1,000 Greatest Drivers: Harry Hartz
The man who crossed America backwards...
The more of these I write, I consistently find the pre-World War II drivers more interesting to write about than the more modern drivers whose careers I was more familiar with before starting the project. There’s something admirable about a guy trying to do everything himself, and it seems like people in that era had just a more mind-boggling array of experiences than most people today in this era of mass specialiation. Obviously, specialization is more efficient and it probably does maximize output and production, but it makes a lot of people far less equipped to handle things outside of their specialty. Obviously, this stands out especially to me given the fact of my autistic spiky profile where I had a numer of quasi-savantish skills and then proved myself incapable that plenty of things that other people would consider everyday household tasks. There was some good article I read a couple years ago comparing how self-sufficient kids used to be in the 1800s and early 20th century with how almost no kids are nowadays and I wish I had saved that, ‘cause now I can’t find it. (I did read through some of the tweets from the guy who wrote that piece and I distinctly remember him writing, “Let them eat code.”) Obviously, as society gets more complex, nobody can master everything you’re supposed to know and now there barely even seems to be any kind of canon of things people are expected to know how to do anymore, but I guess that’s what interests me most about covering the drivers from this era particularly.
Don’t get me wrong, the competition in this era was still very weak (although stronger than the ‘30s), since there were seldom more than 15 starters in the non-Indy 500 races, even the Indy 500s didn’t have 33 cars yet, and the race I picked for Hartz’s best only had eight starters in it. That’s why I award fewer points for each of my tier grade levels for pre-World War II drivers, but they’re definitely more fun to write about.
I did successfully go through all the minor league NASCAR Sportsman and Modified winners before the modern Busch/Nationwide/Xfinity/O’Reilly and Whelen Modified Tours started in 1982 and 1985 respectively, awarding an E grade to all drivers with 40+ wins in a season, an E- to all drivers with 25+, a C+ to all drivers with 15+, a C to all drivers with 10+, and a C- to all drivers with 5+ across Sportsman and Modified combined, but I’m starting to think that was too generous and I should make those thresholds higher, especially the lower ones. (I made some slight judgment calls lifting up drivers if they just missed these precise thresholds if they won in both series or other series in addition to minor league NASCAR or posted very strong championship finishes, etc…) I also think that for the years from the ‘50s-’80s, I’m going to do something similar with regard to grassroots drivers who mostly competed at home tracks and did not compete in major series. This was a major blind spot for me. When I was writing my Dick Trickle entry, I did not rate any of his seasons prior to 1977 and now I see that was obviously a mistake. Having reviewed his list of wins on the Auto Racing Research Associates website (and yep, I’ve already jotted down all the win counts for each driver on that site so I don’t miss anything; like I actually forgot to include Scott Bloomquist on my lock list because I just wasn’t looking at dirt late model racing at all - whoops!), I noticed that his winningest season of 1972 when he won 67 times (probably more race wins than any other driver has ever scored in a season) was a season I didn’t even rate because most of those races just came in weekend home track races and not in established series. I’m going to have to take that into consideration more, and I think for grassroots drivers of that ilk, I’m going to award an E grade for 50+ wins in a season, an E- for 40-49, a C+ for 25-39, a C for 20-24, and a C- for 15-19. Again, only for grassroots drivers who aren’t competing in series (for drivers competing in regional or national championships, obviously the thresholds should be lower), and I think primarily for the ‘50s-’80s, because in those decades you could genuinely make more money being the king of a small pond than you could from being a more marginal major leaguer. Major league drivers got way, way better after the ‘80s everywhere so I think minor league drivers should get much more representation before 1990 and much less after. I think this is a good way for me to capture the legacies of the truly minor league greats like Dick Trickle or Scott Bloomquist while also leaving off drivers like Stewart Friesen. I know according to the ARRA site, Friesen has over 400 wins but having watched him in the NASCAR truck series, I just do not think he belongs on this list. Under the criteria I have come up with here, I have added seven new locks to my list: Jack Bowsher, Ralph Earnhardt (okay, after years of believing all his Hall of Fame inductions and Greatest Drivers list inclusions and shit was only 100% a result of Dale’s success, I finally get it now), Sonny Hutchins, Tiny Lund, Jack McCoy, Marshall Sargent, and LeeRoy Yarbrough. Most of these I was already considering anyway, but Bowsher was a driver I had badly misplaced well below the cutline when he should have been easily far above it. I have also decided to start going through ten drivers a day and rate all their seasons until I’m finished with all the locks (maybe I’ll lower that), which I should finish by mid-May. I also lowered one driver I had as a lock to my bubble: Jack Baldwin. I still have him in, but I realized he was far less dominant a Trans-Am driver than I thought he was and he only really backed into that title even though Scott Sharp was waaaaay better than him when they were teammates.
I decided to skip the Olimpio Alencar, Jr. post originally scheduled because so little has been written about the Stock Car Brasil champions (especially the early ones) in English and I’m going to have to do a lot more research to do those justice, so I slid the Hartz post here. I had originally scheduled it for April 16, which was the anniversary of his first and best win on Easter Sunday in 1922. This means I only ended up skipping the Jack Ingram one for now.
This week’s schedule:
April 19 (yeah, very late): Harry Hartz (free)
April 20: James Weaver (paywalled)
April 21: Martin Tomczyk (free)
April 22: Roy Salvadori (free)
April 23: Joe Weatherly (paywalled)
April 24: Rolf Stommelen (free)
April 25: Felipe Massa (paywalled)
The Hartz post was timely since as I just mentioned in the post itself, he was literally just inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America a few days ago. I’m surprised they even remembered him since this era and really everything before USAC started and A.J. Foyt’s career began has been swept under the rug. Say, does anybody know why Hartz is a member of the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame? I see no evidence that he drove or even owned a sprint car. I don’t get it, but the biography on their site was useful, so thanks!
HARRY HARTZ……………………….USA
Born: December 24, 1896
Died: September 26, 1974
Best year: 1926
Best drive: 1922 Golden State Motor Derby at San Francisco Speedway
A veritable polymath of prewar IndyCar racing, Hartz was the only person who served as a riding mechanic, driver, car owner, engineer, and race official throughout his career. Although his driving career was very short, he won seven IndyCar races in the ‘20s, all on the wooden board tracks that made up almost the entire schedule except for the Indy 500. These board tracks were both faster and more dangerous than Indy itself was. Despite never winning an Indy 500, his three second-place finishes are the most of any non-winner.
Hartz was initially hired by Duesenberg to serve as a riding mechanic in the 1921 Indy 500 for eventual 1923 AAA champion Eddie Hearne before almost immediately getting the racing bug himself. In only his ninth start in 1922, he led all but one lap of a San Francisco 150-miler in his self-owned Duesenberg, lapping the then-best driver in the world Jimmy Murphy on the final lap in a race refereed by heavyweight boxing champion James J. Corbett. A month later, he started and finished second behind Murphy and led 42 laps at the Indy 500. In 1923, he again started and finished second at Indy, this time for Cliff Durant, IndyCar winner and son of General Motors founder William C. Durant, and won his second race in Fresno.
After a winless 1924 and 1925, he came back to win the IndyCar championship in 1926. Although rookie Frank Lockhart was significantly faster, winning the Indy 500 on his debut by over two laps against Hartz, who again finished second and both drivers won five times, Hartz ended up winning the title because he started five more races and was more consistent than Lockhart. His average speed of 134.091 mph at Atlantic City that year would remain the fastest race ever until the 1957 Indy 500. Hartz’s driving career ended when he flipped three times on the board track at Salem, New Hampshire, was ejected from the car and badly burned while his head struck the wooden surface. Although he was critically injured, he miraculously survived, won two Indy 500s as a car owner with Billy Arnold in 1930 and Fred Frame in 1932, served as a stunt driver for the Howard Hawks movie The Crowd Roars, drove a DeSoto backwards across the country in 1933, and served on the technical committees for both AAA and its replacement USAC.
Like all 1920s drivers, Hartz is underrated. Even his era’s Indy 500 winners aren’t well-remembered and many champions who didn’t win the 500 are quickly forgotten. In Hartz’s case, that’s a particular shame because his try-anything-once élan and unusually comprehensive understanding of all aspects of the sport stand out in any era. It seems his reputation is starting to make a comeback as he was just inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame literally days before I wrote this. The 1920s were definitely one of the most interesting eras for IndyCar racing, and that decade has never gotten the attention it deserved.
Year-by-year: 1922: E-, 1923: C+, 1924: C+, 1925: E-, 1926: 2, 1927: C+