Tony Stewart’s 1995 Silver Crown championship winner

As part of the 2018 Performance Racing Industry (PRI) trade show in Indianapolis the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum presented the “Hoosier Thunder: Indiana’s Short Track Heritage” exhibit which featured Tony Stewart's 1995 United States Auto Club (USAC) championship winning Silver Crown championship dirt car.

In 1995, Tony Stewart became the first driver to win the USAC “Triple Crown”- as won championships in the National Sprint Car, National Midget and the Silver Crown series - all in the same season. 

Tony drove this USAC Silver Crown championship dirt car owned by Edinburgh Indiana engine builder Glen Neibel  powered by one of Neibel’s potent V-6 engines with sponsorship from the Willie Boles Chevrolet dealership in Pendleton Indiana. As they were competing against cars equipped with 358-cubic-inch V-8 engines, the V-6 powered car was given a weight break.

Stewart never won a USAC Silver Crown race during the 1995 season but strung together a consistent series of finishes. In a ten-race season, Tony scored five top-5 finishes and three top-ten finishes. 

As he entered the final race of the season at the Cal Expo Fairgrounds in Sacramento California, Tony was in third place in the points. As the race progressed the two drivers ahead of him in points, Dave Darland and Jack Hewitt experienced troubles during the 100-mile race,  Stewart scored his second consecutive and third overall runner-up finish and won the 1995 USAC Silver Crown title by just two points.   

Stewart moved into the NASCAR "cup" series and won three driver championships (2002, 2005 and 2011) to go along with his four USAC driver championships. With his 1997 IRL championship, Tony is the only man to win both an IndyCar and NASCAR  championship. Stewart was elected into the USAC Hall of Fame in 2016 and the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2019. 

All photos by the author        

Goodbye to Irwindale Speedway

 

Doug Stokes recently shared the sad news that the last official day of occupancy at the Irwindale Event Center (aka Irwindale Speedway) will be January 31 2018. Irwindale Speedway opened on March 27 1999, and from 1999 through 2011 the lightning fast progressively banked   ½-mile paved oval hosted the Turkey Night Grand Prix for the United States Auto Club midget division in a program supported by the USAC Western States sprint cars

Through the years, truly legendary midget car drivers raced and won the Turkey Night Grand Prix on Irwindale’s asphalt - Tony Stewart and Bobby Santos each won there, and the Bryan Clauson won back to back in 2009 and 2010. Jason Leffler won twice in 1999 and 2005, while David Steele won in 2001 and 2003.

While those were all great victories, for the author the most memorable race win came with the 2011 Turkey Night Grand Prix, when New Castle Indiana’s Caleb Armstrong led the last 81 laps as he withstood challenges from Kody Swanson, Bryan Clauson, Darren Hagen and a young kid named Kyle Larson. Clauson, denied his third straight Turkey Night win, finished third to claim the 2011 USAC midget title his second straight championship.

That November night in 2011, rumors swept the pit area that Irwindale has lost its title sponsor Toyota and was closing; sure enough, in February 2012 the Speedway declared bankruptcy. Nearly a year later, the track reopened as the Irwindale Event Center on a year-to-year lease but the Turkey Night Grand Prix never returned as the track focused on stock cars, "drifting," and figure eight racing.

Goodbye to Irwindale, we will always have its great racing memories