Chicago owns a racy past

This weekend's opening of the Chicago Motor Speedway is thelatest chapter in the storied history of Chicago motor sports.

Chicago's racing legacy can be traced to the turn of the century,when what is believed to be the country's first automobile race washeld along a lakefront course that ran north from the city limitsthrough Evanston.

While the 67,000-seat, state-of-the-art Chicago Motor Speedway isby far the most ambitious motor-sports venue the city has seen,Chicago's racing tradition includes several other prominent tracks.

Maywood was the home of the Chicago Speedway, a high-banked, two-mile track built of wood that hosted open-wheel racing from 1917-1919. In those early days of racing, board-surfaced speedways werethe norm, and the lightning-fast track was built as a rival to theIndianapolis Motor Speedway. Unfortunately, the facility didn'tsurvive past its third season and was torn down to make way forcommercial development.

Auto racing was a major attraction at Soldier Field right afterWorld War II. A paved half-mile oval track built inside the stadiumhosted a variety of motor-sports events, including open-wheel andstock-car racing.

Midget-car racing was a big draw back then, and the open-cockpitmachines competed at Soldier Field for some of the largest purses inthe country. Drivers from across the United States took part in theevents, which generated national attention.

In the late 1940s and '50s, stock cars became popular, andSoldier Field played host to many major events. Racing pioneer andChicago native Andy Granatelli promoted a weekly program thatregularly drew crowds in excess of 30,000.

Granatelli, who later went on to a successful career as an Indycar team owner, ran the "Hurricane Racing Association" stock-carcircuit, a barnstorming tour whose weekly schedule included stops atRockford Speedway, the now gone Waukegan Speedway and two nights atSolder Field.

"These shows drew some of the biggest racers in the area as wellas some incredibly large crowds," noted Chicago racing historian andmotor-sports writer Stan Kalwasinski said. "It really put racing onthe map in Chicago."

One of the largest crowds for any event in the city's history wasrecorded when more than 100,000 showed for a stock-car program tobenefit the Chicago Police Department's benevolent fund.

Two drivers from the circuit went on to become Indianapolis 500winners, Pat Flaherty in 1956 and Jim Rathman in 1960.

"Both those guys turned out to be pretty good Indy car driversafter their Chicago stock-car careers," Kalwasinski said.

Soldier Field also was the site of three NASCAR-sanctioned racesin the late 1950s. Stock-car great Glen "Fireball" Roberts won aGrand National (now Winston Cup) race in 1956 before more than50,000 fans.

And the sanctioning body also brought its then-popular convertiblestock-car series to the lakefront that year with local favorite"Tiger" Tom Pistone winning the 200-lap race before 38,000.

The legendary Curtis Turner won the following season's convertibleevent, but the series soon disbanded, and NASCAR has not returned tothe area with a major race since.

Racing ceased at Soldier Field in the early 1960s, but othernotable area tracks picked up the local racing slack.

O'Hare Stadium, a quarter-mile paved track on Mannheim Road, wasthe site of weekly programs throughout the decade. Drivers such asPistone, Gene Marmor, Whitey Gerken, Roy Martinelli, Bill Lutz andFred Lorenzen, who went on to a successful Winston Cup career, wereregular competitors at the facility.

Hinsdale's Santa Fe Speedway may be Chicago's best-known shorttrack. Originally built for horse racing, the venerable clay trackhosted nearly every type of racing imaginable, including midgets,sprint cars, late-model stock cars, truck and tractor pulls,motorcycle racing and, of course, the infamous demolition derbies.

Santa Fe finally fell victim to the wrecking ball and was leveledfor a housing development in 1996.

But despite a few casualties along the way, the Chicago-arearacing scene remains healthy. Nearly a dozen tracks within a 90-minute drive of the Loop present racing during the summer months.

The historic Rockford Speedway has been part of the racing worldfor more than 50 years. The northwest Illinois track's weeklySaturday night stock-car shows are nearly all sell-outs, and itsNational Short Track Championship race in September is considered oneof the premier stock-car races in the country.

Also located to the city's west is Sycamore Speedway, which hostsweekly programs Friday and Saturday nights on its clay track.

North of the border lies Wisconsin's Wilmot Speedway at theKenosha County Fairgrounds. The one-third-mile dirt track hosts thearea's only weekly sprint-car racing program on Saturday nights.Lake Geneva Raceway, a one-third-mile paved track in the resort town,runs a successful Saturday night late-model program.

Illiana Motor Speedway in Schererville, Ind., is the site ofweekly Saturday night stock-car action. The half-mile paved ovaldraws drivers from around the Midwest each September for itsBettenhausen 100.

Raceway Park, at 127th and Ashland Avenue in Blue Island, is oneof the oldest tracks in the country. The one-fifth-mile paved"bowl," which opened its gates in the early 1900s, still presentsweekly stock-car racing every Saturday and Sunday night.

Travel a little farther south of the city, and there's even moreracing. Grundy County Speedway in Morris hosts Friday night racingthrough Labor Day weekend. Kankakee Speedway and LaSalle Speedway,operated by former Santa Fe driving star Tony Izzo, present racingFriday and Saturday nights, respectively. And, of course, the newlyconstructed drag strip; dirt track complex at Joliet's Route 66Raceway hosts a variety of events all season.

So while the Chicago Motor Speedway is the newest kid on theblock, the Chicago area has long been home to auto racing.