Sport: Doodlebug Derby

The Indianapolis classic of U. S. auto racing was eight months away last week. But on a ramshackle half-mile dirt track on the outskirts of Detroit 33 chugging, sputtering little cars lined up before 10,000 spectators to run what the track’s owner Don Zeiter, at least, regarded as Indianapolis in miniature. Its qualifying races had already been run off exactly like those at Indianapolis. Chief differences were the length of the race (150 miles instead of 500), the size of the track (½mile instead of 2½), the size of the prizes ($5,000 instead of $20,000), the length of the cars (6 ft. instead of 12). But to the midget racers, who call their cars “doodlebugs,” last week’s race was the longest and most important so far run in the U. S.

No sooner had the doodlebugs rolled out of their pits and roared across the starting line than the spectators were dramatically reminded of Indianapolis. Rounding the first of the 300 laps, Marshall Lewis’ car skidded, overturned. Driver Lewis scrambled out unhurt. Later Johnny Ritter, smallest but reputedly most “heavy-footed” of doodlebug racers, did the same thing. After 2 hr. 18 min. of noise, flying dirt and squirting oil, Los Angeles’ Ronney Householder flashed across the finish line, followed by Detroit’s Glenn Meyers and Indiana’s Ted Hartley. Winner House-holder’s average speed was 65.2 m.p.h. To dapper, mustached 29-year-old Ronney Householder, who grew up with the sport and has been carrying his doodlebug around to races in a specially built truck for four years, his $1,500 share of the prize money was the biggest he had ever won. To his colleagues it was conclusive proof that their diminutive sport was rapidly coming of age.

Doodlebugs first appeared in the U. S. in Los Angeles in 1919 when a group of rich youngsters built midget cars to race around the Junior College Stadium, but midget racing as a recognized U. S. sport is less than five years old. In 1932 a field of eight midgets raced 20 laps around the football field of Los Angeles’ Loyola High School. In 1934 Oilman Earl Gilmore built a stadium for midgets at a cost of $134,000. The Gilmore track was soon drawing crowds as large as 9,000, and shortly thereafter a onetime Hearst cameraman named Norman Alley opened a track in Chicago. Although Promoter Alley at first claimed that there was no money in the sport, the following year he proceeded to sign up on long-term contracts most of the leading drivers appearing on a mushrooming series of Midwest tracks. Madison Square Garden, prime barometer for new U. S. sporting crazes, held its first doodlebug race in its outdoor bowl last year. A midget race in Philadelphia’s Municipal Stadium last summer drew 53,000 customers, largest professional sport gate that city had enjoyed since the Dempsey-Tunney fight of 1926. Today there are profitable tracks in scores of U. S. cities, fly-by-night ventures in a hundred more. The sport has been roughly organized into Midwest, Pacific and Atlantic associations, but as yet has no national championship.

Most of the 2,500 existing doodlebugs have a 75-inch wheelbase, as compared to the 105-inch average of standard racing cars, weigh from 600 to 1,000 lb. The original midget cars were crude affairs powered by motorcycle engines, later by outboard motors, cost about $400 to build. In 1934 Los Angeles’ Frederick Offenhauser, longtime assistant of Harry Miller whose standard-size engines won most of the important U. S. auto races in the past decade, developed a special miniature motor. Most top-notch doodlebuggers now use Offenhauser motors, spend up to $5,000 for a racing car. A doodlebug generates anything from 15 to 65 h. p., can do up to 120 m. p. h. on a straightaway. Even though races rarely exceed 70 m. p. h., the impression of speed is spectacular, even scary.

Since doodlebugs may race indoors as well as outdoors and thus have a steady year-round season, they have attracted a number of standard-racing drivers, most notable of whom is Lou Schneider, who won at Indianapolis in 1931. Top-notch drivers average about $750 a week. Most of the rest average $125. Few can now afford to own the cars they drive. Like his brother, racing what he calls a “big iron” the ”little iron” driver is inordinately susceptible to quirks and superstitions. No driver will paint his car green. No driver likes to catch sight of a customer munching peanuts. No driver will let a woman sit in his car. Lost shoes are also a bad omen, since the impact of a crash on a tightly-wedged driver often knocks him out of his shoes. Not so dangerous as “big iron” racing, the chief problem of the doodlebug driver is keeping his jealously guarded fuel mixture a secret.

Well on his wav to becoming the dean of doodlebug promoters last week. Don Zeiter is a dour 41-year-old Ohioan so close-mouthed that he will not admit that Donald is his first name. An oldtime dirt-track manager, he appeared in Detroit five years ago with no worldly goods save a Model T Ford, convinced citizens that the U. S. auto centre should be the centre of U. S. auto racing. He built his motor speedway by securing the site, lumber, oil and contractor’s services through profit-sharing agreements, attracted nightly crowds of 10,000 the past summer. His customary 83-cent top he boosted to $3.30 for last week’s derby. Like his colleagues. Promoter Zeiter makes every driver sign a waiver absolving him from damages before getting onto his track, but he is less sympathetic than most. Don Zeiter’s belief is that ”anyone who gets into a racing car is a sucker.”