Fork in the Road
The past roots of dirt car racing take a fork in the road.
Dirt Car racing became a national pastime after World War II. Nascar’s Strictly Stock races were the hot ticket on the National scene, while the “dirt modified”
began its reign of terror on short tracks across the midwest.
All forms of racing which involved circle track and road courses in these early days of racing were primarily dirt surface tracks. The crown jewel of racing machines, the Indy car, was more often raced on one mile fairground dirt tracks than paved courses.
Nascar’s “Strictly Stock” racing dominated the east and south, and the newly formed tracks in the midwest were the hotbed of shad tree mechanics testing
their ideas when rules were few if any. As early as 1949 these midwest tracks were spawning the awesome “modified” stock car. These cars were frequently
open wheel front end coupes with rear fenders only. This Author’s family fielded two such machines. Both 1936 plymouth coupes, one equipped with a flat head
caddilac v8 and the other with the new 49 olds rocket overhead valve engine. Both cars were raced on a paved track on Friday Night and on a Dirt Track
on Saturday. The only changes made to go from the paved surface to the dirt were the tires !
The 1950′s were the Glory days of the Indy car evolving into and endless battle of new ideas and slick engineering to out gun the rest of the field. Little time was
spent on safety, and, the sad history of racing produced more fatalities during the 50′s than another time in racing history.
The dirt car fork in the road came in the early 60′s when it became apparent that the fast guys were sticking to pavement or dirt. The evolution in chassis
design had begun. The goals were to get faster by a fraction of a second with each improvement. By the late 1970′s the Dirt Car chassis evolution found
racers building all tube chassis and equipping their machines with “quick change” rear ends. Racing Tires were coming into their best days of tire evolution.
A great selection of rubber compounds were on the market, from the “gum ball” super soft to the rock hard tire. Most Late Model and open wheel teams
began grooving their own tires to pickup that extra fraction of a second. Different designs and compounds for different tracks.
While Dirt Car racing developed sophisticate suspensions and engines surpassing 1000 hp in the “super wedge car late models” , Nascar was hauling in the reins by
limiting engine size to 358 cubic inches in 1974.
Over the years to present, some dirt car chassis makers produced “combo” chassis so racers could set up the car for dirt or pavement. This experiment has
pretty much went by the wayside. Dirt Track racers and fans now know: dirt is for racing and pavement is for getting there.