1920 AAA Championship Car season

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
←  1919 1921  →

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]

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]

Official schedule and results

Rnd	Date	Race Name	Track	Location	Type	Pole Position	Winning Driver
1	February 28	Beverly Hills Race 1 - 250	Los Angeles Motor Speedway	Beverly Hills, California	Board	Jimmy Murphy	Jimmy Murphy
NC	March 28	Beverly Hills Heat 1 - 50	Los Angeles Motor Speedway	Beverly Hills, California	Board	—	Art Klein
Beverly Hills Heat 2 - 50		—				Jimmy Murphy
Beverly Hills Main - 50 A		—				Tommy Milton
2	May 31	International 500 Mile Sweepstakes B	Indianapolis Motor Speedway	Speedway, Indiana	Brick	Ralph DePalma	Gaston Chevrolet
NC	June 19	Universal Trophy Race - 225	Uniontown Speedway	Hopwood, Pennsylvania	Board	—	Tommy Milton
3	July 5	Tacoma Race - 200	Pacific Speedway	Tacoma, Washington	Board	Tommy Milton	Tommy Milton
4	August 28	Elgin National Trophy - 255 C	Elgin Road Race Course	Elgin, Illinois	Road	Ralph DePalma	Ralph DePalma
NC	September 6	4th Annual Autumn Classic - 225	Uniontown Speedway	Hopwood, Pennsylvania	Board	—	Tommy Milton
NC	September 19	Syracuse Race - 50	New York State Fairgrounds	Syracuse, New York	Dirt	—	Ralph DePalma
NC	October 2	San Joaquin Valley Classic - 200	Fresno Speedway	Fresno, California	Board	Eddie O'Donnell	Jimmy Murphy
5	November 25	Beverly Hills Race 5 - 250	Los Angeles Motor Speedway	Beverly Hills, California	Board	Jimmy Murphy	Roscoe Sarles

  Dirt/Brick/Board Oval

  Road Course/Hill Climb

  Non-championship race

^A Starters limited to first four finishers for each preliminary race

^B 183 in³ (3.00 L) maximum displacement.

^C Points allocated on the basis of advertised distance of 250 miles.

Controversy over official race schedule

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.

Official final points standings

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]

Further information: List of American Championship car racing point scoring systems

Pos Driver BEV1 INDY TAC ELG BEV2 Pts 1 Gaston Chevrolet 1 7 8 6 1030 2 Tommy Milton 16 3 1* 2 11 930 3 Jimmy Murphy 1 4 6 3 4 885 4 Ralph DePalma 8 5 11 1 DNQ 605 5 Roscoe Sarles 14 17 5 1* 540 6 René Thomas 2 520 7 Joe Thomas 2 8 10 7 5 351 8 Ralph Mulford 7 9 2 4 350 9 Eddie Hearne 6 6 3 DNQ 3 345 10 Eddie Miller  RY  DNP 2 260 11 Ira Vail 3 12 140 12 Eddie O'Donnell 5 14 8 5 7 110 13 Art Klein 13 8 4 62 14 Ken Goodson  R  4 61 15 Jean Chassagne 7 50 16 Tom Alley 10 7 36 17 Percy Ford 6 35 18 Pete Henderson 10 14 19 John DePalma 9 10 20 Harry Thicksten  R  8 2 - Jim Crosby 8 0 - Joe Boyer 11* 12* 9 0 - Al Melcher 9 0 - Eddie Pullen 10 0 - John Thiele  R  10 0 - John Boling  R  11 0 - Riley Brett  R  11 0 - Cliff Durant 15 DNQ 12 Wth 0 - Reeves Dutton 12 0 - Aldo Franchi 13 0 - Ray Howard 13 0 - Jules Goux 15 0 - Willie Haupt 16 0 - Wade Morton  R  16 0 - Bennett Hill 17 17 DNP 0 - Jerry Wunderlich  R  17 0 - Waldo Stein 18 DNQ DNP 0 - Salvatore Barbarino 18 0 - Louis Chevrolet 18 0 - Howdy Wilcox 19 0 - Jean Porporato 22 0 - André Boillot 23 0 - Toland Nicholson DNQ 0 - John White DNQ 0 - Arthur Chevrolet DNQ 0 - Jules Ellingboe DNQ 0 - Frank Elliott DNQ 0 - Kurt Hitke DNQ 0 - Glenn Howard DNQ 0 - Jack Scales DNQ 0 - Dave Lewis DNQ 0 - Alton Soules DNQ 0 - Stuart Wilkinson DNQ 0 - Tom Rooney DNS 0 - W. H. Seymour DSQ 0 Pos Driver BEV1 INDY TAC ELG BEV2 Pts

Color Result Gold Winner Silver 2nd place Bronze 3rd place Green 4th & 5th place Light Blue 6th-10th place Dark Blue Finished (Outside Top 10) Purple Did not finish (Ret) Red Did not qualify (DNQ) Brown Withdrawn (Wth) Black Disqualified (DSQ) White Did not start (DNS) Blank Did not participate (DNP) Not competing In-line notation Bold Pole position Italics Ran fastest race lap * Led most race laps Rookie of the Year Rookie

See also

• 1920 Indianapolis 500

References

• 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)

1. 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.
2. "1920 Beverly Hills Race 5".
3. Beverly Hills race day program "The present standings of the championship contenders who race today" 25 November 1920
4. Detroit News. 26 September 1920, Sect. II p. 7
5. L.A. Times. 21 November 1920, Pt. 6 p. 1
6. Motor Age. 27 October 1927, Pgs. 17 & 20
7. "500 miles to go; The story of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, New York, Al Bloemker, 1961, p. 153
8. "1920 AAA National Championship Trail".