1920_AAA_Championship_Car_season
The 1920 AAA Championship Car season consisted of 5 races, beginning in Beverly Hills, California on February 28 and concluding in Beverly Hills on November 25. The AAA National Champion and Indianapolis 500 champion was Gaston Chevrolet. The 1920 season later became a source of confusion and misinformation for historians when in 1926 the AAA published a revisionist history, naming another driver as the season's point champion.[1]
| 1920 AAA Championship Car season | |
|---|---|
| AAA National Circuit Championship | |
| Season | |
| Races | 5 |
| Start date | February 28 |
| End date | November 25 |
| Awards | |
| National champion |  Gaston Chevrolet |
| Indianapolis 500 winner | Gaston Chevrolet |
During the final race of the season on November 25 the Beverly Hills event witnessed a tragedy, as that year's Indianapolis 500 winner, and soon-to-be National Champion, Gaston Chevrolet, was killed along with Eddie O'Donnell riding mechanic Lyall Jolls.[2]
The 5 race schedule has been confirmed as the correct and historically accurate schedule for the championship season of 1920. In the race day program for the final race at Beverly Hills was the points distribution[3] for the championship contenders over the previous four races of the season. The championship was confirmed in the weeks leading up to the race by various newspapers around the country printing the four race championship standings leading to the final race.[4][5]
Confusion about the season began in 1926 when, for "comparative reasons", Contest Board member Arthur Means reworked the schedule to include 10 races and changed the champion to Tommy Milton. The earliest that the ten race standing occur are in the 27 October 1927 issue of Motor Age.[6] In 1951 Racing Board member Russ Catlin found these retroactive crib sheets and folded the results into official AAA documentation, continuing the confusion about the 1920 season and early AAA history as a whole. The added races to the season were all of the Non-championship races of the above official schedule, excepted the two races at Uniontown Speedway.
In 1961, Al Bloemker attempted to reconcile the two different accounts for the 1920 season. He surmises that there was an issue with sanctioning fees paid by the Uniontown Speedway and their two races held that year were not included in the final season standings.[7] The printed media of the time is silent about any issue with the Uniontown races not being championship events. They did in fact hold two races but they were not part of the championship. If Uniontown did pay for championship level racing but was not credited for them, lawsuits would have surely been filed but no such record exists.
Note: Drivers had to be running at the finish to score points. Points scored by drivers sharing a ride were split according to percentage of race driven. Starters were not allowed to score points as relief drivers, if a race starter finished the race in another car, in a points scoring position, those points were awarded to the driver who had started the car..
The final standings based on reference.[8]
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- Åberg, Andreas. "AAA National Championship 1920". Driver Database. Archived from the original on October 19, 2012. Retrieved April 26, 2011.
- "1920 AAA National Championship Trail". ChampCarStats.com. Archived from the original on March 23, 2012. Retrieved April 26, 2011.
- Harms, Phil. "Champ Car Statistics 1920". Motorsport.com. Archived from the original on September 12, 2012. Retrieved April 26, 2011.
- http://media.indycar.com/pdf/2011/IICS_2011_Historical_Record_Book_INT6.pdf Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine (p. 77)
- Capps, H. Donald (February–March 2010). "John Glenn Printz and the Struggle for the Past: The A.A.A. Catastrophe - Arthur Means, Val Haresnape, Russ Catlin, and Bob Russo" (PDF). Rear View Mirror. 7 (6): 21–38.
- Beverly Hills race day program "The present standings of the championship contenders who race today" 25 November 1920
- Detroit News. 26 September 1920, Sect. II p. 7
- L.A. Times. 21 November 1920, Pt. 6 p. 1
- Motor Age. 27 October 1927, Pgs. 17 & 20
- "500 miles to go; The story of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, New York, Al Bloemker, 1961, p. 153