The Pivotal Year of 1910

1910 was a pivotal year for auto racing. Consider the following.

• The Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) had recently paved the track with bricks, making it America's first true superspeedway.

• The sport had largely re-emerged from "the split" of the era - the battle between the American Automobile Association (AAA) and the Automobile Club of America, best known as the organizers of the American Grand Prize.

• Barney Oldfield had shaken the world from Daytona Beach by gunning his newly acquired "Blitzen Benz" across the sands for a new world land speed record of 131.7 mph.

• The AAA - partially in response to Oldfield's popularity - announced a schedule of "national championship" races that have confused racing aficionados since.

• A sea change in racing venues was in full swing. The gradual demise of the classic public roads races began with the final Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island while purpose-built, dedicated speedways emerged in Indianapolis, Atlanta, and America's first board track outside Los Angeles at Playa Del Rey.​

IMS, led by Ernie Moross more than most people understand today, aggressively pursued race dates and landed on days in May, July, and September. They also organized a major aviation show featuring the mercurial Wright Brothers and a second balloon racing national championship.

The May IMS races, slated around Memorial Day, were the first of the AAA's national championship races. What's confusing about that is that when people today read, "national championship," they apply an understanding based on our current perspective. There would be no national champion crowned based on a season of accumulating points until 1916.

Actually, the AAA national championship races of 1910 were a nuanced branding strategy and not a series of points-awarding contests. National championship racing was a way to brand contests as authentic racing - not the "outlaw" efforts of far-flung, loosely organized track promoters and race clubs.

More than any group, though, Barney Oldfield stood as the biggest threat to AAA dominance. He was determined to run his show to mitigate personal danger in wheel-to-wheel competition and, of course, gain a bigger slice of the revenue by cutting out the middleman. That would be the AAA, of course.

In some ways, this one man, Barney Oldfield, was a more troublesome rival to the AAA than the ACA who had waged a conventional frontal attack for dominance and lost. Oldfield's tactics were more analogous to guerilla attacks than the ACA's conventional business warfare strategy.

Oldfield's success with the Blitzen Benz in Daytona put him in demand for exhibitions across the country. Moross, his former promoter, recognized this and arranged for Barney to appear at the Brickyard for record runs. He also ventured out to Playa Del Rey and toured the nation's fairgrounds dirt tracks. Most interestingly, Oldfield considered forming a league of short tracks he wanted owners to pave with cinder blocks.

Barney had smarts, but he also had weaknesses for cigars, philandering, and alcohol. No surprise, he could not assemble a confederation of independent, self-centered track promoters. The fact that the AAA threatened to never sanction races at their tracks if they stepped out of line was a further impediment.

Despite the infighting, the sport's growth accelerated. There were always down seasons but the expansion of auto racing generally headed northward.

That's Barney in this image, campaigning his brutish Blitzen Benz at a dirt track in 1910. Click thru to an article that discusses the work of Moross to secure dates at IMS. You will also meet Sam Butler, the former ACA president who became chairman of the AAA Contest Board. Have fun!