Oxley Proudly Adds a Piece of History to Speedway Championship Event

Speedway will soon pay homage to one of its pioneers, and Brad Oxley couldn’t be more proud.

Oxley, a San Juan Capistrano rider and promoter of the weekly shows at the Orange County Fairgrounds, gave up a personal treasure when he created the Jack Milne Cup, a championship-format race for the season’s top 16 riders June 27 at Costa Mesa.

Jack Milne was the first American to win a World Championship in any form of motor racing when he took the Speedway title in 1937 at Wembley Stadium. Three men from Pasadena, including Milne’s brother, Cordy (third place), swept the podium.

Milne was poised to win several more titles had it not been for World War II. He finished second in 1938, but four days before the start of the 1939 race at Wembley, England, declared war on Germany.

Milne won the Queen’s Coronation Cup earlier in 1937.

Apparently, it was just another in a long line of silver trophies Milne won from 1935-38, but it was priceless to Oxley from the day in 1973 when Milne pulled it from a box stuck in the back of a closet.

Milne, known to Oxley as “Uncle Jack” though the two are not related, gave the trophy to Oxley, saying, “If you think you can fix it, you can have it.”

Oxley didn’t have it fixed. Instead, he set it next to his bed, where it has been for the last 25 years. The cup is finally being fixed this week.

Taking a page from the Stanley Cup, the race winner’s name will be mounted on the cup’s base. It will be displayed at International Speedway’s special events.

Milne is largely responsible for Speedway in Southern California--and at Costa Mesa--since the first racing program on June 13, 1969.

He provided the money and the expertise and Brad Oxley’s father, Harry, did all the work. Milne died in 1995.

“Our show is going pretty well this year, and the reason is because I learned the easy way, the people who knew the answers told me,” Oxley said. “We’re not deviating very far from the mold those guys cast in the early ‘70s.”

After Milne’s victory in 1937, no American won the Speedway World Championship until Bruce Penhall of Laguna Hills in 1981-82.

“As a kid, I pretended I was a speedway rider on my bicycle,” said Oxley, 38. “I never pretended to be the champion speedway racer, I was just a speedway racer [and] that was good enough for me.

“That little cup, he passed it off as not a big deal, but I think he knew it was a big deal when he gave it to me.”

Oxley, who is leading in points this season, grew up reading about the great speedway champions racing in their leather helmets and the silver cups they won. It wasn’t until that day, at age 13, that he finally saw the trophies he had heard so much about.

“It’s important that the new guys racing today who aren’t aware of the 70-year tradition of the sport, understand the reason they’re doing what they’re doing is because of guys like Jack Milne,” Oxley said. “It’s akin to a baseball player not knowing who Babe Ruth was.

“We’ve only been blessed with a few people like that, and this is really just a small way to recognize a person who had a monumental impact on Speedway. It’s long overdue, and I’m just lucky to be the one in position to do it.”

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Costa Mesa’s Bobby Schwartz, twice a world pairs champion and once a team champion in Speedway, is starting to feel his age.

“I’m not as into it as much as I once was,” he said. “At times I wonder why I’m still doing it, but the next night I win and it’s great again. I’m in a couple different minds occasionally.

“I’ve had better days when I concentrated just on Speedway, but I can’t do that anymore. I’ll be 42 in August. When I was 22, Speedway was all I focused on.”

Schwartz, who is in his 25th season at Costa Mesa, has made every main event but one this season. He said he could probably ride until he is 50, and he continues to love the people and the sport.

However . . .

“I didn’t do very well [on May 30], because I stuck a sign in a rental property at 4 p.m. and had 20 phone calls by 5,” Schwartz said. “I went to the track that night and was more excited about the rental property.”

That was the night he didn’t make the final. The following week, Schwartz won his first main event of the season.

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Max Papis and Arciero-Wells Racing stunned the Champ Car series when it won the provisional pole in Detroit two weeks ago. Papis, from Newport Beach, qualified during the late session.

“We’ve had a lot of frustration the past 2 1/2 years and that was a special moment for me, tremendous joy,” Papis said. “I held the steering wheel so strong, very proud of all my mechanics. I thought about my dad in Italy, how proud he would have been if he had been there to see me. For me, it was like I won the championship.”

Though Papis admitted it was extraordinary circumstances that positioned him for the moment (the faster cars had qualified on a wet track), it was critical the Toyota engine seized the opportunity. Had it rained hard during the next day’s qualifying, perhaps Papis would have started the race from the pole with three other Toyotas in the top 10.

“Last year, we wouldn’t have put the car in that position under any circumstances and that was the encouraging part for me,” Papis said. “In my session were Jimmy Vasser, Mark Blundell and Mauricio Gugelman, and we got it.

“We showed a light at the end of the tunnel that we had not shown before.”

Papis and the developing Toyota program qualified 19th the next day and finished 18th in the race.