Vanderbilt Cup Races

Oct 26 2011

Starting Lineup: The 6 Cars of the 1909 Massapequa Sweepstakes

During the 1909 Vanderbilt Cup Race, two other sweepstakes races (the Massapequa Sweepstakes and the Wheatley Hills Sweepstakes ) were run simultaneously for commercially available stock cars. The Massapequa Sweepstakes had six entrants for the smallest stock cars with engines 161 to 230 cubic inches. The winner received a prize of $1,000.

1909 Massapequa Sweepstakes Summary

The 10 lap, 126.4 mile race had a small but competitive field of six entries: two Chalmers-Detroit “30’s,” one Hudson and three Maxwells.

Fastest out of the gate was the #45 Maxwell of Thomas Costello, cutting a lap at 60 miles per hour. His success was short-lived as he hit a tree on his second lap and damaged the machine too severely to continue. By that time George Ainslee in the #42 Hudson had passed Joe Matson’s #43 Chalmers-Detroit for second place and was able to move into the lead with the demise of Costello.

Matson, who in June won the Indiana Trophy, a stock car race for the same class held in Crown Point, Indiana, re-passed Ainslee for the lead. He paced out the remaining seven laps steadily extending his lead to 18:30 over eventual second place finisher Martin Doorley in #46 Maxwell. Matson’s race average was 58.4 miles per hour.

If not for a broken rear axle during the last lap on the #41 Chalmers-Detroit driven by “Buster” Brown, the Chalmers team could have finished one-two.