guest MIC DROP

By Bob Mays

PROMOTING SPRINT CAR races has always been something of an art form. J. Alex Sloan may have been the first real sprint car promoter. He was part huckster, part ballyhoo artist and part businessman. He sought out hard working men of his own ilk and trained them well in the ways of sprint car promotion. Al Sweeney and Gaylord White were protégés of Sloan and so was Frank Winkley.

Following Sloan’s death in 1937, his trainees began to spread their wings. Sweeney and White formed National Speedways, Inc., in 1941 and Winkley formed his group, Auto Racing Inc., in 1948. His first big contract? Emory Collins, who jumped from Sweeney’s camp because Wink guaranteed Collins a percentage of the gate receipts from the Clay County Fair!

“Wink,” as his cronies called him, was an aggressive over-achiever, promoting IMCA races all across the Midwest. He developed his own core group of loyal worker bees, including flag-waver, Jake Bozony; publicity men, Nick Nachicas and Tom McGeehan; announcer, Moke Crosby and Winks wife, Verna, who kept the books straight.

Wink was totally committed to racing and he promoted in excess of 75 races a year throughout the heartland. He put on races at Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Grand Forks, North Dakota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; LaCrosse, Wisconsin as well as state fair shows at Minot (North Dakota); Huron (South Dakota); Hutchinson (Kansas); Oklahoma City (Oklahoma) and the crown jewel of ARI, the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul. In the 1950s, when the dirt fairgrounds circuit was at its dustiness, Wink had someone rig up portable lights that he could take from track to track for night racing. More than one driver told me it was just barely better than no lights at all and the shadows because of the angle of the bulbs made for a very surreal event.

Wink could be a tough guy to figure out, on one hand he read and often quoted the classics and on the other hand his high-speed driving antics (usually from one race meet to another) was the stuff of legend. It was once said of Winkley that he was “completely honest, completely honorable and completely crazy!”

As one of two official IMCA promoters, Wink carried on a friendly rivalry with Al Sweeney, who ran IMCA’s other promotional arm, National Speedways. One time, Sweeney’s big star entered a Wink race. Upon finding out, Sweeney paid the driver the equivalent of first place to stay home. Wink was pissed but instead of starting a war, he started negotiations. Soon, Auto Racing Inc. and National Speedways were trading their top drivers back and forth to the advantage of both.

Winkley was very dedicated to his drivers, he thought of them as his children, who needed to be taken care of at all times. At one event held at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, one of Wink’s top guys, Jim Hurtubise, ran over a wheel and sailed out of the park on the backstretch. Now, Cedar Rapids was famous for having a railroad track running parallel to the backstretch, so Wink wasted no time in getting to the scene. There was Hurtubise, upside down straddling the tracks, Wink poked his head in the cockpit to see if Hurk was still with us (he was), Winks first words were, “Don’t worry Hurk, we’ll get this car off you,” Hurk, never real serious, replied, “Better hurry Wink, I think I just heard a train whistle!”

And, so it goes…Wink, though not a racer himself, was proud of the way he could handle a steering wheel. With the fact that he was promoting 80-100 events a year across a seven-state region made it imperative that get from one event to another as quickly as possible. More than one driver who hitched a ride with Wink got out of his big Caddy shaken by the experience. Eventually, his driving got the best of him when, in the summer of 1968, his convertible flew off the road between promotions, putting an end to his career and his life.

For saving Herk from the train and promoting nearly 100 races a year for nearly 50 years, welcome to my Hall of Fame, Wink.

Esteemed inductees of the Mays Hall of Fame are: Scott Fernyhough, Leroy Byers, Myrna Mays, Ray Valasek, William Campbell Gault, Ken Simon, Robert Roof, Don McChesney, Charlie Blosser, Donna Wilson, Ron Hoettels, Luke Bogar, Big Al Murie, Bill Hill and Walt Imlay.