Karting: where Baer Field began

1962 — present

The small cars that started and outlasted: Fort Wayne's longest-running racing form is its smallest. Baer Field itself began as a go-kart track in 1962, two years before the half-mile rose beside it; when the original kart layout was given up, a 1/10-mile kart oval was built in the big track's infield, and the 1999 expansion added a dirt kart track outside the paved ovals, so that karts raced at Baer Field in every decade of its life. Indoors, go-karts and quarter midgets have been on the Rumble's card since its first years — the same ladder Sarah Fisher climbed from quarter midgets and karts to the Indianapolis 500, as the Rumble's own president put it when Fisher visited the event in 2009. And on the east side, a commercial kart track trades today as Fort Wayne Speedway Go Karts at 4550 Speedway Drive, on the ground of the old fairgrounds bowl: the fastest 5/8-mile in the world, in its chroniclers' phrase, still turns wheels — at kart scale.

Sources:

1. Baer Field Speedway / ICAR announcement, February 6, 2015 (TJSlideways) — the 1962 go-kart origin and the infield 1/10-mile kart oval.
2. ACGSI, Allen INGenWeb, "Baer Field Raceway" and "Fort Wayne Speedway" — the kart track at Baer Field from the early 1960s, the dirt kart track added in 1999, and the Fort Wayne Speedway Go Karts listing at 4550 Speedway Drive.
3. TJSlideways, "IndyCar's Fisher to Meet Fans at 'Rumble in Fort Wayne,'" December 3, 2009 — karts and quarter midgets on the Rumble program, on the 1/6-mile track.