Barney's Brickyard Best

Despite two fifth-place finishes in his only appearances in the Indianapolis 500 (1914 & 1916), Barney Oldfield's biggest day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was probably May 30, 1910. The events that day were the concluding contests of a Memorial Day weekend American Automobile Association (AAA) race meet. This was the first major racing at the track after it was paved with 3.2 million bricks the previous autumn.
 
For Oldfield, the track was a kind of confirmation of who he was as an iconic American race driver. Born in a log cabin in 1878 at least a generation after such circumstance was common, especially near Toledo, Ohio, an observer might have held low expectations for the boy.
 
He came of age part of the first generation to grow up with the automobile, the telephone, yellow journalism and Barnum & Bailey. His extroversion, athleticism and proclivity for promotion allowed him to easily slip into the rapid steams redefining the American landscape.
 
As a teenager he gravitated to the roughneck world of bicycle racing on the wooden velodromes. The new "safety bicycle" designed with two wheels of equal diameter soared into 1890's pop culture of the day so much so it inspired songs such as, "On a Bicycle Built for Two."
 
The bicycle craze gave way to the growing influence of the automobile which had at its underpinnings the drivetrain technology of the bikes. The early cars most commonly had their engine's power delivered to the wheels by beefed-up versions of the bicycle chain. Gears, too, were originated with the two-wheelers.
 
Oldfield met a soulmate in the form of Tom Cooper during his bicycle racing days. They evolved with the technology to take an interest in racing cars. While Cooper had the edge on Oldfield on the bikes, it was Barney who excelled with cars and captured the imagination of a curious - sometimes crazed - public instinctively drawn to the massive, 2,000 pound machines of iron and wood that could produce the equivalent power of dozens of horses.
 
Juxtaposed to today the news media was woefully underdeveloped and so it is telling that Oldfield rose from obscurity to national sensation almost overnight. His victory in October 1902 over millionaire automotive industrialist Alexander Winton in a five-mile sprint race of only five cars on the Grosse Point dirt horse track quickly made him the poster boy for the American grassroots version motor racing. The telegraph operators tapped out reporters' stories to newspapers across the country at 186,000 miles per second.
 
Oldfield drove a Tom Cooper and Henry Ford designed behemoth called the "999," allegedly given that moniker by future Indianapolis Motor Speedway Founder Carl Fisher when promoting an Ohio race meet months earlier. The "999" was first the name of a high-speed locomotive train of the day.
 
Oldfield and the new "999" went on to create more history when in June 1903 he became the first man to complete a mile in under a minute on a closed course track - the Indiana State Fairgrounds dirt oval. By August 1903 Winton hired Oldfield, correctly assuming his talent and nerve would generate tremendous publicity and attract consumers to his Winton Motor Carriage Company products.
 
While Winton was right about Oldfield's appeal, he did not recognize that the 24-year-old's penchant for marching to his own drumbeat would lead to antics he could not tolerate. Not only was Barney outspoken but his entrepreneurial spirit pulled him to define new ways to generate income from motorsport. He and Cooper ventured into the country hinterlands to stage what industry observers began to deride as "barnstorming" tours.
 
This activity played to the "weed benders" of remote country areas where many had not yet seen an automobile, let alone some daring young man driving a mechanical brute at insane speeds that, if sustained, could propel a person 50 miles away in just an hour. My God, it could take the better part of sunlight to travel seven miles by an average man's experience.
 
Some thought the problem with the barnstorming was that it was more about entertainment than authentic competition. The real issue was that Oldfield drew healthy crowds and the whole production was outside the scope of AAA sanction. Thus began an enduring rivalry between a single man and the era's most powerful automobile industry advocacy force in America.
 
The other thing about Oldfield was that he was an Ohioan, "a Westerner," to the AAA elite of the northeast. Perhaps the most influential of the first generation of the Eurocentric AAA racers was William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. - the founder of America's first major auto race, the Vanderbilt Cup.
 
The two men were essentially the same age and as testosterone-propelled scorchers in their mid-20's they only encountered each other in head-to-head auto racing competition once. That was at the Ormond-Daytona Beach time trials of late January 1904. The race format was a tournament. Oldfield and Vanderbilt met each other in the mile competition speed trial.
 
It was the Westerner Oldfield in his American-built Winton Bullet II opposing one of the wealthiest men in America and scion to a New York-headquartered railroad empire, Vanderbilt, in what was arguably the most powerful car in the world - an aluminum Mercedes. The difference proved to be the driver as a game of "chicken" ensued.
 
The races and time trials occurred at the shore's edge in those morning hours where the tide had receded to reveal the smooth surface it had created the night before. Now cured by the ocean breeze and baked by the sun its unique composition of granite granules presented a running surface as hard as concrete - the fastest speedway known to man.
 
The opportunity Oldfield saw came in the phenomenon of what locals called "washboards." These were rippled imperfections the mindless tide had left behind because nature does what nature does and never asks forgiveness or provides explanations.
 
Still, Oldfield saw opportunity in the imperfection. Such adversity was his friend if he embraced what he believed would intimidate his rival. Inevitably at 90 miles per hour the crude wagon-like chassis bounced in the air upon encountering such a subtle malformation. Oldfield didn't lift. Vanderbilt did, and that was the difference.
 
Still, Winton could not tolerate a man who refused to understand the quest for purity in at least the perception of corporate brands. Oldfield's flaunting of the forces of the AAA and continued promoting of semi-staged, unsanctioned events forced a parting of the ways with the Scottish millionaire-immigrant and his driver.
 
Oldfield's life was complicated by tragic developments. The inherent danger of his sport with its blinding dust produced accidents. The horse tracks were not conditioned for big, heavy automobiles that crashed through flimsy rails that guided horses but in no way served as retaining walls. The venues were poorly policed and Oldfield experienced two accidents that produced spectator deaths.
 
While he escaped permanent injuries, he had been knocked unconscious and awakened to find looters he called "vultures" pulling pieces off his cars as souvenirs. All of this weighed on his mind and was part of his motivation for barnstorming. His goal was to mitigate risk. He preferred record attempts, exhibition runs and match races where he could manage the wheel-to-wheel engagement and run with people he could trust. He also cut out the middlemen of the AAA and split the difference with track management.
 
After Winton he raced for Peerless but soon found himself purchasing the car, the Green Dragon, and campaigning his own team. After one of his several "retirements" and a brief stint with a stage play production company he spent a few seasons in the middle part of the 20th century's first decade largely focused on his barnstorming - an approach to motorsport he never fully discarded.
 
Oldfield was the most recognizable character among the Westerners who drove the dirt ovals. There were others, but like with Webb Jay and Earl Kiser injuries aborted their careers. The AAA establishment tilted to the proper motor racing of Europe and the road racing style. Most respected were events such as the American Grand Prize, the Vanderbilt Cup, the Lowell Road Race and similar contests.
 
Oldfield became a kind of cartoon character in their minds, not to be taken seriously as a racer. Still, his fans in the hinterlands embraced his defiance of authority and penchant for saying pretty much whatever came into his head.
 
Barney was far from perfect. A heavy drinker and womanizer many deemed his appetites appalling. Then again, others cheered him on.
 
One thing Barney did not like was the campaign to impugn his reputation as a talented driver. By 1908 he was entering legitimate auto races such as the Briarcliff road race with humbling results. In 1909 he was at the opening of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and gave a reasonable accounting for himself, winning a 25-mile go.
 
His biggest statement came in March 1910 when after very deliberately purchasing what was judged to be the most powerful car in the world - the 200 HP Blitzen Benz - he went after the world's land speed record. Officiating did not recognize his run as definitive but he was widely and wildly embraced as a success when he flew along the shore at the then-unthinkable speed of 131 mph.
 
He arrived at the newly brick-paved Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May 1910 with his Benz and a contract to drive a Knox stock car in other events throughout the holiday weekend. That brings us back to his biggest Brickyard day. During the weekend he set new American standards for a closed circuit mile and kilometer as well as picking off two sprint race victories for Knox.
 
More importantly, though, Oldfield was successful at the venue that was the crowning glory to how he had built his career: as a Midwestern self-made racing driver who established his bodacious reputation on circular tracks.