By RON WARE
FORT WAYNE, Ind. – Former USAC national midget champion Russ Gamester will drive a glossy black No. 46 Grant King-VW in this weekend’s 12th annual “Rumble in Fort Wayne.”
But as he settles into the cockpit, the Peru, Ind., driver just might feel like he’s buckled into a time machine.
Gamester will return to his roots Saturday and Sunday {Dec. 26-27} at the Memorial Coliseum Expo Center, racing indoors for the first time since 1997. It will mark his first appearance at Fort Wayne since 1989, when he won the indoor championship on the old Memorial Coliseum track.
“I miss running the indoor races,” said an enthused Gamester, who now competes primarily in the USAC Silver Crown Series and in the annual Little 500 sprint car race at Anderson, Ind. “USAC used to have Fort Wayne, the Indy Coliseum, the Hoosier Dome. Dayton was in there once in a while.
“Those were some good times.”
They were especially good for Gamester, whose calculating style seemed perfectly matched to the demands of the tight indoor tracks, which require a blend of patience and aggressiveness. He twice won the prestigious “Thunder in the Dome” midget race at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis, and he also captured the next-to-last race at the former Memorial Coliseum track, boosting him to the 1989 indoor title.
“A lot of these guys grew up racing go-karts or micros,” Gamester said, searching for the key to his indoor success. “I just started racing midgets when I turned 18. I hadn’t raced anything else. I started running all the small stuff – the (Indianapolis) Speedrome, tracks like that – and I adapted to them. I adapted to it really good.
“It’s patient racing. You have to know when to go and when not to go. It’s easy to get torn up.”
Fellow Peru resident Todd Black asked Gamester a few weeks ago if he would race one of his cars in the winged outlaw modified midget division at Fort Wayne. Black has two cars built by Gamester’s older brother, George, who heads up Gamester Racing Products, and wanted a veteran to help set up the chassis.
No sooner had Gamester agreed than Rumble Series promoter Tony Barhorst asked if he would like to race a midget, too. So the Gamesters pulled out of storage the car he won with at the RCA Dome in 1997 and meticulously restored it to near-mint condition. Remarkably, this will be the car’s first race since then.
Back in those days, Gamester harbored hopes of making it to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He won the 1989 USAC national midget championship, finished runner-up a year later to a kid named Jeff Gordon and was runner-up in Silver Crown points in 1999 to Ryan Newman. He passed his Indy Racing League rookie test in March 2000 at Texas and was within a few laps of completing his Indy 500 rookie test that year when the engine blew.
That’s as close as he came to making it to the Brickyard.
“We just couldn’t afford to pay for a ride,” he said bluntly. “It’s the only sport in the world where your talent means nothing and your pocketbook means everything. In hockey, if you have talent, you’ll get to the top. Same thing in tennis. Same thing in golf. Same thing in every other sport.
“Money can buy you a ride, and that’s what’s killed the sport.”
But Gamester, who turns 45 next month, doesn’t want to sound bitter. He’s grateful for the opportunities he’s had.
The Gamester family has been involved in racing since the early 1970s, when his father, Gary, decided to become an owner and bought an old midget one night at a race in Joliet, Ill. The car, as it turned out, was a piece of crap. The frustration grew until Gamester’s late grandfather, George Gamester, finally rolled it into a lake.
“True story,” Gamester said, laughing. “My grandfather pushed it in a lake. He went out bought my dad a car, and we’ve been in it ever since. Billy Shuman and Mel Kenyon were our drivers in the early years.”
This weekend, Gamester hopes to make a different kind of splash.
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In addition to midgets and winged outlaw midgets, the “Rumble in Fort Wayne” will feature MiniCup stock cars, karts, Jr. Sprints and JEGS quarter midgets, all racing on a 1/6-mile track. Midget racing begins at 7 p.m. Saturday and at 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets will be available at the door.
More information, including ticket prices and race headquarters hotel rates, is available at rumbleseries.com or by contacting Barhorst at tbracefest@aol.com.