1,000 Greatest Drivers: Tommy Hinnershitz

The winningest sprint car driver ever but not in my opinion the best.

I’m gonna try to cut the start of this entry a little short to finish before midnight. This took a fair bit of research on newspaper archive sites for me to sort through. I already knew he was the winningest sprint car driver from Gene Crucean’s site, which has since gone offline. I couldn’t really do anything with him until I knew how many races he won each season because the AAA-era win counts were never available online even though the USAC-era win counts were (and Hinnershitz’s best seasons all came under AAA sanctioning), but Michael Ferner has a near-complete archive of sprint car race winners so I was able to figure it out. It seems to me that Hinnershitz mainly dominated over a power vacuum. Ted Horn had won all three IndyCar titles and all three Eastern Big Car titles simultaneously and Hinnershitz didn’t start dominating until immediately after Horn’s death, so he never really overtook him. As I mention here, he also benefited from the fact that Bill Holland first dropped back to part-time in 1950, then got suspended by the AAA for competing in a non-sanctioned NASCAR event and his career never really recovered. And Troy Ruttman was just as dominant as he was in the Pacific and Midwest Big Car championships (despite being only 19-22 years old at the time), so it’s hard for me to not think Hinnershitz pales compared to all those guys, especially since they all won either IndyCar titles or Indy 500s and he never did much of anything in his IndyCar starts besides the 2 Big Car wins that counted as IndyCar races due to a bizarre technicality.

Nonetheless, after reading about his work ethic and his clean driving style, I certainly came to greatly admire Hinnershitz. I don’t think he was the greatest sprint car driver ever (Steve Kinser probably) and I would honestly look towards later decades for that, especially because the fact that the AAA/USAC Big/Sprint Car Series was split into three different regional divisions probably means none of them were as strong as the series after the regional divisions merged in the ‘60s. There were a few interesting anecdotes that I decided not to include in the entry. I had the line "He [Hinnershitz] initially raced a 1912 Model T under the alias of Indy 500 winner Tommy Milton. Although he crashed into a barn on that occasion" in, but I didn’t think I could properly verify it. He was also one of three drivers to make the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. Surprisingly Mario and Michael Andretti aren’t the other two. I mean it isn’t surprising that Roger Penske is one of them, but I was thrown for a loop to see that the other one was Toby Tobias. According to his Wikipedia, he supposedly has 300 wins? I only have 12 for him. I guess that’s somebody I have to research more…

TOMMY HINNERSHITZ…………….USA

Born: April 6, 1912
Died: August 1, 1999

Best year: 1949
Best drive: September 12, 1948 AAA Big Car race at Williams Grove Speedway

The most successful sprint car driver in history, Hinnershitz won a record seven championships and 109 races. The early years of sprint car racing were rather confusing as races were originally sanctioned by the AAA and the cars were known as big cars, but at the tail end of his career, USAC took over sanctioning and the cars were renamed sprint cars. There were also three regional Big Car championships for most of this period (Eastern, Midwest, and Pacific). He primarily entered Eastern Big Car races and all his championships came in that division, but he also won 10 Midwest Big Car/Sprint races and 6 Eastern Midget races.

One of the hardest-working racers ever, Hinnershitz worked on a farm near Reading, Pennsylvania on weekdays and raced on weekends. He rarely made much money and occasionally didn’t break even. He not only nearly always owned his cars but also did all the mechanical work himself because he couldn’t afford employees. Although he was a second-tier star in the ‘30s, he picked up steam late in the decade, winning the first races at Lebanon in 1935 and Williams Grove in 1939.

After serving in the army during World War II, his career really shined after the war ended. 2 of his 1946 Big Car wins counted for IndyCar credit, but in his 22 full-length IndyCar starts, he never led a lap or finished better than third, perhaps because he usually drove other people’s cars in his IndyCar races. His pass of three-time IndyCar champion Ted Horn for the win at Williams Grove in 1948 proved an important turning point. He was the main benefactor after Horn’s death that year and Holland’s suspension from the AAA in 1950, winning four straight titles and 46 races from 1949-1952. He was renowned for his smooth, clean style, making a deliberate effort to understand how drivers crashed to avoid crashing himself. He patiently spent laps setting up passes before typically accelerating past cars on the outside. He won three more titles in 1955, 1956, and 1959 before retiring three hours after his friend and rival Johnny Thomson died in a crash. After his retirement, he engineered Mario Andretti’s first IndyCar.

Universally beloved by his peers for his modest, unassuming nature, his work ethic, and his clean driving, A.J. Foyt called him the best sprint car driver ever. Personally, I don’t agree. Most of his elite contemporaries won full IndyCar races and I have to ding Hinnershitz somewhat since he didn’t, and Horn and Holland were easily better when they raced together. He also greatly benefited from AAA being split into three separate championships. His superior contemporary Troy Ruttman won almost the exact same number of races during Hinnershitz’s four-peat (45), but rarely entered the East Coast races. Having said that, even if Hinnershitz is more of a sprint car career compiler than the goat, it’s hard to imagine anyone surpassing his records, and he’s certainly one of the most admirable sprint car drivers as a person.

Year-by-year: 1936: C+, 1938: C+, 1939: C+, 1940: C+, 1946: C-, 1947: C+, 1948: E-, 1949: E, 1950: E-, 1951: C+, 1952: E-, 1953: C+, 1954: C-, 1955: C+, 1956: C+, 1959: C