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Tony Solomito: Finding the Limit

Born in Bloomington to parents Joe and Sharlene in 1952 Tony Solomito was smitten with racing almost at birth. Joe returned to Bloomington from WWII after serving in the U.S. Army. “In the Army he started in North Africa,” Tony says, “he was a convoy leader and travelled through Iran, Iraq and into Russia providing troops with food.” The family had originally settled on 1st street when Joe worked in the stone business. After moving near the current Bloomington North High School, he began raising cattle.

Tony remembers listening to every lap of the Indianapolis 500 on the radio, but this was not a passive activity. “I would get on my bike during the 500,” he says, “and put a little oil down so I could slide my rear wheels right up to the curb of my garage. I would go for 200 laps. My dad would come out and say what in the world happened here?”

By five he was in karts, and he took it very seriously, Father and son would travel to French Lick. Ellettsville, and near the RCA plant. “I wanted to race,” he says, “that is all I wanted to do. My favorite driver was A J Foyt and later on it was Mario Andretti, but I just loved sprint cars. Because of that I followed Dick Gaines and Bob Kinser and tried to copy everything they did.”

He spent seven years in karts, and as his father remarked to Evansville Press reporter Don White, “he got pretty good at it.” His next move in the sport was unusual given his background, and it was prompted when he acquired a Triumph Spitfire when he was sixteen. From there he participated in gymkhana’s, a unique discipline that is often contested in large parking lots and airstrips. At these makeshift tracks drivers negotiate a circuit often comprised of cones and race against the clock. Solomito was proficient enough to become a hired hand.

Was it fun? Yes. Was it a sprint car? No.

It was here that his cousin Sheldon Kinser entered the picture. As seems to be the case more often than not, a little bit of chance changed Tony’s racing fortunes. Joe and Tony ran into Sheldon who was digging out a creek bed with a backhoe south of Bloomington. After the encounter they all decided to go to lunch. Almost on cue Tony admitted to Sheldon that he wanted to get in a sprint car in the worst way. “So, Sheldon made a sales pitch to my dad,” Tony says with a laugh, “he told him about onboard fire extinguishers, and how the roll bars made the cars safe and all of that. Then my dad went to the bathroom and Sheldon told me everything he just said was a lie. He told me you can get yourself killed in those things if you aren’t careful. He also said if you do this you have to love it – not like it – love it.”

Sheldon was preaching to the choir.

With Joe Solomito now leaning towards helping his son out, he engaged in his own form of extortion. Tony had spent a couple of years at Indiana University and Joe told him he would get a sprint car if he stayed in school. That part of the bargain went south primarily because Tony’s heart just wasn’t in it.

Joe decided to hedge his bet a bit. In speaking about his son to Don White he noted “his ambition since he was 12 was to drive a sprint car. I rented Rex Mitchell’s car for him for a couple of weeks thinking it would cure him, but all it did was fire him up that much more.” In 1972 Tony was prepared to give it a go. Like many, he soon realized that there was a lot more to this game than meets the eye. “When I first started I realized there was so much more to it than people think,” he says, “because you are always tuning the car, working with the bars and shocks and if it isn’t right you just can’t drive it.”

It didn’t take all summer for Joe Solomito to understand that his son was willing to put in the work. “I have to admit,” Joe shared, “that no one had worked harder throughout the season.” When it was clear this was no passing fancy the family secured a car from Evansville driver Harry Hale. “We got the car for a little over $3000 and it came with other parts and accessories,” Tony says, “It was really heavy but study. Denny Mitchell built the motor. Denny’s motors were really reliable. They only produced about 475 horses, but you can run them over and over. We had a couple built and they lasted all season.”

His first year behind the wheel of a sprint car was an unqualified success. He topped it all off on September 17 at Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Indiana when he held off Mike Johnson, Gene Henson, and Dick Gaines to get his first sprint car victory. Reflecting on that glorious moment over fifty-two years later he says, “You have no idea how that felt. Because when you first get out there you think you are going as fast as A J Foyt and about that time it looks like there are bumble bees going all around you.” To top off his year he was named the Tri-State (Hoosier Auto Race Club) Rookie of the Year and Sportsmanship award winner.

Flush with success father and son travelled to Indianapolis to purchase a new car from Grant King. There were the normal teething problems. “We had a little trouble making it work at first,” he says, “we had bad engine problems, but we finally got it going. Then we won quite a few times here, there, and yon.”

He began racing extensively throughout the region and became a consistent winner. “We raced with Denny Mitchell for a time in a kind of experimental car,” he says, “the wheel base was six inches longer, but it had a great motor. If the track was right it would just fly, but if you had to diamond it really hard in the corner it couldn’t do that because of the wheelbase. But we had luck in that car at Bloomington, Lawrenceburg, and we ran a lot at Kokomo. At Kokomo, the pay was based on a percentage of the crowd, and we didn’t know at first that there wasn’t much to do there. I remember we went up here one time and I was fast time, I won the heat and the trophy dash, and I finished second in the feature. We walked out of there with eight or nine hundred dollars which was a lot in the 1970s. They ran with wings on Wednesday night and non-wing on Sunday, so we were up there twice a week.”

Yet not long after he really began to stretch his wings he felt
one dramatic change in technology had a significant impact on the sport. “The first time we saw a drag tire was at Brownstown,” he recalls. “Karl Kinser was winning everything with Dick Gaines at the time. That night there was a guy who came over from Pennsylvania named Roger Larson and he lapped everybody. Everybody. Almost twice. That was probably the first time a Karl Kinser car had been lapped in umpteen years. Karl was a genius. Well Larson was using a drag tire, and everything was different after that.”

Roger Larson was born in South Dakota and most recall him from his days racing in the Midwest at places like Huset’s Speedway in his home state and Knoxville Raceway (where he lost his life in 1979 along with Darryl Dawley). However, Larson did briefly relocate to Emigh, Pennsylvania where he took over the famous Dick Bogar #99 when Jan Opperman left the team.

Solomito wasn’t as interested in Larson’s journey nearly as much as was how much drag tires would impact on his world. “Now you had to have a motor that put out a lot of horsepower and you had to have new tires if you wanted to do well. If you wanted to run in the back of the pack you could put on used tires. You weren’t going to win or be in the top five and, of course, that was always our mission.”

Like everyone interested in winning Solomito went to the big tires and there were host of adjustments to be made. In fact, in the days before beadlocks were used to secure the tires, a new set of problems arose. “Without the beadlocks if you blew a tire your wheel would just hit the ground and dig in,” Tony says, “one night I was at Bloomington and there was a big hole, so I went around on the top. I didn’t hit the hole but when it blew a tire, my frame hit the ground, and the car just stopped. It crushed my back and everyone was like why is he hurt? When we got the car back we saw that the firewall had been pushed back ten inches. That is how hard it stopped.” The final diagnosis was a broken shoulder.

Undaunted Solomito soldiered on and continued his pattern of success. He eventually raced four times a week and juggled all of that with work. He had spent some time at J & S Locksmith and says,” it didn’t pay much but if I needed to race they let me off and I could make the time up.” Later he worked with Sheldon Kinser in a radiator shop and eventually retired from General Electric. “It was a lot of hard work and sleepless nights,” he says, “but it was fun. I could go to work on Monday morning with no sleep after racing at Kokomo. I would have mud clods in my underwear, would change clothes, and hit the line at my work. I had so much adrenaline going and so much to think about that the day would just fly by.”

Bloomington Speedway and Lawrenceburg were two of his favorite tracks and he spent a bit more time in the Whiskey City because of a favorable purse. Good days came when he hooked up with the Law Brothers and piloted their copper colored #77 car. In 1979 and 1980 he was Lawrenceburg Speedway’s Calvin Gilstrap Memorial Award winner. Given the prize was bestowed on a driver who demonstrated professionalism and sportsmanship it was a singular honor. During his impressive 1980 season he reeled off three straight wins at the track. In the last win of this impressive streak Solomito had a rear suspension failure with three circuits remaining but still managed to hold off the always tough Greg Staab.

As good as things were going there came a point where he knew it was time for the Law Brothers to invest in a new frame. Just as drag tires had changed the sport, new chassis designs were also making a difference. “With the newer frames you could come out of a corner, put the throttle down and it would just go,” he says, “It was amazing. You didn’t have to feather the throttle down the straightaway. But that took away an advantage for me because I was good at feathering the throttle.”

He came close to track championships, but he often hooked up with teams that like to travel. Beyond the core Indiana stops there were trips to Ohio and Pennsylvania and when points were tallied at the end of the year this bit of wanderlust always cost him a spot or two in the standings. Not that he really cared. “When we traveled that was a lot of fun,” he says, “you got to see what they were doing over there. Because of the points systems some tracks used I would have to start on the tail a lot, but we still did well over there.”

He raced through the 1984 season where a range of factors cut his career shorter than he would have liked. “There was a recession, “he says, “and everything dried up.” Saddled for a time with a car that wasn’t as competitive as he would have liked he began to do an assessment of risk versus reward. “If you don’t have a car capable of the top five you are at risk,” he notes, “When you are in the middle of the back some of those guys don’t know where their car is going. It’s not always the driver’s fault. Sometimes they are just hanging on trying to make it around the racetrack.” In the aftermath of his racing career there was a knee and hip replacement, and he fought back cancer. There are no regrets, and he adds with a laugh “I had fun getting this way.”

The first win remains the highlight of his career, and there were days when he enjoyed a satisfying payday. Still, amid one of the hottest stretches of his career a 1974 win at Bloomington Speedway may have garnered the most attention. That was the day three streakers entered the racetrack, one only adorned with an STP cap. Thinking back to this memorable night Solomito says, “It was fun. Plus, we were running well at the time.” What was his biggest takeaway from this unusual period in American culture? “If I had a racetrack I would have a streaker every other night,” he says with a hearty laugh, “it would get more fans to the track, and they would be hooting and hollering and all you really have to do is wear flesh tone underwear.”

While he has no idea how many checkered flags he took in his career, the fact remains that Tony Solomito was a prime time player. No one truly tames a sprint car, but some ultimately do a better job trying to get these unruly beasts to behave than others. It is impossible to provide a recipe for becoming an elite talent, but Tony may come as close to anyone when trying to explain the progression to the top tier. “There is a level where you are comfortable,” he says, “and then there is a level above that. That’s where your reflexes are working more than your brain. Then there is a level above that which is hard to explain to people. When you get into that area you can’t believe what you are doing. You know you are doing it, don’t get me wrong. And you may be enjoying it, or it may be as scary as hell but when you hit that level that is where you are getting where the other guys aren’t.”

That final level may be difficult to describe but it is a place where Tony Solomito earned his pay.

wing photo John Mahoney
non-wing Billy Sheppard collection

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