6/3/2025
Bloomington Speedway
Remembering a Legend: Don Nordhorn
Indiana has produced its share of great sprint car drivers, and by the late 1960s many knowledgeable fans from across the country were well-aware of the exploits of Dick Gaines and Bob Kinser. Given their list of accomplishments, no one was surprised when these two giants were enshrined in the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame. Yet, in this heady time one of the fiercest competitors these men faced was actually a teammate. That driver was an unassuming man from Evansville, Indiana named Don Nordhorn.
Born on January 16, 1934, Don is now 91 years old, and fifty years have passed since he walked away from the sport. His father Henry was an insurance salesman while his mother Alma was a homemaker. Thus, there was nothing to suggest he would devote much of his life to auto racing. As one could expect he has reached a point where it takes an extra minute or two now to recall some of the key moments in his stellar career. It is also true that he isn’t one to boast. He was a man of his times, and like so many who ultimately made their mark in the speed game it all began humbly.
When asked when he began his career he says “I think I was around twenty years old. I started in an old junker, and I ran a Chrysler with a Plymouth body.” His most common early haunt was the Evansville Speedrome where he competed with the United Stock Car Racing Association. A companion track for the USCRA was Kentucky’s Henderson Speedway just south of Evansville on US 41. Nordhorn first appears in the results during the 1954 season but quickly found his land legs. Early in the 1955 campaign he competed in a car sponsored by Leonard Auto Parts but accepted a ride with Evansville owner Del Burkes. However, perhaps most important to his budding career was a chance to substitute for talented Ken Coffey in Gordon Ghormley’s no. G-2.
Don’s first taste of victory came in a USCRA Australian Pursuit race on September 3, 1955, and two weeks later he topped the 25-lap feature at the Speedrome. The thought of being a professional racecar driver never entered his mind. As his career was getting underway, he was in his words “a paint and body man” at Hickey’s Garage. “There were three of us,” he says, “and each of us had our own customers. It made it more personal. I did the work for Signal Delivery who leased trucks to Whirlpool. They eventually wanted me to come to work for them and at that time we were actually located in the Whirlpool Plant.”
At this time, he also took a more active role in the USCRA and in April
1956 was named secretary/treasure of the club. Now a true star, at the Speedrome he posted four 50-lap wins in the Ghormley entry and was declared by the Evansville Press to be the driver of the year. Off the track substantial changes were afoot. The club was anxious to find new digs, and as result a new racetrack known as Evansville Speedway was born north of the city on US 41.
It’s funny how things play out. The new facility bordered a small farm owned by a man named Ed Helfrich who had no interest in auto racing. His son, current Tri-State Speedway proprietor Tommy Helfrich picks up the story, “My dad moved in 1954 or 1955, and he came from a farm family. He was poor, and he was working at Swift Packing company in Evansville, and he had forty acres and an old John Deere tractor. They started building this track right next to our property and he didn’t even go down there. They got it open in 1957 so one Saturday night they had a tremendous rain storm, and everybody got caught in the infield and they had no way to pull anybody out. One of the drivers said, ‘I think that guy up there has a little tractor.’ They walked up there and got my dad, and he got them out.”
A simple good deed was about to change Ed’s life. “Right after my dad helped out somebody thought, hey, this could be handy,” Tommy says, “They figured since he has a tractor maybe he could work the track a little bit. The bigger problem was all of these people got together and built the speedway but none of the bills were paid. The club was now running into all kinds of problems, and there was a lawsuit against the track. An attorney from Princeton, Indiana contacted my dad and asked if he would rent the track. Then that went on for a while and then somebody got crosswise with my dad, and he said either sell it to me or I’m done. That was in 1960, so depending on how you look at it that was either a blessing or a curse.”
Fiscal issues aside, Don Nordhorn had every reason to love the place now known as Tri-State Speedway. He would win the very first event held at the track on June 22, 1957, and when he made the transition to the super modifieds it was more of the same. By 1961 he was named to the USCRA Board of Directors and captured the first super modified event held at Tri-State that same year. In a story of ongoing success at the Haubstadt, Indiana oval in 1964 he was the USCRA super modified champion.
While the principal players in the club remained the same by 1965 races at Tri-State were under the Hoosier Auto Racing Club umbrella. The name change reflected the recognition that stock cars, albeit loosely defined, were no longer the premier class at the track and the area. Yet, at the same time the use of the word sprint car began to enter the lexicon. Nordhorn, for his part, even confuses matters by reporting that Ross Moore owned his first sprint car. With Moore, an excavating engineer from Bridgeport, Illinois, Don was nearly unstoppable at Tri State. In 1965 he won nine times on his way to his second straight championship. Putting another important win on his resume, in early September he topped a 100 lap South Central Indiana Racing Association feature at Bloomington.
The 1966 season was a time of new opportunities. Nordhorn had previously suggested a preference for remaining close to home, but before long he was straying farther away from his base. There was one big reason for the change. “Dizz Wilson called me,” Don says, “and he asked me if I would drive one of his cars. He had two cars at the time, and he already had Dick Gaines driving for him.” Wilson had a well-earned reputation for firing drivers who did not perform up to his exacting standards. Apparently, Nordhorn passed muster. “I got along with him pretty well,” he said with a chuckle, “and I lasted with him for several years, but Dick drove for him longer than me.”
Don was still winning with Ross Moore, but he was also racing extensively with Wilson. On May 30 Nordhorn signed in with Dizz for a 400 lap open competition race at Ellis Speedway in Reed, Kentucky. When the checkered flag dropped Don took the $1000 top prize by holding off Gaines and Georgia pavement ace Herman Wise. Wins came in long distance tilts at Tri-State, he was victorious again at Bloomington, and he also fared well with IMCA at the Terre Haute Action Track.
The 1967 season proved to be another banner year. He found pay dirt at Tri-State six times, an equal number at Bloomington where he reeled off four straight wins in May and early June, and he also grabbed the brass ring at Lawrenceburg. However, if there was a true signature win it came on August 5 when Dizz and Don took the last 500 lap sprint car race ever held at Eldora Speedway. Their winning margin was a whopping fifteen laps. Not surprisingly in a race this long there was drama to be had. “I looked down at my oil gauge and it was down to zero,” Don recalls, “and I thought the engine was going to blow. I was watching the scorers because they sat up there and they flipped a card over every time you ran a lap. I looked up and saw I was ahead by 19 laps. Every now and then you would see a car sitting there with a bunch of steam coming out of it because their radiator was getting full of mud, and they were overheating. I was careful not to get behind a wheel where they were throwing mud back. Still, I thought I had better stop to see what Dizz had to say about this lack of oil pressure. So, I did. I came in and pulled it out of gear and sat there idling. Dizz came over and I pointed down at the oil gauge. He took two steps back and motioned me on. Somebody had a push truck right behind me. Coming in cost me three laps but it turns out that the oil gauge wasn’t working. Keeping the radiator clean is what won me the race.”
The feature took a bit over three hours to complete and, in the aftermath, Nordhorn quipped to Greenville, Ohio reporter Jack Willey, “A thousand bucks an hour isn’t too bad. It sure beats the dickens out of anything I could think of. But the working conditions could stand a little improvement. I mean it got awfully dry out there and the air conditioning wasn’t working too good.”
In 1967 Don also made an appearance in Lawrence Fox’s sprint car, and it proved to be a harbinger of things to come. While many may have surmised that Dizz Wilson had served another driver their walking papers, in this case Nordhorn had decided to walk away. “I didn’t like the way Dizz treated me,” he flatly notes, “He favored Dick Gaines quite a bit. It is true that Dick raced for him for a long time and won a lot of races. Still, we would go to a race and all of a sudden, Dick would decide he wanted to drive my car, and he did. That happened several times. He would always get new tires. It was that sort of thing. I didn’t think he appreciated me, so I had a good chance to leave, and I did. When Galen Fox called me and asked me to drive his new car, I thought it was a good chance to get away from Dizz.” It turns out that the move did catch Wilson off guard. “He called me and wanted to know what was wrong,” Nordhorn says, “but I didn’t have much to say. Finally, he said I guess if you drive for a guy for three years that’s enough.”
Ironically, with this change of scenery Don was once again a part of a potent two-car squad with another heavy-hitter as a teammate – Bob Kinser. When he thinks back to those days Nordhorn said, “I always got along with Bob.” There were still a few moments that needed to be smoothed over, but both men benefitted from the mechanical wizardry of Galen Fox. He began the 1968 season at the IMCA openers in Tampa, Florida, then hit the ground running with three wins at Bloomington to start the year. Finding the IMCA schedule to his liking he scored two wins at the high banks of Winchester and in September he topped his foes at Nashville, Tennessee. He completed his year with a sterling second place run to Bob Cleberg in the prestigious Western World Championship at Arizona’s Manzanita Speedway after a tremendous tussle with Bob Kinser who ended his night in the fourth position.
Yet perhaps no race in his entire career was as odd as his lone appearance at the Little 500 at Anderson Speedway. Things started well when he qualified third, and he led laps early. Then things turned sour. Minnesota driver Harry Kern lost his life in a four car tangle, and shortly thereafter rain halted the proceedings. Nordhorn had been out front but blew his engine just before the skies opened up. Although he was just a teenager at the time, this set into motion a series of events that crew member Ernie Hays remembers well.
“We took the car back to Bloomington,” Hays recalls, “and Galen and I worked all night to take the engine out of Bob Kinser’s no. 53 car and put it in the no. 52. Changing an engine wasn’t like it is today. The oil tank was under the seat, and it was a real process back then. We got done about seven a.m. and split for a couple hours of sleep. I think we got back there in the afternoon to finish the race.” Unfortunately, Nordhorn was eventually black flagged in the race for losing oil. The record shows that he had led 89 laps. Hays remembers and oil line may have come off. That was enough of a problem, but there was more drama forthcoming back home. “Later Bob showed up to go to Haubstadt,” Ernie says, “and there isn’t an engine in his car. He was not a happy camper.”
Nearly fifty-seven years later Don Nordhorn remembers how it went down, “Bob was really mad, and I don’t blame him. I think at that time Galen was paid based on what the car made, so when he decided to go back to the Little 500 that was a financial decision.” Hays does recall a bit of drama trying to juggle two cars. “Galen was really tuned into Bob,” he says, “and they had a lot of success. When the 52 car showed up it divided his attention, so it wasn’t always smooth. I remember going to Lawrenceburg one night and there was a fight over a diamond tire. Bob wanted, and felt he deserved, the best, and for the most part I think he got it. It was contentious between Bob and Don, but they were competitors. No one was more competitive than Bob Kinser.”
By now anyone who followed the sport realized that Don Nordhorn knew how to win. While there was a time when he eschewed any notion that he would chase the USAC trail soon others were chasing him. Suddenly it made sense. In early 1972 Tri State Speedway welcomed their star home with Don Nordhorn Night. On his special occasion he told reporters “I found myself travelling around to different tracks about as much as if I I’d been running USAC but not making as much money. I just decided to make the switch.”
In November 1968 he raced with the USAC sprints in Clovis, California, and the following year he started seventeen features for owner Bob Ziegler, as well as with Ray and Cissy Smith. The final tally found him in the 12th position in series points with four top five finishes to his credit. He would remain active in the USAC sprint car ranks through 1974 and found steady work on the one-mile dirt tracks in what became known as the Silver Crown series primarily with the Speedway Motors team. His first sprint car win came with owner Mark Hughes at Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1970, and three more came over the course of his career with Evansville radiator shop owner Sid Van Winkle. In 1973 he finished third in the final standings behind Rollie Beale and Lee Kunzman. A move to Paul Leffler’s operation in 1974 seemed promising, but the car was sold out from under him and a hard tumble later in the year required some time to heal. That also provided him with some time to think. The feelings he had about the sport were complex but when he added it all up, he chose to walk away.
. When Tommy Helfrich speaks of Don Nordhorn he says, “he was one of my heroes. He was just a common Joe, but he was so gifted. So many of the people I admire just don’t have an ego. He worked all week, but on the racetrack, you could watch him and could see his track sense and just how smart he was. He was a natural.” Ernie Hays would go forth to work for Stewart-Hass racing but as a kid he realized he was watching someone who was just a bit different. “Don was really professional,” he says. “He almost reminded you of an IndyCar driver. He approached everything methodically and he really drove methodically.”
When some of the great sprint car drivers from our past are recalled, Nordhorn’s name should be in the conversation. Whether dirt or pavement, short or long distance he found victory lane often. One doubts he thinks about that very much today. While others seem impressed with all he accomplished he seems disinclined to dwell on the past. When he thinks about his greatest rivals, he doesn’t note Gaines, or Kinser, or any of the big names from USAC or IMCA. No, consistent with who he is he mentions someone from home, Donald Edward “Snooky” Bullock.
When asked what became of his many trophies his response is unsurprising. “I sold my house, and I had all my trophies in the top of the garage,” he says, “One day I was getting them down and I sat them by the entrance to the garage and a guy came by and asked if I wanted to sell them. I decided that was a good way to get rid of them.” In the end Tommy Helfrich was right, Don Nordhorn was just a common working man, who happened to do a little racing on the side – he just happened to do it very well.
Action shot John Mahoney - posed with Sid Van Winkle Donnie Hardesty
posed early years Tri State Area Racing History collection
Article Credit: Patrick Sullivan
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