User:Proscriptus/Sandbox
| Gus Monckmeier and Ray Latham | |
|---|---|
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| Gustav Monckmeier and mechanic Ray Latham in a Staver at the Elgin National Road Races, c. August 28, 1911. |
Gustav Carl Monckmeier (Dec 13 1888-October 1962) was a German-American racing car driver and inventor.
Monckmeier was born in Germany, and emigrated to the United States in 1901; within a year, he found work at the Mercedes Factory on Long Island [1].
In 1910, he appears as an entrant in the Wisconsin State Association Reliability Tour's Milwaukee Sentinel Trophy, driving a Staver entered by the Stephenson Motor Car Company[2]. He quickly became a Staver factory driver, research engineer and test driver.
Staver was in the right place at the right time, because 1910 marked the debut of the Elgin National Road Races, which instantly became one of the premier events of the day. After Ned Crane was disqualified on the final lap of the 1910 running (for almost taking Arthur Greiner’s National off the track when pitting)[3] and Chester Cheney’s car broke down after 42 minutes, Monckmeier was left to carry the flag, taking third place Fox River Trophy in just over three hours before more than 50,000 spectators[4]. From there, he were off and running, sparkling at the Algonquin Hill Climb and one two Staver entrants at the Indianapolis Speedway in September.
Ned Crane didn’t make it back for the 1911 season, killed while testing a Buick in April, but Monckmeier continued to win efficiency contests, hillclimbs and endurance events, soon joined by driver Emery T. Knudsen. Monckmeier, Knudsen and famed driver Ralph Ireland were all on the slate for Staver at Elgin that August, when on August 21 Ireland was killed in practice as a result of a burst tire. “I’ll never ride in a racing automobile again,” said his mechanician (riding mechanic) Joe O’Brien, who was thrown from the vehicle and spent a week in a hospital. “This once has been enough for me. Ireland was as good and as careful a driver as they make—it was simply chance that killed him. I’m not going to take any more of those kind of chances.”
Monckmeier wasn’t scared off—motor racing deaths weren’t exactly front page news, and with Knudsen and Californian Joseph K. Nikrent (longtime holder of many Speedway Class B and C records in a Buick), did very well for the rest of the year. Nikrent was a short track specialist, and gave Stavers some of their first victories on ¾-mile tracks, as well as the exciting, nearly vertical board tracks at autodromes. Fatalities weren’t, but big wins were front-page news, so when Knudsen took one of two perfect scores (along with a Moline) in the Chicago Auto Club’s weeklong, Around Lake Michigan 1,355-mile reliability run in October 1911, it made the cover of Motor Age.
Nikrent returned to Los Angeles for the 1912 season, but 1911 came back to haunt Staver. In the middle of another successful Around Lake Michigan run on October 21, 1912, the AAA suspended them from all competition through June 1, 1013, for a rule 75 violation: Their 1911 entries, run in the Stock class, had been revealed to be less than stock. Monckmeier and Knudsen, hundreds of miles away from Chicago and incommunicado, completed the race anyway, Monckmeier winning the W. E. Stahlmaker cup for touring cars. It appears the victory was allowed to stand.
When they started racing again in the summer of 1913, it was now the 70hp Staver 65s that took the limelight. Staver engineer Dan Teetor, running in a car with an engine built by his brother Ralph Teetor at Teetor-Hartley, set a new record at the Newport, Indiana, hillclimb, 16.8 seconds in Class E (Nonstock, 451 to 600 cubic inches). Monckmeier set a record of his own in front of 35,000 spectators at the Illinois State Fair in October, 54 seconds on the mile track (eclipsed that same day by the Louis Disbrow’s fantastic Simplex Zip), and won the ten-mile club championship race for Chicago. He continued to race a Staver 65 through the fall of 1913 in the South, but Staver’s fortunes were in decline and the company never won another race.
Monckmeier wasn’t quite done winning in a Staver, however: On October 1, 1914, four months after Staver ceased making automobiles, he won a 30-mile race on a one-mile dirt track at Johnson County Fairgrounds Racetrack in Iowa City, Iowa, with a time of 36 minutes, 34 seconds, beating two Buicks and a Mercer. It was his sole recorded American open-wheel, track racing victory.