1913, Bob Burman, Minoru Park

 I've probably posted this before.

aviators, 1912

 Early flying exhibition. Ad from the April 12, 1912 Vancouver Daily News Advertiser.

1914, Terrible Teddy Tetzlaff, Minoru Park

 Terrible Teddy Tetzlaff advertised in the July 23, 1914 Vancouver World.

Bob Burman, Minoru, 1913

From the July 28, 1913 Vancouver World.

Terrible Teddy

From the "wayback" machine. An ad for Terrible Teddy Tetzlaff and the Blitzen Benz at Minoru Park in 1914.

early vancouver, part eight

One thing I omitted last post was a Dominion Day (July 1st) "aerial event" at Minoru Park. This involved Harry Hooper in the "Vulcan Kewpie" Stutz, owned by the Vulcan Ironworks (J.R. Duncan) racing an aeroplane for two miles.

Harry had done this before in 1916 at Hastings Park. (I seemed to have missed including that in my early Vancouver history. I'll have to remedy that shortly.) He lost then to his aeroplane competition and he again lost to the aeroplane in 1919. He did win a regular race against a Cadillac.

early vancouver racing, part five

A pair of race dates from 1914. The Romano Special makes its first appearance in Vancouver.

I'm not too sure about the results of the Tetzlaff date but the names Billy Carlson, Hughie Hughes and Wilbur D'Alene were pretty big in their day:

15--July 1, 1914, Minoru Park

--Mile against time
1st, Percy Barnes, Romano Special 1:00 1/2
2nd, Hugo Pagano, Speedwell 1:11
3rd, W.H. Smythe, Stearns 1:12
4th, ???, Pacific Car Special 1:13

--Vancouver owned cars for Vancouver City championship, 10-miles
1st, C.R. Thomas, American 13:01
2nd, W.H. Smythe, Stearns 13:01 1-5
3rd, Fred Franklin, Ford 15:00

--15-miles, standing start
1st, Fred Barsby, Studebaker 20:20
2nd, ???, American 20:20.55
3rd, ???, Pacific Car Special 22:40

--International free for all, 10-miles
1st, Romano Special 13:55
2nd, Speedwell 13:56
3rd, Stearns 14:15

--5-miles
1st, Romano Special 6:19
2nd, Speedwell 7:29
3rd, Stearns 7:45


16--July 24, 1914, Minoru Park

--Teddy Tetzlaff, Blitzen Benz, 56 seconds for one mile

--1st event, 5 miles
1st, Hughie Hughes
2nd, Billy Carlson
Time, 5:27

--2nd event, heat for free-for-all
1st, Wilbur D’Alene
2nd, Billy Carlson
3rd, Hughie Hughes

--3rd event, heat for free-for-all
1st, Wilbur D’Alene
2nd, Billy Carlson

--4th event, heat for free-for-all
1st, Billy Carlson
2nd, Wilbur D’Alene


17--July 25, 1914, Minoru Park

--rained out?

early vancouver racing, part four

Wild Bob Burman came north to Vancouver with an entourage of professional drivers.

The big deal of the two weekends that he raced at Minoru Park was his attempts to run the Blitzen Benz at record speeds. According to the newspaper reports of the day he did drop the time for the mile consistently. No world's record, maybe a Canadian record, but nothing seems to have been official.

10--July 18, 1913, Minoru Park

--Bob Burman, Blitzen Benz, 2:15 p.m., 55 4-5 second for the mile

--Bob Burman, Blitzen Benz, 6:00 p.m., 54 2-5 seconds for the mile

--1st heat, free-for-all
1st, Burman

--600 c.I. displacement or more
1st, Burman (Keaton)


11--July 19, 1913, Minoru Park

--10,000 in attendance

--Bob Burman, Blitzen Benz, 52 2-5 seconds for the mile


12--July 25, 1913, Minoru Park

--Bob Burman, Blitzen Benz, 51 3-5 for the mile

--1st heat, free-for-all
1st, Burman
2nd, Endicott
3rd, Benedict (Mercedes)

--2nd heat,
1st, Benedict

--3rd heat,
1st, Burman


13--July 26, 1913, Minoru Park

--Bob Burman, Blitzen Benz, 50 4-5 for the mile

--Burman vs. horse (Flying Squirrel)
3-32nds of of mile
1st, Burman

early vancouver racing, part two

I know I'm missing information between 1907 and 1912. Just haven't looked hard enough. Oh well, a future research project. And an update for the blog.

Minoru Park in Richmond still exists, but the one-mile horse track doesn't.

Of interest is that the promoter is Con Jones, a tobacconist from Australia, who got professional field lacrosse going in Vancouver for a short while. He built a playing field called Con Jones Park (what is now Callister Park). From 1939 to 1941 midgets and motorcycles raced there.

And Harry Hooper's name will show up in other racing information in the future. Vancouver's first taxi cab driver Harry was a self-promoter and one of Vancouver's characters.

Details of the motorcycle races are probably in the clippings. I just didn't transcribe them. (And I will at some point.)
cheers,
bfp

3--July 20, 1912, Minoru Park


--time for one mile
--Barney Oldfield, 200 h.p. Christie 1:01 2/5

--5-miles
1st, "Wild Bill" Fritsch, 90 h.p. Cino
2nd, C.E. Winsler, Hudson

--5-miles
1st, "Wild Bill" Fritsch, Cino
2nd, Lew Heineman, Prince Henry Benz

--3-miles
1st, "Wild Bill" Fritsch, Benz
2nd, Barney Oldfield, Christie
time, 3:24 1-5


4--August 14, 1912, Hastings Park, Vancouver Exhibition

--motorcycles


5--August 19, 1912, Hastings Park, Vancouver Exhibition

--motorcycles






6--September 28, 1912, Minoru Park

--10-miles, match race
1st, Red Sebastian, Cole
2nd, Harry Hooper, Winton
time, 11:25
(also started: McLeod, American and Storm, Oldsmobile)

--10-miles, match race
1st, Bennett, Ford
2nd, Stirton, American
time, 11:55 1-5

--mile for time
1st, Sebastian, Cole 1:04 1-5
2nd, Storms, Oldsmobile 1:08 3-5
3rd, Hooper, Winton 1:08 4-5
4th, Bennett, Ford 1:09
5th, Stirton, American 1:12 3-5

--10-mile free for all
1st, Bennett, Ford
2nd, Sebastian, Cole
3rd, Stirton, American
time, 11:58 1-5
(also started: Storms, Oldsmobile and McLeod, American)

--pursuit race
1st, Bennett, Ford
(also started: Hooper, Winton; Storms, Oldsmobile; and Sebastian, Cole)

The best known and best advertised driver in the world.

An excerpt from a dusty (that is, if digital stuff can collect dust) manuscript that may see print some day:

Barney Oldfield was described, in one of the local Vancouver papers at the time, as the "best known and best advertised driver in the world." It now seems a back-handed compliment but was a truthful statement at the time.

Barney Oldfield was "merely" a fast driver who had run one of the original Fords for Henry Ford in land speed attempts. He had then gone on to cross North America visiting fairs and horse tracks, like Minoru Park, demonstrating to people not fortunate enough to live in areas that might have had racing already established, what the automobile was all about. He was so well known that cops would often ask speeders that they had pulled over, “who do you think you are, Barney Oldfield?” In a special 1996 issue, 100 Years Of The Automobile In America, Motor Trend magazine presented its "13 Giants of American Motorsport". Barney Oldfield was number one.

He didn't win the Indianapolis 500, having only competed in two of the May events, or win any of the major events held in those early days of automobile racing. He did hold some land speed records set on the straight flying mile at Daytona Beach, Florida. His major influence, though, is exactly what he did at Minoru Park. He helped introduce automobile racing to places that were not the centers of the sport.

For his efforts "Barn-Storming Barney" often was barred from racing events by the official sanctioning body of American racing, the American Automobile Association.

The advertisements in the local papers for Barney's July 20, 1912, appearance were full page. Barney's mug grinned from behind the stubby stogie that was his trade mark. The hyperbole of the ad called him "the emperor of the kingdom of speed" and the "king of speed maniacs".

His racing car at that point was the Christie. In those days the cars were as amazing as the men who drove them, if not more so. The automobile was still being developed and radically modified as quickly as they wheeled around the dirt tracks of North America.

Built by Walter Christie it was a front-wheel direct drive V-4. The cylinders, according to the newspapers, were measured out at 7 3/4 inches by 8 inches which gave the engine a displacement of over 1500 cubic inches. The sound was supposedly akin to a "battery of artillery firing".

Christie, according to reports in the local papers, had told Barney he would give the cigar smoking racer six weeks "of life if you try to drive this car as fast as it will go. Why, man, if you opened it wide on a straight it would shoot you through the fence of a track so quick you would never know you had started, so powerful it is".

Oldfield had raced against the Christie a few years earlier. Barney was in a car that would show up at Minoru Park in 1913, the Blitzen Benz. On the beach of Daytona, Florida, the Christie ran the mile in 30.39 seconds, nearly 120 mph, before seizing up. Barney in the Benz ran the same distance in 28 3/5 seconds.

Two years later Oldfield bought the Christie for $750. He called it “the quickest two mile car in the world today.” Unfortunately he couldn’t get it up to speed on the Minoru mile. Earlier in the summer Oldfield had run the mile in Portland, Oregon, in just over 52 seconds, so the car was
capable of good speed.

It could be said that Barney and his team of two other drivers also introduced corporate sponsorship to the Vancouver racing public. Barney was a stockholder in the Firestone tire company, and carried on the hood of his car, "Firestone Tires, My Only Insurance".

Unfortunately, for all of the buildup and sponsorship, the Christie would not co-operate to either shoot Barney through the fence or set a "world's" record on the Minoru track. He could only get one lap up to racing speed and timed that at one minute, one and two-fifths seconds. The rest of the time the car popped and backfired.

When running properly the text of the day indicates Oldfield and the Christie were magnificent spectacles:

"On the straights Oldfield must have been making 70 miles per hour and the big low-slung red car spat flame and emitted a roar..., dashing up the straight stretch dipping like a speed boat in a ground swell, and seeming to clear yards at a single bound clear of the earth". He could have lit his cigar with that sort of flame.

When it got "sulky" the Christie belched "flames at times that almost enveloped the side of the car".

Barney didn't set a record. He didn't even win any of the races scheduled. That honour went to "Wild Bill" Fritsch in a Cino automobile built in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Fritsch also won a race, and supposedly the $100 bet that was advertised from a local Vancouver man, C.E. Winsler, in J.E. Gray's Metropolitan garage 33 horse-power Hudson. Reports had Fritsch's Cino toying with Winsler's Hudson.

Fritsch took a five mile race from fellow touring pro Lew Heineman who was driving a Prinz Henry Benz. The Benz apparently took a cue from Barney's Christie and would not perform. The win gave Fritsch the chance to go against Barney for three miles. For two of those three miles it was close until the Christie bogged down again.

Barney, frustrated with the Christie, hopped in the Benz only to find it acting up once more. Barney's legendary mechanical ability--he could take a balky motor to the starting line, hop out of the driver seat and deftly tweak something under the hood to make it run smoothly, mainly because he had detuned the car before hand--left him at Minoru Park. Reports had the magneto on both cars failing.

With that let down, the cars, with Barney Oldfield et al., headed east to Calgary and other prairie towns.

The only other problem with the Minoru race was getting all the people home to Vancouver from Lulu Island. B.C. Electric had put out special cars but with the automobile races being run after the horse races the reported crowds of anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 (depending on the newspaper) all surged home at the same time. It apparently took some people until 8 o’clock to get home. Scandalous behavior for 1912.