The
Indyslotcar series formed a hall of fame four years ago. The initial
inductee was three time champion Larry Rotter. The second was founder
and 5-time champion Phil Cianciola.
The third inductee was twice champion Jim Iverson. In 2014, 2-time champion "Gentleman Jim" Kaehny was enshrined. There was no inductee in 2015.
In a few weeks the fifth inductee for the 20 year old league will be introduced.
Who will it be?
The cat is a little out of the bag for many behind the scenes, but you reading this may not know, so I won't spoil it for you.
The
only known rule is that you have to be officially retired from the
league, although if you are also a track owner and you let the league
race on your track you are still allowed to race.
There is only one
person that makes the decision on who gets into the hall of fame, league
commissioner Mike Kristof. Here are my odds, based solely or this year,
on who will get the honor for 2016:
Chad Sorce
In
86 starts Sorce won nine times, had six pole positions and made the
final four race 37 times with 15 heat race wins. Not a dominate racer
early in this career, he came on like a storm in his last three when he
teamed up with Dan Margetta to form the Miller Lite Team. Together they
gave Ferrari a run for the money with Sorce finishing a close second to
Kamikawa in the 2001 championship. Sorce does have the distinction of
being the first person not associated with Phil Cianciola to join the
league. He was also the first to act as a spotter for another driver
(Dave Austin, both wore headphones to talk to each other around the
track). Sorce's Clevelandstone raceway was the sight of a major event in
Indyslotcar history with a nuclear meltdown! A consummate autograph
collector, the space that once hosted Clevelandstone is now a museum to
these autographs.
Odds of induction: 30-1
Dave Austin:
The only other champion besides Cianciola in the first five years of the league, and the first to win by cheating, the
original clown prince of the league also took a championship, 13 wins,
27 heat wins, appeared in 54 finals in 118 starts. While well known for
making the league as fun as it was both on camera and off, he was a
competitive driver. His nomination also comes with controversy because
he was a terrible driver his first two years in the league, then blitzes
everyone in season three to win the championship. Turns out he
introduced the league to another driver, Jonathan May, who was a driver
in a different league who knew all the tips and tricks for making a car
go faster. This included attaching a very small and narrow magnet to the
underside of the front wing making it almost impossible for his car to
crash. He famously revealed his secret after the last race of the season
when he stuck his car to a metal pole. His championship wasn’t taken
away, however the cheating genie was out of the box. He is remembered
for that as well.
Dave is also the person responsible for giving
members up close access to cars and drivers at the Milwaukee Mile when
he worked there. That and his lighthearted fare is what he is most
appreciated for now.
“Dave was so fast during his championship. It
seems obvious now nut not at the time,” Kamikawa remembers. “After that
season on a good night he was still deadly quick, especially when he was
paired with Kaehny on Team Kool Guys.” He was one of the drivers that everyone came to see because of his skills but also because he made the league fun. Odds of induction: Even
John Shea:
John
was never league champion, however his influence runs throughout the
racing world. In this league he took 15 wins, 11 pole positions, 36 heat
wins, and appeared in 47 finals in 98 starts. Shea was the first to
break down the cars technically to understand how they worked and what
made them go faster. He dispensed that knowledge to others freely and
was known as a fierce competitor. His battles with Cianciola are things
of legend. He built a replica of Monza and staged that first race, the
US Grand prix, in the garage of the Milwaukee Mile. “He and Phil had
battles on and off the track. Both legendary. He argued against stupid
rules and tried to make good rules better, Kamikawa said. He is still
the toughest person I’ve raced against and I’m not saying that because
he was my teammate for years!”
Those battles with Phil would also
lead John to form the stock car based American Racing Alliance and later
the ISF of which he is multiple times champion in both.
Odds of Induction: 15-1
John Baas:
Not
a champion on track but one in life, he took three wins and three
poles, 13 heat wins, appeared in 17 finals in 135 starts. Maybe not as
impressive stats as others, however Baas contributed something else in
terms of track engineering. He built the massive Vernon Farms quad oval
raceway, and later made a portable version of the track.
He was also the first to really detail the landscape in and around the
tracks in the exact attention to detail that model railroaders do. “John
was fun to race against. Most importantly he was the first to detail
his track with outhouses. We used to ponder what would happen if we were
all suddenly sent to the Twilight Zone racing world where we were
actually to scale with the cars and racing on our tracks. No one had any
bathrooms until John followed up on it!” mused Kamikawa.
Odds of Induction: 35-1
Tony Perkins:
Probably the most popular winner of any induction would be the famously inventive T-Perk.
Famously
no feature wins in his career, one pole position, 4 heat wins, 19
finals appearances in 102 starts. In one of his most famous racing
moments he raced against the entire Penske team of Austin, Cianciola,
and Kaehny in a heat race and beat them all!
One of the original
drivers, Tony was the first to crash another car off the track in the
first race causing a rivalry to develop between him and the crashee,
Everet Kamikawa. “Tony and I supposedly had this big rivalry after that.
It was all lip service much like David Hobbs and Sam Posey in sports
cars,” Kamikawa said. “Tony is a class act who always had a thing where
the celebrities flocked to him.”
Indeed Tony had that kavorka as his
paddock area was often visited by the likes of The Spice Girls, Greg
Moore, Frank Williams, The Pussycat Dolls, and a host of various
beautiful women from the modeling and singing worlds. “We single drivers
would hang out with Tony just to catch what he was throwing away!”
Kamikawa chuckled. Tony was also the first of the group known as
“painters,” drivers who didn’t rely on store bought cars. Over the years
Tony painted cars in liveries like: Players, Duracell, Target, and
several others.
Odds of Induction: 30-1
These are my predictions on who
will be the next one enshrined in the Indyslotcar Hall of Fame in 2016.
Some of these names will make another appearance in 2017.
Until then…It’s not bad being in the pits!
Steve “The Wrench” Ratchett
