Even though he loved racing, August “Gus” Schrader was a cautious driver, telling friends he felt safer on the racetrack than on the highways.
Schrader, born in Newhall in 1895, became known in racing circles as the “Flying Dutchman,” breaking records with his daring driving from the early 1900s into the 1940s before dying in a race right before he had planned to retire.
Schrader gravitated to racing machines early, starting with motorcycle racing on county fair tracks in 1916. He moved on to cars.
By 1922, he was placing first more often than not.
The Labor Day races at the Johnson County Fairgrounds, sponsored by the Cedar Rapids Motor Club, awarded $1,165 in prizes. Schrader and his brother, Emmet, placed first and second in all of the professional auto races. Gus drove his Dodge Special and Emmet a Nash Special.
Schrader spent the summer of 1923 breaking track records, two of them at Hastings, Neb., and Aberdeen, S.D. Somewhere along the way he acquired the nickname the “Flying Dutchman.”
He headed to the Anamosa fairgrounds for Labor Day races on Sept. 3, 1923. He placed first in time trial heats for motorcycles, third in the 5-mile motorcycle race, first in the 6-mile motorcycle race and first in the auto 4-mile preliminary event.
He would have placed third in the 8-mile motorcycle race, but took a serious spill turning into the straightaway. First reports of the accident said he was either dead or that his neck was broken.
Neither was true, and he was back on the track in Marengo a few weeks later and in Kenosha, Wis., in October.
New Fronty Ford
Schrader spent the winter of 1929-30 building a new car to replace the Kinsey Special he had been driving. His new Fronty Ford — a Model T Frontenac — helped him become one of the best dirt track drivers in the nation.
In Milwaukee, on Sept. 2, 1931, he set a 25-mile world dirt track record of 18 minutes, 9 seconds, in his Miller Special. He also set a record in the mile time trial of 41.19 seconds.
Schrader and Indy 500 winner Louis Meyer crashed during a race at a Bakersfield, Calif., speedway in 1932. The accident landed Schrader in the hospital for two weeks.
He entered the Indy 500 in 1935, but his car developed motor trouble in the 116th mile. He stuck to racing on dirt tracks all over the country after that.
World champ
Schrader was the International Motor Contest Association‘s national sprint car champion eight times, winning from 1933 to 1937 and again from 1939 through 1941.
Time trials for the association’s 1938 gold cup races was scheduled at the Hawkeye Downs track in Cedar Rapids on May 29, 1938. Schrader’s new car was an Offenhauser-Miller built in Los Angeles.
Before 8,000 fans at the Downs, he set three new world records for a half-mile track. His time trials record was 25.23 seconds, breaking his own 25.6 record. He won the seven-lap event by a car length and won the 10-lap event as well, in a record-setting 11 minutes, 51.5 seconds.
“Galloping Gus” was back at the Downs in 1940. Although he was faster than his nearest competitor, Emory Collins, by 0.05 seconds in time trials, Schrader lost the seven-lap race by two lengths.
Schrader was determined to beat speedway champ Jimmy Wilburn from Portland, Ore., in a 5-mile race at the Downs on Aug. 10, 1941, but he finished seconds behind Wilburn. It was the seventh time out of 10 races that Wilburn had bested Schrader that year.
It was the last time Hawkeye Downs dust would cover Schrader’s car.
Last race
Three weeks before Schrader planned to race at the Louisiana State Fair in Shreveport, he told Cedar Rapids friends he was retiring from racing. He was 46 and had made plans after the Louisiana race to take his wife, Eunice, on a deer hunting trip to Canada.
The track at Shreveport was dusty Oct. 22, 1941. Spectators could barely see when the nine-time dirt track champ locked wheels with his nemesis Wilburn’s car, sending Schrader flying nearly 15 feet into the air.
“As Schrader was catapulted into the air, his helmet and shoes fell off,” the Shreveport Times reported. “Falling on his head, he suffered a skull fracture and concussion but no other broken bones. Racetrack followers said that if the helmet had not fallen off, Schrader most likely would have survived.”
Schrader, who was driven in more than 1,100 races, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Wilburn was not injured.
A tribute
Schrader’s funeral was held at Turner Chapel in Cedar Rapids on Oct. 25, and his body was taken to Los Angeles for burial.
“Hours have passed since the night crew called to break the news of Gus Schrader’s tragic death, and it’s still hard to believe that the old Flying Dutchman has faced a starter’s barrier on this earth for the last time,” veteran sports reporter Tait Cummins wrote in his Gazette Red Peppers column Oct. 23.
“Schrader was a hard man to know intimately, supremely confident of his ability to cope with any situation which might arise on a racetrack, and so utterly fearless his very presence in a race caused countless drivers to settle for second place or worse before the race ever started.
“With all his driving courage, however, Schrader was probably the most careful driver in the business, keenly aware of the hazards he faced and determined to run his string out to retire in comfort on the means his hazardous career made possible.”
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