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1946 – present
The venue line only: The deep racing record belongs to Racing; this section carries the venue facts. South Bend Motor Speedway, a high-banked quarter-mile paved oval on State Road 2 west of Mayflower Road, was built over two years by the South Bend Auto Racing Association — Joe Kovatch and thirteen others, local drivers Charlie Van Acker and Charlie Szekendy among them — for midget racing, and opened on August 23, 1946, before some 8,000 people, Chicago's Ted Duncan winning the first feature and Gus Klingbiel standing as the track's first champion at season's end. It was a midget-racing hotbed after the war and ran for nearly eight decades: it closed for weekly racing in 2007, reopened under new owners, and held a farewell "Last Lap" weekend in May 2024 after a sale — though limited racing had resumed there by 2026. The city's other oval stood inside Playland Park, which ran midget and stock-car racing and held South Bend’s only NASCAR race, in 1952, won by Tim Flock with Lee Petty second — Herb Thomas took the pole and led the first 41 laps before a crash on lap 64 left him 18th — before about 3,700 spectators.
Sources:
- SPEED SPORT — the speedway's opening of August 23, 1946, its builders, the first feature, and the May 2024 "Last Lap."
- Playland Park history — the park oval's racing and the 1952 NASCAR race, Tim Flock the winner and Herb Thomas the pole-sitter.