proved to be a long and successful racing career. Ted raced into his 70’s before he retired in 1973 raced across the United States as well as in Canada, Mexico, and South America. Ted won the 1939 Central States Racing Association midget championship and the 1950 Great Lakes Auto Racing Association championship.
 

Ted Hartley's son, Leslie Eugene “Gene” Hartley was the 1959 USAC (United States Auto Club) midget series champion, scored 33 USAC midget feature wins in his career, and drove in ten Indianapolis 500-mile races. Both Hartley’s, father and son, are immortalized in the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame.

In our installment we will review Chance Kinsley’s 1924 racing season.