Toledo Speedway

(TOLEDO, Ohio – April 28, 2015) – With a beautiful weather forecast predicted for Friday night, a great classic from the past is returning to Toledo Speedway for some good old-fashioned open-wheel excitement.

The Hemelgarn Racing/Super Fitness Rollie Beale Classic is on the way…featuring the USAC Silver Crown Series in a 100-lap feature event on the Toledo half-mile oval.

Sylvania Northview high-school student Austin Nemire will be making his Silver Crown debut Friday at Toledo, and spent much of the day Tuesday testing for the big show.

“It’s just a lot different than the midgets we ran the last couple of years,” said Nemire regarding the Silver Crown car, which is much heavier and bigger than a midget. “I think we’ll be alright come Friday.”

The 100-lap Rollie Beale Classic is a much longer race than Nemire is accustomed to.

“The way the car’s going to feel from the beginning towards the end with the fuel and everything…it’s going to be a lot different than anything I’ve ever done. We’ll just try and save the car till the end. Easy on it in the beginning and don’t get in trouble.”

Outside of a little “twitch” getting in the corners, Nemire got right up to speed.

“Getting in the corner, it felt a little loose. It was stable in the center and getting off, but getting in (to the corners) the car’s still got a little twitch.

“Obviously, we’ve got a lot to learn with this style of car. Our main goal to just finish the race. This is my first time in this car…it’d be good to finish. We want to do well in front of our hometown crowd, but we also know the competition is going to be super tough. There are veterans on this tour that have been doing this for decades. We’re excited…optimistic…but we have to be realistic about it all.”

Nemire, the fourth generation in the family of Nemire racers from Toledo, drives for 1996 Indianapolis 500 champion car owner Ron Hemelgarn.

“He’s doing a great job,” Hemelgarn said. “He’s very smooth, consistent…he’s looking good. These cars are fast and quick…the race is going to be fantastic Friday night.”

USAC has a long history with Toledo Speedway – mostly with the USAC Sprint Car division – reaching back to 1969 when Bruce Walkup won the inaugural 30-lap USAC Sprint main event on June 21.

The event is named after Toledoan Rollie Beale, the 1973 USAC National Sprint Car champion, and five-time Toledo USAC Sprint winner with victories in 1971, ’72 and ’76. Other USAC winners at Toledo over the years include Indy 500 veterans Gary Bettenhausen, Pancho Carter, Larry Dickson, Tom Bigelow, Rich Vogler and Tom Sneva, the 1983 Indy 500 winner.

The beautifully-restored No. 2 Rodeo Bar Special that Beale won his national championship in will also be on display Friday night.

Beale passed away on February 17, 2014 at the age of 84. Many Beale family and friends are expected to be in attendance for Friday night’s Rollie Beale Classic.

Joining the USAC Silver Crown Series for the Hemelgarn Racing/Super Fitness Rollie Beale Classic will be the USAC HPD Midgets on the quarter-mile oval and the NW Ohio Quarter Midgets.

Rollie Beale History

Born on January 16, 1930 in Toledo, Ohio – sharing the same birthday with fellow motorsports legend A.J. Foyt – he grew up during the Great Depression, and from that footprint grew into one of the most revered racers in the country.

Mostly recognized for his accomplishments as the 1973 USAC National Sprint Car champion, his 32 career USAC sprint wins and his USAC Silver Crown accomplishments, he also earned local track championships closer to home over the years, all the while building a giant fan base that would remain with him, and grow over the decades. He was eventually inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1996.

He began his racing career at Toledo Raceway Park (TRP) and the Fort Miami Fairgrounds in Maumee, Ohio in 1950 under an ‘assumed’ name because he was not yet 21. He ran the final three races of the 1950 season on the TRP quarter mile track in a No. 66 1937 flathead Ford jalopy. From there, and in addition to working as a union railroader in Toledo, his racing career took off.

Over the years, he won hundreds of feature races in a wide-variety of home-built contraptions from jalopies to super modifieds to stock cars to, eventually, the more sophisticated sprint cars. Beale earned his first track championship at TRP in 1952 on the original quarter-mile track and his final title came on a national stage in USAC in 1973. In between he also earned track championship at Lorain County Speedway as well as the 1963 super modified track championship at Fremont Speedway. He also won the prestigious “Little 500” sprint car race at Anderson Speedway in 1966.

After 14 years racing on the local scene, he ventured out onto the national stage where he competed in the IMCA (International Motor Car Association) sprint car league, which he utilized as a springboard to USAC.

Even though he was working full time, Beale was able to make the most of his three years racing with the IMCA. Running a "schedule of convenience," Beale wound up fifth in the season-long points standings twice on a circuit he remembers as "tough - a stand-up-in-your-seat type of thing."

Feeling good about their team, Beale along with chief mechanic Don Harrell, moved up to USAC in 1967.

Ten years later after he finally hung up his helmet, retiring, fittingly, at Toledo Speedway during a USAC sprint race in 1977, he had become one of USAC's all time top sprint car drivers with 32 feature race wins (five at Toledo Speedway), captured the 1973 series championship, twice won second place in the season point standings and took third three times.

Looking back over a career that saw many changes in the sport, Beale commented on the sprint car he won the championship in – Toledoan Ron Kilman’s No. 2 Rodeo Bar Special.

"The way sprint cars are built today there's no comparison,” Beale said in an interview in 2011. “Not with the way they handle, not with the way they run. They are a lot better race car today. We were good enough to run good with what we had."

Beale learned the craft of sprint car racing in the days before roll cages were mandated, a time when many men died doing it. In fact, during the 1966 USAC sprint season alone there were, sadly, six fatalities, including racing legends Jud Larson and Don Branson.

While the roll cage provides the driver with more protection, Beale, sharing the sentiments of many of his peers, said, "It didn't make much difference. When you drive a race car you don't think much about that stuff. You're doing what you're supposed to do, what you enjoy doing. We always felt that if a race car driver drove the car the right way, cages and wings didn't mean much."

In the days before tear-off lenses, Beale would “put a band around aviator goggles lenses and put them on the outside of your goggles. Then pull them down one at a time when they got dirty. I don't think I ever put on more than six at one time."

Another major difference between then and now was then "we didn't build a car especially for dirt or especially for pavement; we built a car to race." Going from a dirt track one day to an asphalt oval the next wasn't a big deal for Beale and crew.

While he tested for but never drove in the Indianapolis 500, Beale has driven many laps in both sprint cars and champ cars against Foyt, Andretti, the Unsers, Rutherford, and other Brickyard veterans. "They were a different breed at Indy but on a sprint car track they were just tough and you had to be a little tougher to beat them. They were good but they were clean."

Although he has raced at tracks from coast to coast the most seat time Beale recorded was in the pickup truck going to and from the track. "I had my job, I took care of my family, but I wanted to race so I did it. Go racing, drive all night, and then go to work. It bothered me but I just did it. I didn't do it for a living, I did it for recreation."