Cal
Niday

Cal Niday was born on 29 April 1914 in Turlock, California. He lost a leg in a motorcycle accident when he was young and raced with a prosthetic leg. He came into car racing as a helper to midget driver Duane Carter and soon made his own name in Southern California as a midget driver. In Australia, where these cars were called speedcars, he won the season championship in 1947 and 1948, and in 1948 he won the Australian Speedcar Grand Prix at Sydney.

The Indianapolis 500 counted towards the World Championship from 1950 to 1960. Niday started it three times, from 1953 to 1955, without scoring any championship points. In 1953 he drove a Kurtis Kraft, started 30th and retired after 30 laps with a magneto failure. In 1954 he started 13th in a Stevens and finished 10th after completing all 200 laps. In 1955 he started ninth in a Kurtis Kraft-Offenhauser. Around lap 170 a crack in the front axle sent the car into the wall in Turn 4, and it caught fire. Niday was wearing a Bell helmet, the first of its make worn at Indianapolis, and he put the lesser severity of his head injuries down to it.

After recovering he moved to Hawaii in 1957, where he built and raced cars until 1970. In later years he took part in vintage sprint car and midget events, and in 1986 and 1987 he was president of the Western Racing Association. Niday died on 14 February 1988, aged 73, after a crash in his midget at a vintage event at Willow Springs International Raceway in California.

Source: Wikipedia, “Cal Niday”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.