The AAA Contest Board was the motorsports arm of the American Automobile Association. The contest board sanctioned automobile races from 1904 until 1955, establishing American Championship car racing. Modern-day Indy Car racing racing traces its roots directly to these AAA events.
All of the races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during that time period were sanctioned by AAA, including the Indianapolis 500. AAA sanctioned the 1905 National Motor Car Championship, the first national championship for major auto racing. It resumed the National Championship in 1916, and again from 1920 to 1955. It also sanctioned the Vanderbilt Cup.White, Gordon. The AAA Contest Board , Retrieved 2010-10-22
The AAA Contest Board dissolved and decided to focus strictly on helping the automobiling public as a result of the 1955 Le Mans disaster.
History
AAA was established in Chicago, Illinois, on March 4, 1902. By June the same year, AAA also established the Racing Board. A. R. Pardington was appointed chairman and the board sanctioned its first race, the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup held on Long Island, New York. It is unclear as to why William K. Vanderbilt had AAA sanction his race as opposed to the Automobile Club of America (ACA), the predominant sanctioning body for U.S. racing at the time.
With the success of the racing board's experience sanctioning automobile events in 1904, the board announced a national track championship for 1905. The National Motor Car Championship was the first time in American auto racing history that a points system was used to officially decide an annual champion. From 1906 through 1915 the racing board, inexplicably, recognized no official championship seasons. It did, however, continue to sanction numerous individual events, the Vanderbilt Cup and events at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
In 1908, the ACA created the American Grand Prize, another Grand Prix style race in the United States, along with the then established Vanderbilt Cup. This race started a feud between the ACA and AAA. Later in 1908 it was decided that AAA would sanction all big time racing nationally and the ACA would sanction all international events held on American soil. On December 2, 1908, AAA dissolved the Racing Board and created the Contest Board soon after. Though the rationale for this decision has been lost with time, the move was most likely done to allow AAA to oversee all automobile events and not just racing contests.
The Manufacturers Contest Association (MCA) urged AAA to organize racing so American manufacturers could race mostly stock configuration cars, relevant to the needs of the general public, and ban the pure race cars being imported from Europe. The stock car style rules continued until 1916, when the Contest Board relaxed the rules allowing purpose built machines back into competition ahead of its next officially recognized championship season in 1916. Although AAA did not declare national champions from 1906 through 1915, the American automobile journal Motor Age published who they regarded the most outstanding American driver during the years of 1909–1915. These picks have become de facto national champions of the day.
During the First World War, AAA suspended the national championship and limited the number of sanctioned races as a whole. This period also saw the demise of the Vanderbilt Cup and the American Grand Prize, and the ACA folded during the war. American manufacturers saw the absence of European racers, and the relaxed rules due to no national level sanctioning, as a chance for the U.S. to catch up to the European racers who had dominated racing internationally up until that point. After the War, the Contest Board picked up the pieces and regularly held national championships from 1920 until the U.S. entered the Second World War in 1941.
After World War I, the race car specifications for the national championship were mostly aligned with what the Indianapolis Motor Speedway wanted to run during its Memorial Day classic, and this still holds mostly true today. AAA, again, restarted the championship with the close of the war for the 1946 season and continued uninterrupted through 1955.
On July 13, 1955, Senator Richard Neuberger (D-OR) called for a bill to ban automobile racing after the Le Mans disaster and the 1955 Indianapolis 500 fatalities. The bill did not pass, but pressure from the Senator was enough that the AAA announced on August 3, 1955 it would disband the Contest Board and cease motorsport sanctioning. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway and other Midwestern promoters formed a "Temporary Emergency Committee," later known as the United States Auto Club (USAC), to replace the AAA. At the international level, the Automobile Competition Committee for the United States (ACCUS), formed in 1957 by USAC, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR), and the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), replaced the AAA Contest Board as the national sporting authority representative to the FIA. During the last half of the Racing Boards existence they sanctioned many forms of racing such as midgets, sprint cars, sports cars and stock cars as well as top level championship car racing.
National Championship results
Year ChampionAAA National Motor Car Championship 1905 Barney Oldfield 1906 No official national championships 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915YearAAA National Championship 1916 Dario Resta 1917 No official national championships(World War I/flu pandemic) 1918 1919 1920 Gaston Chevrolet 1921 Tommy Milton 1922 Jimmy Murphy 1923 Eddie Hearne 1924 Jimmy Murphy 1925 Pete DePaolo 1926 Harry Hartz 1927 Pete DePaolo 1928 Louis Meyer 1929 Louis Meyer 1930 Billy Arnold 1931 Louis Schneider 1932 Bob Carey 1933 Louis Meyer 1934 Bill Cummings 1935 Kelly Petillo 1936 Mauri Rose 1937 Wilbur Shaw 1938 Floyd Roberts 1939 Wilbur Shaw 1940 Rex Mays 1941 Rex Mays 1942 No automobile racing held due to World War II 1943 1944 1945 1946 Ted Horn 1947 Ted Horn 1948 Ted Horn 1949 Johnnie Parsons 1950 Henry Banks 1951 Tony Bettenhausen 1952 Chuck Stevenson 1953 Sam Hanks 1954 Jimmy Bryan 1955 Bob Sweikert
Contemporary publication selections Each year from 1909 to 1915 and again from 1917 to 1919, the American automobile journal Motor Age selected a "driver of the year". Likewise, other contemporary publications such as The Horseless Age, MoToR, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Times published similar selections. These were similar in concept to newspaper decisions. While these selections are strictly unofficial, they are customarily regarded as the de facto champions for the respective seasons. No such selections were made for 1916, since an official points system was in place that year to determine the champion.
Year Motor Age Horseless Age Others 1909 Bert Dingley — — 1910 Ralph Mulford — — 1911 Harvey Herrick — —1912 Ralph DePalma — Teddy Tetzlaff (L.A. Times) Bob Burman (NYT) Ralph DePalma (Chicago) 1913 Earl Cooper Earl Cooper — 1914 Ralph DePalma Ralph DePalma (road racing) Ralph DePalma (MoToR) René Thomas (speedways)1915 Earl Cooper (road racing) Earl Cooper (road racing) Earl Cooper (MoToR) (road racing) Gil Andersen (speedways) Eddie Rickenbacker (speedways) Dario Resta (MoToR) (speedways) Eddie Rickenbacker (tracks) Earl Cooper (overall) — 1916 — — — 1917 Earl Cooper — — 1918 Ralph Mulford — —1919 Tommy Milton (road racing) — — Eddie Hearne (speedways) Eddie Hearne (overall)
Controversy Between the years of 1902 and 1919, although AAA sanctioned many races, an official national championship of drivers was only declared and awarded in 1905 and 1916. On two separate occasions, Contest Board record keepers changed the results of certain seasons, and used extraneous points tables and methods to calculate retrospective national champions for years in which one had not been declared. These ill-advised records made their way into official publications, books, magazines, and media guides, and largely due to the scarcity of records, were accepted as fact for decades by an unsuspecting public. It was not until further research was undertaken during the 1970s and 1980s that the truth behind the history was brought back to light. These actions collectively have made it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction regarding the first two decades of AAA sanctioned national championship racing.
Retrospectively awarded champions Sometime during the years 1926 through 1929, Arthur Means, the Assistant Secretary of the AAA Contest Board, with the approval of Secretary Val Haresnape, retrospectively calculated championship results for major AAA-sanctioned races contested in 1909–1915 and 1917–1920. Means used points tables from the mid-1920s to create his hypothetical calculations. By reworking the 1920 docket, adding five events that were originally run as non-points or "exhibition" races, the pair effectively stripped Gaston Chevrolet of his 1920 championship; instead declaring Tommy Milton the new champion. However, by no later than 1929, they restored the 1920 championship back to Chevrolet. Their work, meant to be for "comparative reasons" only, was soon accepted as fact. In addition, various arithmetic inconsistencies created further confusion and glaring anomalies.
In 1951, Russ Catlin a sportswriter and publicist for the AAA Contest Board, made substantial revisions to the recorded history of early AAA racing. Using his own devised system of awarding championship points, and building upon the erroneous work previously generated by Means and Haresnape, Catlin fabricated, distorted, and/or negated AAA Contest Board records for 1902–1920. Catlin first published his list in the 1952 Indianapolis 500 program, and also published what he believed to be a history of AAA racing, intended to celebrate its upcoming 50th anniversary. Catlin retroactively created seven new champions (1902–1908), and revised others. He named Victor Hémery the champion for 1905, the winner of that year's Vanderbilt Cup; it is possible he was unaware that an official 1905 champion (Barney Oldfield) had actually been declared. He also named George Robertson the champion for 1909, differing from Means and Haresnape, who had settled on Bert Dingley. Furthermore, Catlin rerevised the 1920 champion to Tommy Milton once more, even after Means and Haresnape had backtracked that decision and given it back to Gaston Chevrolet. IndyCar currently recognizes Russ Catlin's list from 1909 to 1919, but with Gaston Chevrolet as champion for 1920.