Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

lmao thats awsome

Robert Bond    San Jose Ca

Eating peanuts or any peanut product in the pits is bad luck. I believe this started at Indy way back when, but my dad is a big believer in this. He has thrown away candy bars with peanuts in them that people have brought into our pit area. I will never forget the night that one of our friends mistakenly brought in a whole bag of peanuts into our trailer. I have never seen my dad so nervous. I think this is true as we have seen many a team that had crew members eating peanuts and low and behold, their car doesn't finish the next race.

I also forgot to mention the push start. That has been around since sprint car racing began. There have been many attempts to get sprint cars to be self starting, but its just not a sprint car race unless the cars get push started.

In 1956 when my husband competed in the super modified division of stock cars, the Memorial Day Race started 33 cars on a quarter mile and of course they were lined up three abreast but it didn't take long for the field to end up wherever they could get the best traction and with drivers like the Weld boys,Jud Larson and their like that meant anywhere.....sometimes even in the infield !

This was only done on Memorial Day so it did not set a precedent as such except for that one day.

Kansas City had three dirt tracks.Riverside and Olympic were quarters and the old Lakeside track had both a quarter and a half.

Bud's Bride

The peanut jinx was a big factor to a lot of people in the 50's and 60's. I remember a teen age Kenny Weld who was helping his brother Jerry in the pits at Riverside Stadium, came down to our pit and began eating peanuts and tossing the shells into the seat of the Bob Burns owned #15. " I'm jixing you, Hunnicutt".

So I said " Give me some of those nuts, Kenny". The end of the story is I won the A feature that night with the peanut shells still in the car. So much for superstition.

The color green was considered bad luck but they forgot to tell The flying Scot Jimmy Clark and Steve Kinser. One can only wonder how many races Kinser would have won without that green car?

Bud Hunnicutt

I'm betting the peanut superstition was started by a car owner the week after he had to clean all the dam n shells out of his pickup after the crew made a mess of it. I came to this realization after going racing with my buddies in NC. I didn't care about the superstition, so I let them eat all the peanuts they wanted. Well after picking the shells out of every nook and cranny of my truck for the next 2 months, I told the guys "No more peanuts, they're bad luck you know".

Back in the day before sprint cars were push started they were started with a rope tied to a bumper of a pickup, wrapped once around the front axle and the loose end in the drivers hand. The car was pulled in this manner until the engine fired. The driver then released the rope which would unwind from the axle and the driver would pull onto the racing surface.

Well that tops me for sure. So the 4 wide salute came from the midgets in the late 40's. Cool

Yes. They were a transition from the coupes to the sprint cars.

Here's my attempt at having one today

I've always heard you do not eat chicken on raceday. When I asked a couple of guys who told me about it why that tradition exists, neither could say other than they've heard it all of their life. They are both around 50 years of age.

Part time racefan, part time race photographer.

Welding A nickle over the upright tube on the back bumper is a tradition that started from necessity...the hole needed covered, and nickles were easy to come by. I have also heard that it's good luck to weld it on heads up, so your sprinter stays that way. I've also read that it's unlucky to run a number that reads the same upside down as upright. 88, 11, etc.

Interesting info concerning its unlucky to use numbers that read the same upside down as well as upright--I hadn't heard that before. Examples shown were 88 and 11. I wonder how many additional wins Steve Kinser would have if he'd used a lucky number--LOL.

Luna's Ford engine style that won 2 WoO titles and 3 
Kings Royals before a weight rule against the best EVER
in their prime and now DOMINATES super dirt late model
racing is no longer allowed/wanted in a WoO sprint
car.... Was Luna a miracle worker?

The peanut tradition, or if you will superstition, go's way back to 1937 http://www.snopes.com/autos/cursed/peanuts.asp

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true. 

I didn't say you had to belive in those superstitions about the numbers, I don't. I was just repeating what I read in a circle track magazine. However both my micro and the 305 I crew for are both sporting nickles... I thought it was a cool thing to do, and if it is a little lucky I'll take it.

Posted By: SprintRacingAngel on October 13 2011 at 04:37:28 PM I have been around Sprint car racing all my life and am now in college having to write papers and give speeches. I have to do an informative speech and was thinking about doing it over Sprint car traditions. I know that the four wide fan salute is one but there arent any articles about it posted anywhere on the internet. (I asked this question two semesters ago and called all kinds of people and it still took a lot of research and them talking to more people for me to find out why it even started) So what i would like from yall is to post what are the biggest traditions to you and why. I would also like to know more about the Grove and the Ironman. Thanks for all the help to come

Some superstitions I can echo are the peanuts and the color green... which have also both obviously been debunked. As for the # 88, Memphis area locals Mike Ward and Tim Crawley haven't had too bad of luck with them with local track and national 360 championships. It goes without saying that Kinser had a green # 11, single-handedly knocking out two superstitions with that decade of accomplishments.

Superstitions aside, some traditions I believe are:

- the push start for sprint cars... it simply isn't the same without it

- the "outlaw" mentality... which I believe is starting to make a comeback with the poor economy and poor organizations. (Examples from 2011: Sammy, Sam Hafertepe, Danny Smith, Tim Schaffer, Brad Sweet, etc...)

- As with any sport, good rivalries make for good excitement (e.g. Steve/Sammy)

- Legends make traditions... regardless if they are booed for winning too much, anyone who dominates over a certain period grows into folktales and fables of years past... stories that are usually within an earshot any race night in the pits. Steve, Sammy, Doug, Schatz, Myers, Shuman, Kaeding, Rahmer... all legends or soon to be.

Also great runs are regarded as legendary... Alphabet soup through Knoxville with Doty and Wolfgang... It's not exactly sprints but seeing J.J. Yeley run from the "I" (I think... it was borderline ridiculous) to 5th in the A in the Chili Bowl was something I will personally never forget. I will never fail to mention that run whenever the subject arises.

- so many tracks! Knoxville, Eldora, Williams Grove... locally around me, Riverside Speedway in West Memphis is one of the oldest in the country... Hooker Hood, Swindell bros, Sides bros, Stenhouse Sr. and Jr., Terry Gray... all came from "The Ditch." The Syracuse mile... Bristol Motor Speedway on dirt... the list could go on - there is endless history with facilities all across the country, even if they are short lived.

- racing on DIRT is a tradition... who missed that one? haha

- Though, with fear of sounding too corny- the biggest tradition I can see is the family ties and friendships that have continuously pumped through sprint car racing. How many of the names I have mentioned above are a part of multiple generations of racing?

In the pits, someone knows everyone from somewhere and whether it be local or national... you can always see teams helping each other out on a nightly basis and hanging out after the races. Everyone is there for the same reason... to race. Most racers are in over their heads financially because of their passion, which carries into the fans truly appreciating what these guys and girls are doing... not even mentioning the risk of injury or death.

The very foundations and nature of the sport prevent it from becoming too big or too mainstream, yet you can still see it on TV and hear multiple sprint car races from your home computer. I like it like that. Is it perfect? No... but it's cozy and it's (mostly) still real.

Look at me taking a good topic way too seriously... good luck!

The Colour Green has been associated with bad luck in motorsports for as long as people have been racing, but none of you guys have explained why.....

I've heard people come up with crap about it being bad luck because it's the colour of money (in America anyway) and many others but the majority of people don't know where it came from.

It originated from solo (bike's) Speedway in England and Europe and related to the gate colours. Solo's run different helmet couloirs for each starting gate red=1, blue=2, green=3, white=4. Back in the day several riders were killed and seriously injured (safety wasn't real good then) and because gate 3 was difficult due to riders being on either side it was seen to be the most dangerous and it was quite often the green helmeted rider caught up in the incident.

Many riders began to refuse to wear the green helmet covers and still do today because of the superstition; instead they will wear a yellow helmet cover with a black cross on it.

Was it a tradition that the requirement to wear white was posted on a sign at the pit gate? As with any other change various parts of the country make the transition at a different pace. It's pretty amazing that there is actually anyone on this message board besides me old and cantankerous enough to argue about things that happened over 50 years ago.

Stan Meissner

I vaguely remembered this story about how the color green came to be regarded as an unlucky color in the sport of automobile racing but had to look it up on Snopes to find the details.

Here is what Snopes has to say about the origins of this urban legend:

While it is true some drivers have won races in green automobiles, cars of that complexion are rarely to be found at racetracks because they are regarded as unlucky. The prejudice against them dates to the earliest days of motor racing, fed (if not begun) by some especially memorable racing fatalities brought about by green racing machines.

On 17 September 1911, one of the worst auto racing accidents in history occurred at Syracuse, New York, when 11 fans were killed and 10 others injured by Lee Oldfield's Knox racer, a green car that blew a tire during the race, careened into the infield, and plowed through a snow fence into a group of spectators. (The driver, thrown from the car, received minor
injuries.)

On 25 November 1920, Gaston Chevrolet, lost his life when his green Frontenac crashed at the Beverly Hills Board Track into the Duesenberg driven by Eddie O'Donnell. (O'Donnell and Lyall Jolls, his riding mechanic, also lost their lives in that accident.) Scant months earlier, Chevrolet had won the Indianapolis 500 in that very car.

Well-entrenched centuries-old superstition about green being an ill-favored color has likely combined with memory of those two high-profile fatal crashes to help foster the belief
that green cars and auto racing should not mix.