Nearing the end of the golden age when most Indy Car drivers had gobs of experience driving "uprights" elbows OUT on clay tracks... and fans related to them =at= Indy because they'd seen them at work (instead of just the tops of their helmets) in V8-powered sprint and champ cars in places like Decatur, Torrance, Rossburg, Clovis, South Phoenix and Syracuse. Now? It's a TV series featuring upside-down airplanes that sound like weed eaters on near-empty NASCAR tracks.

It's Amazing to see these cars out there with no cage just a small roll hoop that barely reaches the top of the drivers head!!!! Brave Men

Back in the day when ABC tried to show racing but golf or underwater basket weaving would cause the telecast to be preempted ... not even a third of the race was shown

Larry Dickson was one of the best dirt track drivers of all time .

1970 I was 10 years old; my wife was born in 1970, and I caught the racing bug. I had gone to Manzanita Speedway a couple of times by this point to watch USAC Sprints & Midgets. I knew enough about racing to know that winning the Indy 500 by almost 2 laps was special and Al Unser, Sr. would become my favorite driver. I followed auto racing as much as I could in those days, there was no internet, so basically if it wasn't on ABC's Wide World of Sports you didn't see races on TV. Those were the days, the drivers would drive Dirt Champ Cars, or Sprint Cars or even Midgets to earn points for the USAC National Championship. No, it wasn't just racing Indy Cars you had to race other divisions in USAC so you could win the championship.

I do love the sound of them Offenhauser engines-

Al Unser in the Johnny Lightning Special! My once and forever best looking race car.

The track in the video is at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. Syracuse is in New York.

Lone Star JR and Al Unser's rides sound incredible down the frontstretch and heading into to turn 1, sheesh. A TWA commercial on the way out. What a throwback. Really amazing video. Really cool racing history. Whoever owns the originals should be converting all of these types of videos to HD.

When racers had respect for one another 🙂

First, Jim McKay and Chris Economaki! Two of the best.

Boy, does this ever take me back...

The very best racing in America 🇺🇸 when you had to EARN YOUR WAY TO INDY used to watch USAC at Syracuse on the mile of dirt

Nice piece of motorsport history, thanks for sharing.

Still running sprints and midgets here, as well as still hosting the season marquee weekend for American Flat Track. Lotta history here.

So cool to see the history of my home track. Also really cool that Mario Andretti was here just a week after almost dying in the Austrian Grand Prix.

I remember when some cars had roll cages some didn't Believe it not when my Dad was young they didn't use any safety belts Indy cars, champ cars etc .What your seeing here to win the USAC points title you raced on asphalt Indy , Milwaukee and they had a few dirt track races in the schedule .The last big name I ve ever seen .

I hated broadcasts in those days. How could they leave the race in progress? Yet it happened all the time.

They race here the last two days of the state fair. The day before last in silver crowns and the last day in ARCA

I saw them in Milwaukee the next day. The Al Unser show.